About Town

Parking in the city can be really difficult ... or not

An elegant gentleman here, having a quiet beer under a palm tree!

An all together more creative effort here - I'm not quite sure what's holding it up .... said the vicar to the actress!!

A bit of train spotting here - I nearly missed it, but I've seen this bicycle before!

One bicycle 'homed' and a new one to take it's place - I wonder who this belongs to?

Now that's the way to get your dry cleaning home!! How gorgeous!

Auckland Harbour Bridge Song

Perhaps this won't hit the top 20, but it's very cool all the same!!

The song, 'Cycling On The Harbour Bridge', was written in support of the Get Across campaign and has some great footage from the day we crossed in protest - fabulous day!

Here are some snaps from the day

Diverse activists
Clustered activists
Gentlemen Activists
Activists in skirts
Small activists

Here's a great video from the protest day courtesy of Sportzvibes.

Think outside the car-centric box

An oldy but a goody, I found this on Ian Walkers blog. He has put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) on the issue of car storage ... if you really think about it, and break outside the bounds of what has become normal ... it is quite bazaar that people can leave great hunks of metal on the streets in everyone's way!

"I've got a really big wooden crate -- it's a little over 4 metres long and just under 2 metres wide -- and it won't fit in my house. I'm the only person who gets any benefit from my having this crate -- indeed, my ownership of the crate is actually bad for you. I didn't really care about the fact I had nowhere to keep the crate when I bought it; I wanted it and so I got it anyway. So now, because it won't fit in my house, I'm just going to leave it in the street. It'll block half of the road, but so what? I need somewhere to keep my crate and that's where it's going.

Here's the question: why should I be allowed to own a car if I have nowhere to store it? I am not permitted the same freedom to store anything else on the road. If I own a caravan, or a speedboat on a trailer, I am obliged to have off-road storage facilities for it."

Bicycle Taxation

I nicked this in it's entirety from Real Cycling because it's BRILLIANT!! Enjoy ...

"Two lung cancer sufferers are waiting for life-saving radiotherapy. One is a smoker and one a non-smoker. Which gets priority for treatment?

The right answer, of course, is 'neither: free health care is universal and non-prioritised (apologies to US readers), though if I was the doctor I'd be tempted to put the non-smoker first'. But what if the smoker claimed priority because the non-smoker 'doesn't pay hospital tax'?

Nonsense, you'd say: there's no such thing as 'hospital tax'. Oh yes there is, the smoker insists: all that tax I pay on cigarettes pays for the NHS, so the non-smoker has less claim to the treatment than me.

A smoker who claimed this would be held up for public ridicule and contempt. Yet it's exactly the same argument as the certain type of motorist who whinges that 'cyclists don't pay road tax so they should leave the roads to us'.

'Cyclists don't pay road tax' is an urban myth of astounding proportions. More widespread even than the notion that 1970s kids' TV programme Captain Pugwash had characters with very rude names (it didn't); that JFK mistakenly said 'I'm a jam doughnut' in Berlin (he didn't); or that Jeremy Clarkson once wrote something witty.

Now a site called ipayroadtax.com offers to sell you various bits of kit branded with a pretend logo saying that cyclists actually DO pay road tax, because most of us have cars. That's their logo on the right.

It was a wheeze that grew thanks to Twitter by the admirable cycling advocate and journo Carlton Reid (see his fine biking sites bikeforall.net and quickrelease.tv, and his Twitter feed).

Now, anything that might counter certain motorists' tedious and flatly untrue opinions about road funding and raise a bit of awareness is a good thing. If this promotes sensible media debate, and helps destroy this particular urban myth, then great.

But it's a wheeze I can't entirely participate in. I don't have a car, hardly earn enough to pay income tax, and get my T-shirts from East St market for a quid each branded 'Tomy Hifliger' and 'Docle & Gabanna'.

And in any case I'm not entirely clear what it's saying. That it's taxpayers who have the right to use the roads (which are paid for out of general taxation, and council tax, of course)? So not non-taxpayers, then? As a Southwark council-tax payer, do I have more right to use Southwark roads than Lambeth ones?

Maybe there's another answer - to charge cyclists a 'road tax' proportional to the wear and tear they produce compared to cars? The standard figure is that damage to roads is proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight. So a rough figure suggests that a car, which weighs about ten times as much as a cyclist (say 1000kg versus 100kg) should pay 10x10x10x10, or 10,000 times as much in 'road tax'. So if a car pays £100 a year, the cyclist pays 1p. I'd happily pay my next 50 years' 'road tax' now if it would shut up those certain motorists.

But we're getting dangerously close to the Smoker's Defence.

I think instead I'll make a T-shirt that says TAXATION IS IRRELEVANT, I'VE AS MUCH RIGHT TO THE ROAD AS YOU. IN FACT MORE, BECAUSE I HAVE RIGHT OF WAY WHEREAS MOTORISTS USE IT UNDER LICENCE.

No, that'd be too big a T-shirt. Maybe, instead, one that says CAPTAIN PUGWASH IS INNOCENT. Or JFK WAS RIGHT. Hmm. A bit oblique, I'll grant you. Ah, got it: how about 'SOD OFF'?"

And more good stuff

Really nice vid! - makes me just want to get on my bicycle and ride ....

And this post from IAN WALKER’S BLOG made me ROFL (apparently, that's a good thing!) ...

"If pedestrians want to walk on our streets, which we pay for with all our driving taxes, then they need to pay their share and take their part of the responsibility. Anybody who walks anywhere should undergo training, should have to pay an annual tax towards the facilities they enjoy, should display a license plate so they can be identified, and should each be made to carry insurance in case they are ever involved in any accidents. Until then, they can sod off back to Shoeville or wherever it is they go when they aren't freeloading off the rest of us."

Very cool! Remind you of anybody? Does he post to the Herald, by any chance?

Read the rest of it here

Some good stuff!

There was some good stuff floating about in the web ether today, so I thought I'd pass it on ...

This snippet is from the UK film, soon to be released, called 'Beauty and the Bike'. I do hope we can get it to come over here - could be an opportunity for another Red Carpet Ride!

And this is a great video from a fellow blogger in Australia - check out his site at And So To Bike.

(It takes a while to load but it is well worth it - go and have a cuppa while you're waiting!)

Hand painted Healing

These are my first Auckland Cycle Chic 'guest photographer' shots ....

Wow! I want one of those - I wonder if Heidi takes commissions?

Heidi and Jesse own Cycle Store in Lunn Ave in Mt Wellington.

Heidi explains:

"I'm German, I've lived in the French Caribbean for the last 25 years. As a teenager I had already handpainted Ordinary Bikes from 1950 with the basket for my dog. We came to NZ for the outdoor opportunities 1 year ago. In Auckland , I rediscovered the opportunity to use an ordinary bike, especially around the shop in Mt. Wellington, to go shopping without my car. For me, my healing is the best and most comfortable way to move in the city."

Bicycle Adventure

A couple of weekends ago, my daughter and I braved the relative wilds of the North Shore for a cycling adventure ...

We were very impressed with the cycle lanes ... not quite up to the facilities David Hembrow blogs about, but streets ahead of our cycling facilities in the city!

Wow! - segregated bicycle lanes, icons, green paint and signs!!!!

Lots of signs ... round blue ones!

Green cycle lanes ... tres chic!

There was plenty of bike fun to be had at the skate park too!

And more signs - diamond yellow ones!

And yet more signs - square blue and red ones!

We then headed into Takapuna for the customary bicycling adventure ice creme but unfortunately the cycle lanes vanished! We did find this lovely old bike used as a shop decoration, but that was of little consolation when being mowed down by 4 wheel drives - we very swiftly made the decision to take to the pavement!

Why is it that there are no bicycle lanes leading to the places you want to go? Bizarre ... truly bizarre!

You can do it NZ - be positive!!

Sometimes it's quite demoralising when you read about cycling on the web - Cyclists do not have the same rights as motorists on roads. It appears Australia has some ignorant people in high places, one can only be thankful that Mr Scully is the former minister for roads in New South Wales.

But sometimes you hear about some really great things happening ...



Positivity is the key, according to Mikael of Copenhagenize.com

"Pointing behavourial fingers at cyclists serves no good purpose if you don't point the fingers at the other traffic users at the same time. Behavourial campaigns aimed at everyone remove this focus on cyclists and also serves to place the bicycle on an equal footing in the public psyche.

If pointing fingers is your thing, then point them at the most dangerous and destructive elements in cities and towns. The automobiles. By recognising that there is a Bull in Society's China Shop and taking measure to tame it, you place focus logically and correctly on the largest problem.

Getting cyclists to behave like cars is harder than forcing cars to behave like cyclists. Lowering speed limits, building traffic calming measures, etc all help cycling as well as public health through reduced pollution, fewer accidents and less severe accidents, creating more liveable cities, and so on."

There are some fabulous street calming ideas in the Uk - I don't know about you but I definitely fancy some of these in my street!

In Copenhagen "We reached our destination by following some basic unwritten rules. We didn't bang on about the issues of danger or safety. We didn't point fingers at minority groups like the cyclists. We just built the infrastructure and people figured it out.

I'll make a wager. A city that doesn't highlight the positives about urban cycling – and only the positives, constantly and consequently – will never reach 15-20% modal share for bikes and will not succeed in mainstreaming urban cycling like we're seeing in so many cities around the world.

I'd like very much to lose that bet but I'm quite sure I won't."

So there it is - try and say, or show, something positive about cycling everyday - pass it on ...

Run over by a bus!

I happened upon the NZ road casualty statistics for 2008 the other day and had some thoughts …

The statistics for cars are broken down into drivers and passengers – why? Presumably so that the figures don’t look as horrific as they are. So I decided to put all the people who get hurt in cars in one column.

Once I had tried this, I realised why these figures are in two columns – the injuries are so huge for cars, compared to the forms of transport, that the graph is almost unworkable!

I also noted that cycling is incredibly safe! Even Pedestrians are involved in more accidents than cyclists. On the whole the only form of transport that is safer in traffic is ‘other’ - what ever that is!

So just looking at deaths, the only conclusion you can come to is that cars are incredibly dangerous. Also bear in mind that the majority of the deaths in the other columns are due to being hit by (yes, you guessed it) cars!

Looking at Auckland alone:

1,421 people were hurt in cars,

132 pedestrians were hurt by cars (given that pedestrians don't generally hurt themselves!) and

94 cyclists were hurt (presumably some by cars again!) and only 1 cyclist died ....

So when the next person says that they don't cycle in Auckland because it's too dangerous, suggest that they also stop walking, driving, drinking, eating, smoking, boating .... etc.

In fact the only safe thing they can do is 'Other'!!!!