"Bring Back Bike" or "I want to ride my motorbike, I want to ride my bike..."

Having now lived in a country where the scooter is the preferred mode of transport for enough months to form an opinion, and having travelled extensively throughout other countries that think similarly, I believe New Zealand has got it all wrong when it comes to their attitude towards motorbikes/scooters.  Or should I say the authorities have it all wrong.  What the government actually needs to do is encourage more people to use that mode of transport not penalise them by way of higher registration/ACC costs. 

Or what about a compromise where bikes up to 100cc are actually cheaper to register than cars.  Or a toll system that charges cars but not bikes to enter the city.  Why?  Well, less clogged roads, easier parking, environmentally friendly, helping families with lowering cost of living expenses, to name but a few.  Can you imagine Takapuna, Onewa Road area, or the Petone foreshore if there were more bikes and less cars, and less face it, a lot of those cars only ever have one passenger anyway.  And I know that the accident rate for motorbikes is higher, or that they always come off sencond best, but lessening the number of cars on the road could help to ease this, as well as more education and improved roadways.



Don't tell me you can't carpool on a bike. 
Although I think the old guy on the back just jumped on at
the last minute to get in the photo and ask for bakshees!
No, wait, he's just been caught in the act of pick-pocketing that
guys wallet!



It was announced last week, as I was writing this, that ACC levies are being reduced in some areas because they were back in the black.  Those areas did not include reducing car & bike registrations.  There was then a piece on tv about a motorcyclist highlighting the actions of many bikers who refuse to register their bikes and ride around on forged number plates.  And at around $600 to register a larger bike I can understand that...$600!  Good God!

Are we there yet? But wait...there's more! 
Eight is definitely enough!
Count them...8!  That's one less Mazda Bongo on the roads.
So $600 divided by 8 equals $75...That's still a months wages
each, or 1000 Nikes!

And while one may claim it isn't fair to compare Rarotonga, where I enjoy scootering bliss, to NZ, because of the increased road users, try telling the people in the two photos above.  They're from India and China respectively, countries that each have over a billion people each.