Editorial: Two-wheelers to the city's rescue

Anyone prone to twinges of anxiety about how well Auckland's ropey public transport system will deal with the chaos of the Rugby World Cup in 2011 can take heart: to our rescue is coming a fleet of sleek but robust and brand-new ... bicycles.

Cycling enthusiast Julian Hulls won the support of the Auckland Regional Council for a $4-an-hour bike hire scheme "as a public transport option for the rugby festival".

Most Aucklanders will have spotted the problem with the proposal but for the benefit of the regional councillors who gave it the nod, we briefly outline them here. 1. The traffic. 2. The terrain.

Councillor Sandra Coney, who gushed that "the idea of lots of people going by bike to Eden Park is really great" has possibly not attempted the feat herself. If she had, she would have noticed the long slog up Queen St and the suicidally cycle-hostile wasteland of the uptown interchanges. And once she got to the park, she might have wondered where she could lock up her bike in the throng of arriving fans, who might good-naturedly let her tyres down. Add into the mix roads clogged with buses (never mind Aucklanders going about their business) and the fact that many of the cyclists will be inexperienced and full of the sponsor's product imbibed at Party Central on Queen's Wharf and you have enough work to keep the nation's orthopaedic surgeons busy until 2013.

Hulls' claim that it will put Auckland on a par with London, Paris and Melbourne, would be laughable if it were not so frightening. All those cities have working public transport systems; here we are still learning how to compose a sentence that contains the words "train" and "on time". But if this is the thinking that excites decision-makers at a regional planning level barely two years out from kick-off, we should start praying for the arrival of the Super City. With a bit of luck, somebody in the new council will realise that it's time to stop mucking around.