The increasingly polarised debate over cycling access to a harbour crossing has brought out some fairly trenchant opinions. But do the anti-cyclist feelings that have been unleashed really reflect how people feel?

The real problem here is that after years of talk about a second harbour crossing, the investment has finally come through, but it’s to satisfy a politically driven agenda, not to solve congestion problems that are getting worse every week.

Quite rightly, residents on the North Shore and businesses on both sides of the harbour feel betrayed. Labour’s fixation on furthering cycle use through projects like their new bridge linking to a cycleway through the North Shore shows that they are out of touch with modern New Zealand. It’s the same with Labour’s decision to push ahead with light rail along Dominion Road, at an estimated $10 billion plus. Once again it’s a project that won’t make a scrap of difference to queues on the Southern Motorway. Even Labour’s own cost-benefit analysis of the cycling bridge shows that the investment doesn’t stack up.

But the pain doesn’t stop there. Both in Auckland and beyond, transport infrastructure projects are being scrapped to finance Labour’s vanity projects. The Mill Road to Drury South corridor, an upgrade to link Whangārei and Port Marsden, and one from Te Puna to Ōmokoroa in the Bay of Plenty – all axed.

These were all projects promised during the election and now cancelled because Labour is ideologically opposed to them. It could be said that Labour deliberately played down the true cost of these projects to win voters, while knowing that they would never go ahead.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favour of a bridge we can cycle and walk over, but it has to carry buses, freight and cars too. If we are going to build another bridge let’s do it for the right reasons and do it properly.

Bridges are incredibly expensive investments to make – the $785m price tag for the cycle bridge is proof of that – so we have to take a long-term view and employ a broad-scale approach to their planning.

Barely nine years after the Harbour Bridge opened in 1959 we were adding clip-ons because the real needs of a growing city had been hopelessly under-estimated. That bridge is now over 60 and under more pressure than ever before. The next one has to exceed the vision of the first to get anywhere near doing the job intended. When viewed in that context, even the most ardent cyclist has to admit that the cycle bridge just doesn’t stack up.

On a positive note, I want to applaud the forthcoming trial of hybrid ferries, all we need to do now is turbo-charge that thinking to give ourselves ferry services to rival Sydney.

And finally, at a community level, I’m delighted to announce the launch of the North Shore MP Award for Excellence in Community Contribution. One student from each of the 25 schools in the electorate will gain the award (I’ll be able to provide details shortly). As a volunteer for St. John I’m particularly excited about rewarding our young people for contributing to their communities – well done to every student.