Kate Hawkesby: Why do we bother with cycleways, if even the cyclists don't use them?

I have a very smart girlfriend who is an extremely active citizen in her local community, and her city in general actually.

She is a go-getter who stays informed, keeps up with local and national politics, and donates a lot of her time and energy to helping the community. She was an early adopter to the e-scooter, uses the city’s cycle ways, and is all for saving the planet and getting cars off the road.

But, and here’s the big but, she raised a very valid point the other day regarding said cycleways. Guess who is not using them? The cyclists.

She and her husband were walking along Auckland’s Tamaki Drive waterfront, the very same Tamaki Drive that had years of disruption as extremely expensive extremely wide cycleways were installed. And what she witnessed, was cyclist after cyclist after cyclist riding on the footpath, not the cycleways.

Within a five minute timeframe she noted no fewer than 10 cyclists barrelling past them on the footpath. Worse yet, they got abused for being in the cyclists’ way. She and her husband were on the footpath, walking, where pedestrians are supposed to walk. They were abused by cyclists trying to ride along the footpath, instead of the cycleway.

Now whenever you criticise cyclist behaviour you get accused of being anti-bikes so I want to stress she is anything but. She said she was on the side of cyclists when they got their gold plated cycleway paid for by 99 percent of ratepayers who don’t cycle it. She was happy for them. Right up until she got abused by them as they nearly ran her over, because they wanted the footpath all to themselves too.

And this is where cyclists, some cyclists, not all, do themselves a huge disservice and lose people’s support. There were more cyclists on the pavement than on the cycleway. The cycleway was empty.

My friend’s point was: why should hardworking ratepayers fund expensive and expansive cycleways if cyclists won’t even use them? She has appealed to Auckland Council and Mayor Wayne Brown to start fining cyclists who use footpaths when a cycleway is available. She said until cyclists embrace them, the vast majority of ratepayers who do not use them should not fund another metre of new cycleway. She said money raised from fining footpath clogging cyclists could be used to fund the new cycleways instead.

She makes sense I reckon, it’s hard to argue with. They have expensive lanes laid out especially for them, so why aren’t they using them? Even cyclists agreed with her. Some saying if there’s no cycle way available they’ll ride on the road before they even consider hopping on the footpath. One cyclist pointed out that cyclists who ride in packs on busy roads also give cyclists a bad name, and those who think it’s their right to abuse pedestrians on the footpath are equally loathed.

Someone wrote to me the other day and said in Wellington, it's the cycle lanes that are creating so many choke points that traffic across the city has been reduced to a crawl. Frustrating when the traffic's crawling past empty cycleways.

It’s the same in Auckland.

And I’m just not sure if those who designed the cycleways and decided they should have all that space on the road, actually thought through the winter months and how the half the year the weather precludes cyclists from even riding their bikes anyway. So bang for buck, are they all really worth it?

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