Auckland Council's design champion Ludo Campbell Reid fires back at critics of the city's cycling plan
COMMENT: $23 million in Government funding to get more school children cycling.
This funding will go to schools to install riding tracks and buy fleets of bikes.
This throws up so many questions it's hard to know where to start, but let's start with: whose responsibility is it when the kid falls off that bike and gets injured? Who's liable when the bike gets nicked? Who fixes the bikes when they break? Are teachers now being trained as bike mechanics too?
Where are all these riding tracks, bike storage facilities and fleets of bikes going? Schools barely have enough room for classrooms these days.
And how does this scheme help children with disabilities who're unable to ride bikes or use tracks?
This policy appears geared purely towards able-bodied students? Would money not be better spent on wheelchair access for toilets and more ramps into classrooms?
If the 1980s was so great do we also get kids to perm their hair and don Hammer pants again too?
In announcing this policy, Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter, famous for riding a bike to hospital to give birth said: "In the 1980s more than half of school kids walked or cycled to school."
Yep, that was the 80s. More than half the school kids probably had perms and wore Hammer pants too - doesn't make it right.
You can't date stamp an entire decade of history and hark back to it. It's not how the world works. We've moved on. Moved forward. We have bigger problems for kids now, like feeding them.
Why would we reference the 80s as some kind of goal? Going back in time also makes no sense because it's not an accurate comparison.
In the 80s the roads had fewer cars congesting them, there weren't bus lanes, and other hazards that there are now.
Children didn't ride with the distraction of a cellphone, they didn't need to carry laptops to school like they do now.
In encouraging kids to get on bikes and cycle to school, think about all that entails these days - their schoolbag, a laptop in it, some PE gear, their books, their lunch, pop it all on their back, put a helmet on, and ride to school.
It's not the 80s. Trying to put kids into a time warp is going to be a very expensive waste of money.
I'd rather see $23m spent on teachers' pay, more support for special needs kids, food in kids' tummies, shoes on their feet, better access for kids with disabilities who're already struggling to get around school.
