Yesterday, I joined what the media now claims was approximately 2000 "protesters" in a leisurely cycle ride across the Auckland Harbour Bridge. For those of you unfamiliar, downtown Auckland City is separated from its northern suburbs by an arm of the Hauraki Gulf (the Waitemata Harbour), and in 1959 an iconic bridge (rather resembling the one in Sydney) was erected for motorists. Cyclists and pedestrians are banned from using the bridge (the only exception being the annual Auckland Marathon), and instead must pay $5 for the ferry or embark on the 50km detour around the harbour to reach the northern suburbs.
In an effort to secure cycle & pedestrian access to the bridge, a grassroots effort, GetAcross, has lobbied politicians to include such access in future infrastructure plans. Having received the cold shoulder after multiple meetings with the bridge's owner, the national highway agency, they organised a gathering in honour of the bridge's 50th birthday. This comes after the highway agency cancelled their own plans for a similar event to mark the occasion, citing "too much interest".
So I understand when politicians ignore grassroots movements when the cause isn't very populist (the "loud minority" phenomenon). Hence the 10 or so protestors frequently outside the Chinese embassy in Wellington demanding China "Free Tibet" aren't likely to change anything soon - New Zealand's economic free-trade agreement with China is a tad more important in politicians' eyes. But, in modern Anglo-American democracies, I have never heard of grassroots causes to be ignored because they were too popular!
To prepare for the gathering, the highway agency spent a bunch of money putting up a fence around the park adjacent to the bridge, while ensuring that the police and their bridge employees were there to ensure a safe closure of the bridge, and then promptly screamed "NO!" in to a megaphone when the organisers offically offered them one last chance to change their mind and allow an hour or two for safe access. Then six cyclists simply rode on to the bridge from the adjacent on-ramp and the police and bridge employees did the smart thing and closed the bridge to allow safe access for all.
Enter the politics, since we wouldn't want to show that such "law-breaking" (even though, technically, only those 6 cyclists broke the law) was harmless, eh? As mentioned earlier, the highway agency doesn't seem to have a problem closing the bridge for the Auckland Marathon, which sees 9000 or so runners jog across over the course of 2 hours on a Sunday morning while traffic flows freely in both directions on the bridge (the bridge is actually 3 bridges, so they only need to close one). But for some reason, probably to ensure that the media focuses on disrupton caused by the protest, rather than the message of the protest, the highway agency directed the police to close all northbound lanes (e.g. closing 1 and a half bridges). So traffic was stopped and the media captured some angry motorists that became the focus of later reporting, since anger appears to sell more papers and capture more viewers than discussing the reasons behind why the highway agency spent more money on resisting the crossing rather than on accommodating it without vehicle disruption.
Here's some data on what was orignally planned to be a rather celebratory crossing by foot and cycle, but turned into a political statement by the uncooperative strategy adopted by the highway agency:
1. An estimated 318,000 people (over 25% of metropolitan Auckland) would have wanted to cross the bridge.
2. It would take 6.5 hours, so that means approximately 50,000 people can cross safely in one hour.
3. The daily average number of cars crossing is 154,000.
4. New Zealand's average vehicle occupancy rate is something around 1.2 persons per vehicle, so that means only around 184,000 people would have crossed by car on that day.
That means that for the celebratory day, the demand to cross by foot was about double than that by car! (And, since it was a Sunday, the figure wanting to cross by car is probably exaggerated, since weekends in May probably see below average numbers of cars crossing)
In an effort to secure cycle & pedestrian access to the bridge, a grassroots effort, GetAcross, has lobbied politicians to include such access in future infrastructure plans. Having received the cold shoulder after multiple meetings with the bridge's owner, the national highway agency, they organised a gathering in honour of the bridge's 50th birthday. This comes after the highway agency cancelled their own plans for a similar event to mark the occasion, citing "too much interest".
So I understand when politicians ignore grassroots movements when the cause isn't very populist (the "loud minority" phenomenon). Hence the 10 or so protestors frequently outside the Chinese embassy in Wellington demanding China "Free Tibet" aren't likely to change anything soon - New Zealand's economic free-trade agreement with China is a tad more important in politicians' eyes. But, in modern Anglo-American democracies, I have never heard of grassroots causes to be ignored because they were too popular!
To prepare for the gathering, the highway agency spent a bunch of money putting up a fence around the park adjacent to the bridge, while ensuring that the police and their bridge employees were there to ensure a safe closure of the bridge, and then promptly screamed "NO!" in to a megaphone when the organisers offically offered them one last chance to change their mind and allow an hour or two for safe access. Then six cyclists simply rode on to the bridge from the adjacent on-ramp and the police and bridge employees did the smart thing and closed the bridge to allow safe access for all.
Enter the politics, since we wouldn't want to show that such "law-breaking" (even though, technically, only those 6 cyclists broke the law) was harmless, eh? As mentioned earlier, the highway agency doesn't seem to have a problem closing the bridge for the Auckland Marathon, which sees 9000 or so runners jog across over the course of 2 hours on a Sunday morning while traffic flows freely in both directions on the bridge (the bridge is actually 3 bridges, so they only need to close one). But for some reason, probably to ensure that the media focuses on disrupton caused by the protest, rather than the message of the protest, the highway agency directed the police to close all northbound lanes (e.g. closing 1 and a half bridges). So traffic was stopped and the media captured some angry motorists that became the focus of later reporting, since anger appears to sell more papers and capture more viewers than discussing the reasons behind why the highway agency spent more money on resisting the crossing rather than on accommodating it without vehicle disruption.
Here's some data on what was orignally planned to be a rather celebratory crossing by foot and cycle, but turned into a political statement by the uncooperative strategy adopted by the highway agency:
1. An estimated 318,000 people (over 25% of metropolitan Auckland) would have wanted to cross the bridge.
2. It would take 6.5 hours, so that means approximately 50,000 people can cross safely in one hour.
3. The daily average number of cars crossing is 154,000.
4. New Zealand's average vehicle occupancy rate is something around 1.2 persons per vehicle, so that means only around 184,000 people would have crossed by car on that day.
That means that for the celebratory day, the demand to cross by foot was about double than that by car! (And, since it was a Sunday, the figure wanting to cross by car is probably exaggerated, since weekends in May probably see below average numbers of cars crossing)
