Driving me to think
Home » Blog » Annabel McAleer » Driving me to thinkHow am I supposed to figure out what I think about the truck drivers' protest, when they're making so much damned noise?
Photo by Francis van Beek. The truck says: "If Dolly Parton had to pay road tax she would be flat bust by now."
Most of the time, having an office smack bang in the middle of Queen Street is an excellent thing. Not today.
The protesting truck drivers had respect from quite a few HB Media staffers earlier this morning. But summoning the concentration to string a sentence together turns out to be quite difficult when hundreds of airhorns are blaring at you. Constantly.
The respect mainly comes from a place of admiration for so many people getting up, getting out and protesting about something they feel strongly about. It is heartening to see (and hear) the honourable act of protesting being revived so heartily.
Whether they have anything to compain about it a slightly more contentious matter.
Clearly, no one likes a surprise. Especially when it involves an unexpected increase in your cost of doing business, at the same time all your other costs are rising. But it seems to me they're wasting more money in fuel for this morning's protest than it would cost to pay the increase in road user charges (RUC)—which, after all, is only $53.80 per 10,000km for an average five tonne truck.
There's some interesting discussion going on in the Herald's Your Views section (never thought I'd say that...) and over at the Frog Blog. My favourite comment so far comes from Matthew Pilott of Wellington:
Every cent of RUC goes on roads—this information is easily available. Everyone cheered when the govt announced an extra billion on roads—so where did you people expect it to come from? The road fairy?
One unexpected advantage of the protest is that many Aucklanders seem to have heeded the traffic warnings and travelled to work by train, carpool or at least drove in ridiculously early. Seems Aucklanders are more than capable of reducing the number of cars on the roads. Wouldn't it be lovely if we kept it up?
The Herald reports that a group of cyclists intends to ride between the trucks along Queen Street today in a protest aimed at persuading the public more freight should be carried by rail than road.
If I can hear the dinging of bicycle bells over the airhorn racket outside, I'll be heading downstairs to cheer them on.
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