One of The Great Rorts Of Our Time

Cycleways--A Thing of Deceptive Beauty

When public bodies waste taxpayers' money, blood begins to simmer on its way to boiling.  It now turns out that Auckland--New Zealand's largest city--has been the victim of a scam.  The deception, apparently, has been carefully engineered by a bunch of anti-car, cycle zealots whose view of the future is soooo righteous, it justifies dissembling and lying.

We live close to the Great South Road as it makes its way down towards the Hunua ranges.  That main arterial road was once a main highway south, with two lanes heading south, and two north.  Now it is one lane either side.  But one both sides of the road there is a vacant cycle way to encourage and facilitate bike use.  What used to be two lanes of traffic each way is now one traffic lane and a cycle way.  At all times during the day and night, even in commuter rush hours, the cycle lane is more empty and barren than the Sahara.  As a consequence, traffic is gridlocked.

Commentator Mike Hoskings has also had his fill of this deceit and chicanery.

I am here to report that we were right all along about cycleways. We said cycleways aren't the future, don't get used, cost a fortune, and inconvenience the rest of us (ie those of us in a car) and for those of us who are guided through life by common sense.

I have a growing feeling we are starting to win the debate, and we are winning in this case through yet more evidence that so many of these decisions having nothing to do with reality, but everything to do with ideology.  An Auckland Transport report lays bare the sheer dishonesty around cycleways and how they're funded. AT used exaggerated figures to get public money to fund these things.  [NZ Herald]

Now in the world of Mum and Dad Hardscrabble if one were seeking investors for a project, it is expected that some business case would have to be made.  If the business case were peppered with falsehoods in order to make things seem better than they actually were, fraud has occurred which is a criminal offence.  This is what has happened in the case of Auckland Transport and the cycleways.

In the four business cases the report looks at, exaggeration was seemingly used in all of them. Millions upon millions of our dollars was spent on things those of us with a brain, but without an agenda, knew were bollocks.  Last year I stood on one of these cycleways, in peak hour, and filmed it. No one was on it, the road was full of cars, but no bikes.

These cases are in Auckland but no matter where you are - Christchurch, or Wellington - be rest assured the same dangerous, exaggerated nonsense will have been used to get your cycleways up and running.  Shops going bust, car parks removed, access to retail prevented so the zealots can build their monuments to a transport system that isn't wanted, isn't used, doesn't pay its way, is there by potentially fraudulent means, and ultimately will be seen for the sham it is.

The Auckland numbers as an example. One project projected 1060 bikes per day. In reality it was 680. Another said 980. In reality it was 330. A third said 975. In reality it was 290.  Even if those original numbers had been right, think about it. Nine hundred bikes a day in a city of 1.5 million people. Does 900 bikes justify millions in construction, and more millions in lost productivity, inconvenience, and wasted time?

Hoskings reckons that this is the tip of the iceberg.  The whole environmental "industry" has been overtaken by snake oil salesmen justifying projects and "investment" by false manufactured "facts".

This is the dishonesty of the modern age. This is our power industry, where we hate we hate fossil fuels, dream of wind farms, but end up importing coal.  This is the oil ban in Taranaki with no new jobs to replace those who pack up and leave the region, or the mining on the West Coast banned but with no ideas to fill the gaps.  This is the EV market where the headlines would have you believe they are booming, and yet we buy 64 utes for every EV.

The ideologues make it up as they go along. They pedal crap. But slowly they are getting found out for what they are.  The lesson here is, if it sounds flakey, it will be. If it sounds too good to be true, it will be. If it's promoted by weirdos, watch out.  These people are dangerous and we are footing the bill. But slowly the facts are exposing their rort.

For our money, those bureaucrats who signed off on make-believe projections and spurious business cases need to be placed before the courts and eventually made to do prison time.  They are no better than hucksters.

If a company made up data in order to sweeten an investment proposal, its directors would likely eat porridge for years.  The same principles must be applied to the bureaucrats of both central and city governments.