Rate Payers will carry the Can for Sky Path

Date: 7 July, 2015

Media Release (For immediate release)

Rate Payers will carry the Can for Sky Path

Last week, Auckland Council struggled to justify at 10% increase in rates. This week it is committing 10s of millions of dollars to underwrite a new toy: the cycle path across the harbour bridge.

‘It's like a family struggling to buy school shoes while dad goes out and buys a boat,’ say Max Whitehead, CEO Small Business Voice.

Mr Whitehead says Auckland small businesses waste huge parts of the day sitting in vehicles waiting for traffic to clear. This congestion is costing Auckland and the NZ economy 100s of millions — if not billions — of dollars.

He also says the Sky Path will be extremely dangerous: ‘Allowing cyclists and pedestrians to travel both directions along a narrow four-metre corridor for a kilometre is crazy’.

‘We don't need a toy like a Sky Path; we need the problem of traffic congestion fixed. That is what our rates should be spent on’.

Mr Whitehead says that in the agreement to build Sky Path, the Sky Path company will be compensated by Auckland rate payers should patronage fail to meet figures set out in Auckland Council’s research documents.

‘It’s unlikely the estimated numbers will ever be achieved. For example, the agreement states that 14,337 people must use Sky Path on a Saturday during summer. Also, people may say, “Oh but people will cycle to work.” That's rubbish; in the last two weeks you would struggle to see any cyclists because it’s raining’.

At the end of the day, Mr Whitehead says, it will be Auckland rate payers who pay for Sky Path.

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