The good oil: Stay out of bus lanes

A bus lane in Remuera. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Stay out of bus lanes, unless you are driving to hospital someone who is dying in front of your eyes. Then, and only then, will you legally have a chance of escaping a fine. The Good Oil knows this because a judge fined him for driving in a special vehicle lane, in this case a bus lane. The Good Oil threw himself on the mercy of the court, saying he entered the bus lane early looking for the driveway into a building. But the judge didn't budge.

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That 50m bus lane access thing people are writing letters to the editor about? It's not in the rules. The law says you must not drive in a special vehicle lane unless you are operating a vehicle of a type that is permitted to use that lane. The 50m thing is an Auckland City Council concession. It's council's way of saying it has made a dog's breakfast of bus lanes and is offering an apology of sorts in allowing motorists to enter a bus lane for convenience, like "crossing the lane in order to turn or park clear of the lane". Something like that anyway. Take the corner of Albert and Wyndham Streets, up from downtown. Sit there for a while and watch how the bus lane confuses motorists. The mayhem has the makings of a modern Three Stooges movie, starring Citizen and Ratepayers' lobbyists as Larry, Moe and Curly Joe. Cut to the scene where they fall over each other.

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A wag we know calls bus lanes "The Green Mile" after the movie and the walk the big guy takes to the execution chamber. The Good Oil likes a "Yellow Brick Road" theme best, if only because he sides with those who believe bus lanes belong somewhere over a rainbow. There is no wizard to ease the pain of a fine, no Dorothy dreamer searching for better beginnings, no scarecrow looking for clues to the confusion, no bloke dressed like a lion hoping for a ticker. No, at the end of The Green Mile is a tin man on a bench. A Wicked Witch collects the fines.

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Auckland finished fourth equal with Vancouver in a survey done by British newspaper the Independent to find the best city in the world. Vienna came first, Zurich second and Geneva third. Each had its downside. Vienna is full of "grumpy, old fur-coated ladies". Zurich has a "conservative and narrow-minded older Swiss population". Geneva is populated by "stand-offish international bureaucrats". Vancouver is "culturally dull". Auckland has "poor infrastructure, crime and other urban problems". Auckland was the only city in the top five where crime was a factor.

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We hope the bus driver who punched his way into the chaos of Anzac Ave traffic and forced five or six drivers to jump on everything to avoid hitting each other lives in rural Auckland. We hope he has chooks. We hope that they turn into emus or ostriches before his eyes and kick the living daylights out of his chook house. That way he will perhaps be left with matchsticks. Then he can use them to prop open his eyes.

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Motorcyclists from the Redeemed club got together at the Drury performance centre the other day to help the parents of a handicapped boy buy a specially equipped vehicle. Around 250 motorcyclists let loose to cobble together around $7500. The Redeemed club is just that - a bunch of former hell-raisers who these days ride the Christian highway.

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Chrysler may be under bankruptcy protection but that did not stop its representatives from disrupting a funeral service in Cranbury, New Jersey, to subpoena the corpse. Chrysler claims the corpse is crucial to an upcoming lawsuit.

alastair.sloane@nzherald.co.nz