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Home > The Mike Hosking Breakfast > Mike's Minute: Public transport zealots have lost the plot


	Podcast:		The Mike Hosking Breakfast
	Episode:		Mike's Minute: Public transport zealots have lost the plot
	Category:		News & Politics
	Duration:		00:02:02
	Publish Date:		2022-03-29 21:01:28
	Description:		I am not sure if they realise it, and even if they do, whether they really care. But taking stuff away from people like car parking on the street, which is what Auckland Transport are doing, affects the most vulnerable. It's like the Government's feebate on EVs, when you have $75,000 to buy a Tesla, you don’t actually need help financially from other taxpayers. When they take your parking away, you use a building or private facility. You don’t like it, but you have the wherewithal to do it. People who have their own carpark in the city, whether leased, owned, provided by their company or boss, are never affected by parking in the street. And they are certainly never hopping on a bus. People like transport departments aren't coordinated in any way, apart from the fact they are all ultimately an arm of the council. They don’t care that by making it harder to get a park, the destination, like the city, is no longer as appealing and therefore people don’t bother. You destroy the very thing you were looking to allegedly enhance. They do it incrementally as well. When it's announced, as it has been this week that 240 kilometres of street parking are going, it's packaged into a much larger piece of transport work so it's harder to find and pick out. And further, it's not all done at once, it's done street by street. You drive past one day and the street is empty of cars. Why? Because they came in and changed the signs. I have a bus lane near my place. It started out as a T3 7-9 Monday to Friday, then it was 7-10, now it's 7-4, as well as Saturdays and Sundays. No one uses it and there are hardly any buses. But that’s how the creep works, start small and before you know it, it's gone. It's a two-fold problem. Rightly or wrongly, people like cars and they aren't dropping them. The statistics tell the story. Making it worse is public transport is a joke. The trains that don't work, the buses that are on strike, and/or never arrive. On their whiteboard at head office of Wonksville is the vision. There's the EVs, the bikes, the e-scooters, the buses humming along filled with happy patrons, and the trains reminiscent of the Piccadilly line, but none of it's real. In New Zealand a lot of people work from home, the CBDs are shot, the buses and trains are laughable, the wonks don’t get it, so they destroy the place. And at the end of the line, as always, with the most inconvenience and cost are the people who can least afford it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
	Total Play:		0