Waste of money?

Picked up this interesting story from The Nelson Mail on the radar.

An Atawhai resident watched in disbelief as a Nelson City Council staff member left her home on a bicycle after carrying out a resource consent inspection.

To summarise, this resident was disgusted that a council representative rode a bike to their property to carry out an inspection.

According to Google maps, the trip is a distance of 5.3km, and would take around 8 minutes in a car. At 15km/h, the trip would have taken around 20 minutes by bike.

The council has two fleet bicycles and encourages sustainable practices where possible but these had to be balanced with efficiency and cycling to out-of-town jobs wasn't appropriate, Mr Johnson said.

The fact this made the news (although I guess even hot spots like Nelson get slow news days) shows that there's a long way to go in NZ for cycling to be accepted as a normal form of transport.

We'd like to send a message of support to the councilor, and hope they keep on using the most efficient means of transport available to them.