These bunch rides exist thanks to a regrettable legal loophole that permits freedom of assembly among cyclists, even going so far as to let them to ride two abreast so long as they don’t "hold back traffic”. Exactly
what constitutes holding back traffic is unclear and so the Wheels have been
known to take to the streets en-masse in groups of up to thirty cyclists,
forcing motorists to exhaustingly lift their foot off the accelerator, delaying their journeys by tens of seconds.
The riders don’t pay a cent in registration or fuel taxes, so while the beleaguered motorists are forced to endure the tedium of turning
the steering wheel by a few degrees to avoid colliding with a mass of sweaty flesh
and carbon fibre – the cyclists ride, mockingly, for free. Exactly how they get
away with this is unclear because lord knows those two-centimetre wide tyres
must dish out a brutal beating to Central Otago’s road network. Next time you
sink axle-deep into a spring pot-hole, don't blame the tourist busses or the cattle trucks - it'll be the cyclists that are responsible.
Until now the Wednesday Wheels and the imitation rides they’ve
spawned on Tuesday and Thursday nights have been at a tolerable level for
motorists, like a tune on the radio that’s not quite annoying enough to make
you change channel. But Queenstown’s cyclist problem could be about to reach full-on
Van Halen levels of intensity.
Mountain bikers, road cyclists’ even filthier cousins, have
been allowed to cut a network of trails through our pine plantations. Those
trails have led to more bikers, which have led to more trails, which have led
to more bikers and so on. Now, it seems this influx of lucrative, socially desirable,
ecologically friendly visitors has piqued the interest of our national human trafficking
organisation, Tourism New Zealand. The result is massive infrastructure
projects like Nga Haerenga, a world-class national network of cycle trails designed to lure even more bikers from
around the world.
The problem is, as sure as night follows day, where mountain
bikers go, road cyclists will follow. If we let our country become known as a
biker-friendly destination then we’ll inevitably see roads crawling with gangs
of “roadies” jacked up on endorphins, speaking in their own lingo and
performing rites and manoeuvres so bizarre that one can only conclude their
sole purpose is to disturb the regular motoring public.
It’s not too late to stop this nightmare from happening. But
Queenstown will need to take a cold hard look at itself and decide: do we want
to give our town over to the spandex wearing scourge or do we want to preserve
every man’s inalienable right to automotive convenience? I think the answer is
obvious.