Jon SullivanIt's local election year in Christchurch City, NZ, which means we have some politicians, including our self-confessed "petrol-head" mayor, making noise about the city's allegedly high spending on cycle ways. There's a good article today in #ThePress pushing back against that, showing that cycle way spending will be about 0.11% of rates increases. They compare that with the 4.6% rates increase for our new stadium.
What the article doesn't do is compare the city's cycle way and car way spending. I found numbers for the region on the ECan website for the next 10 years, for building and servicing our transport infrastructure. It's 74.3% car spend (mostly road maintenance and improvements), 21.9% public transport (including operating the bus fleets), and 3.3% cycling and walking.
https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360782234/what-cutting-cycleways-would-really-save-ratepayers
Philip