As a form of commuting, biking is the best. I thought this even before I lived in Holland. Besides the fact that it's cheap and good for self-righteous tree-humpers, as long as you have a bit of fitness and a decent bike it's faster to bike than to use the car or bus. The problem with cycling in New Zealand is that New Zealanders are so ignorant to the cyclist-cause. Yes, this means that automobilists simply don't realise that you might be there. They'll change lanes in front of you without indicating, they'll turn left into a sidestreet while you are on their left, parallel-parked car doors are like a giant game of whack-a-mole. As a result, I'm one of those agressive cyclists who won't hesitate for a moment to slap the side of a car that nearly kills me. I won't try to dent or scratch the car, but I just want to make a loud a noise as possible so get the driver's heart-rate to go up as much as mine just did. It's only fair.
But this is old news, complaining about drivers not looking out for cyclists. What it also bad is pedestrians crossing the road. I was once biking down a road alongside a long trail of traffic-jammed cars when suddenly a stupid bitch steps out right in front of me. She looked at me like a near-future roadkill and thrust both the palms of her hands at me. I couldn't stop in time, so I swerved slightly and ended up ramming my shoulder into her double-hand punch. I didn't fall, but the stupid whore gave me a dead arm for more than a day.
But stupid people happen everywhere. It's when stupid reaches the govermnent level that it becomes truly scary. There is a section of road here in Wellington that I have biked every day for the last few weeks, as it is the main road from Newtown to the central city. This small stretch of road would be hilarious if it wasn't so ridiculously dangerous. So today I brought my camera along for the ride to break down this cyclist death-row.
This section of road has a bus-lane, which doubles as a parallel car-park. Often at times like this, you need to swing onto the main road. Luckily it is downhill, so it is easy enough to get up to about 40kmph so you can slip between the cars.
Suddenly at the end of this section of road, they kindly decide to introduce a cycle path. Well, it's not so much as a cycle path as a regular footpath with a picture of a bicycle on it. This is quite a busy pedestrian crossing, so it's really quite pointless.
Then, the footpath takes a 90 degree left turn around the corner of a building. It's quite exciting because who knows what is around the corner? Is it a person?
No, there is a damn telephone pole. If you are cylcling with any speed faster than walking-pace, you will have to take the corner wide, which will lead you right into this pole. So you have to break, and continue up the footpath.
Now we come to the end of this footpath/cycle path. Note that there is no picture of a bicycle on this end. From this end, this would appear to be a regular footpath, which according to New Zealand traffic laws, you aren't allowed to cycle on. But it gets worse here. The road from the left is a blind street where cars or people could step in front of you. And the road on the right is a major one-way two-lane street with the left lane possibly being used for cars going in the street straight up ahead. This means that most cars don't bother indicating, and I have to either wait for a gap in traffic, or try and merge which is almost impossible since I can't get up to speed since there is only 10-20 metres of road and this section goes uphill.
This is the shoulder of the two-lane road, which is the closest I've seen to a cycle lane. This lasts for about 20 metres of road.
Soon, there are more parallel parks, and this stupid trailor billboard advertising mini doughnuts. You can see how little room there is for a cyclist - and remember that the taxi is travelling at about 50 kmph. Can you imagine how pissed off you'd be if you died because of somebody wanting to advertise sugar-coated dough?
Then the roadworks begins, with no regard for cyclists. I personally think sacrificing a few parallel parks and making a few people walk a little bit further to work is less effort than scraping a human off the tarseal.
You see here, the dotted yellow lines are just wide enough to bike on. But these are also sacrificed, for as far as I can tell, no apparent reason other to advertise the fact that further up ahead are some road workers waiting for their turn to ride the tractor or hold the stop-go sign.
As of yet, there were no road works going on. But here we have a set of traffic lights. There's nothing wrong with this persee, but read on.
So as soon as you pass the intersection, there are more supid cones, but not only that, you see a sign on the footpath on the other side of the road.
Yes, magically, the cycle path makes a return, but on the wrong side of the road with three lanes of one-way traffic between you and it. Also, remember that you were just at an intersection, which means that most of the time there is a lot of traffic and you have to basically wait until the next red light.
This is the "cycle path" which also looks suspiciously like a footpath. The problem with these is, when there are real footpath users, they don't expect cyclists to be coming up behind them.
Then the cycle path ends after a hundred or so metres, and you need to cross the road like a regular pedestrian.Now tell me that this isn't the stupidest section of road for a cyclist in existence? Obviously, after a few days of commuting this, I began hogging the road, trying to get my speed up so I could bike in the left lane of traffic as if I were a regular vehicle. I also ran red lights and weaved through cars, because this was not only much faster, but much safer.
New Zealand apparently has one of the highest cars per capita ratio, and you sometimes hear about policies to try increase the amount of cyclists. Everyone knows the benefits of cycling for the individual, the environment and for traffic congestion, but I now understand why so few people commute by bike. You have to be fit and a bit of an adrenalie junkie, as well as an asshole that is always looking out just for yourself. I understand why automobilists often get pissed off at cyclists, but they don't understand that to be a cyclist and not die that you need to be an asshole. I think that all public workers, city planners, road-workers and policemen should be forced to bike around cities for a week every year, and maybe the roads can get a little less stupid for cyclists. I don't think we will ever get dedicated cycle lanes in New Zealand, but things could be improved so much by a few simple non-stupid steps:
- No half-assed cycle lanes. You know that councils want to address the problem, because there are sometimes sections of green painted cycle lanes, or those pictures of a bike on the footpath. However these are completely useless if they stop after a only a few hundred metres or less. It would be like cutting out sections of powerlines every few hundred metres - we'd all be living in the dark
- Widen the shoulders. If a cyclist is having to tread the dotten yellow line like a tight-rope walker, then something is wrong.
- Clear the shoulders. People are shit at paralell parking anyway, and they're pretty terrifying.
- Again, force automobilists to bike around a city a few days a year so they realise how incredibly dangerous it can be.
- Non-asian tattoo artists should not be allowed to tattoo Chinese characters. This has nothing to do with cycling, but I think we can all agree than this is a good idea.
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