Mike's Minute: Cycleways – hype over reality

If a council gives a media outlet some numbers and the media outlet simply re-posts those numbers, is that reportage? Or propaganda? 

The headline was "more cyclists get on their bikes", which is true. But at no point in my reading of the cycleways of the nation's major cities, was any definitive analysis done as to whether the cost of the infrastructure to get people on their bikes was worth it. 

In Christchurch some popular routes clocked 2000 trips a day. Is that a lot? 

Well, remember to halve those numbers because trips are each way. So it's 1000 trips going to and from something, and this is in a city of 400,000. 

In Wellington there are four key corridors. They racked up 87,000 trips in a month. 

So if you have 87,000, you actually have roughly 43,000 trips to and from. Divide it by four for the corridors and you have roughly 10,000. Divide that by 30 (for days of the month) and you have 333 people a day. 

That's not a lot of people for cycleways that would have cost many millions of dollars. 

In Christchurch they were claiming a 40% increase in usage, except that was from 2017. So in eight years it's about 5% a year. Not really a booming number. 

Newtown in Wellington is one of their most popular routes. They do, they claim, between 8,000-12,000 trips a month. 

So let's average that. It's 10,000 divided by two so we are down to 5,000. Divide that by 30 and we end up at 166 a day for one of the most popular routes. 

So is cycling booming, or has the council PR department cobbled together their best numbers and passed it off in press release form to a gullible newsroom in the hope no one has a calculator? 

Don’t get me wrong – there's nothing wrong with cycling. Cycling is fun and good for you, but when you add the cost of specialist infrastructure and do the math, it's got a very EV-type vibe about it, doesn’t it? 

It's a lot of hype that is never quite matched by the reality. 

Numbers and percentages are easily messed with to paint the sort of picture you want. 

The favourite is the huge percentage increase, but you're not supposed to ask from what, to what. One to two is 100%, but it's still only two overall. 

Beware the bandwagon and the machine, normally tax or ratepayer funded, that pushes this stuff. 

And, sadly, the media who peddles it. No pun intended. 

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