Mike's Minute: We aren't giving up our cars, but the Government don't get that

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The problem with Michael Wood is his arrogance - and his arrogance prevents him from seeing the simple truth.

None of his goals around getting us out of cars is going to get us out of cars.

He talks of giving us choices but fails to understand that if you are not going to use those choices, they are not really choices. Or even if you would use those choices, but they don’t exist, then that’s not really a choice either.

There is a war on cars and the war, as we found out yesterday, has a series of really dumb names.

The Urban Vehicle Kilometres Travelled Reduction Programme. Are you serious?

That’s the name of a plan.

There are other plans. But all the plans, according to those who follow plans, are the same.

The Auckland plan, the climate action plan, the transport emissions reduction polluting plan, regional land transport plan, the regional public transport plan - so many plans, so little time.

But more importantly, so little success.

Michael Wood says if we go absolutely gangbusters we can get 30 percent of cars as EV's by 2035. It won't happen.

He ignores all the issues around EV's, but that’s because he is blind around transport and emissions from transport.

The other major issue they seem to have failed to work out is they mix their national plans with their local Auckland plans.

For the national emissions number to drop by 20 percent they need Auckland to drop by 29 percent. That isn't happening.

They are trying though. They're killing us on the road, they're cutting lanes and parking, they're forcing us out of our cars and yet, because of a mix of necessity and sheer incompetence on their part, we aren't leaving them.

We aren't leaving them because the trains and buses don’t work. And if they did, they don’t work the way they need to, which is to make our lives work.

And we aren't getting out of cars because we actually like cars. They are useful, they are convenient and they suit us.

And that last critical detail is what ol' Michael “number 47 to Mt Roskill” Wood doesn’t get.

He isn't like us. He is a wonk. He loves plans, he loves theories and he isn't part of the real world.

That’s why we are still in our cars - and he doesn’t get it.

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