John MacDonald: The Government idea leading us down a dead-end street

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

It seems doesn’t it that the Government, at the moment, is hellbent on forcing change on us in so many parts of our lives.

Yesterday, it was the housing intensification changes - which the Christchurch City Council snubbed its nose at.

There’s another one, though, that I suspect the Christchurch council - in fact, all councils around the country - might be quite excited about.

The Government’s “Reshaping Streets” policy will make changes to land transport rules and the Local Government Act, to allow councils to change street lay-outs and street uses for up to two years without consulting anyone first.

The Government’s saying the two years would be a “pilot” or a “trial” and then the councils could consult us on what we thought of it after that.

It would completely turn things on their head and any council could decide it wants to make a change to the lay-out of a road or change the way a road is used, give us just two weeks’ notice, keep the changes in place for two years, and then ask us what we think of it.

As one commentator has been saying, it would mean those opposed to something would run out of steam after two years and the rest of us would probably just accept it and not bother with the drawn-out consultation process.

Now one of the things these proposed changes would do, is allow councils to ban parents from driving to the school gate to pick-up and drop-off their kids.

And they’d do this by closing streets to private vehicles during drop-off and pick-up times.

Can you imagine that? And if parents started driving down side streets to get to the school, councils could extend the ban to those side streets as well. And that’s just one example of how this policy would work.

But, unlike the housing intensification business, it’s quite likely that our local councils will love this one because councils - rightly or wrongly - are perceived as being anti-car, because they seem to love chewing up roads to build cycleways and they love to tell us that we should be taking the bus and riding a bike.

The name of this government policy - Reshaping Streets - says it all, doesn’t it? And councils love re-shaping streets. So maybe they won’t be so quick to push back on it.

Another thing this proposed policy would do is it would let councils remove car parks for two years - again with just two weeks’ notice - and it’d be two years before they had to ask us what we thought of it.

Just yesterday afternoon I went into town to do something but I just about gave up when it became so difficult finding somewhere to park - all because the council thinks we shouldn’t be driving into town, and we should be riding our bikes or taking the bus. So there are nowhere near as many parking spaces in town as there used to be.

And that’s why I think councils everywhere are going to love this “Reshaping Streets” proposal the Government is pushing.

Because if it goes through, they'll be able to take away even more car parks (with just two weeks' notice) and make us wait two years before we get to have a say on it.

They’ll be able to close the roads around schools during drop-off and pick-up time, with just two weeks' notice, and make us wait two years before asking what we think of it.

In my view, calling these things “pilots” is nothing short of shifty. And, as far as I’m concerned, it will be seen by most people as ideology-gone-mad.

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