27 May, 2021, to Wellington City Council at the Long Term Plan meeting
Thank you for opportunity to speak.
I’m submitting just not for myself but for my family, and my brother Ben. Ben is the big boy in the photo I keep in my son’s room, so he knows that he had an uncle who loved him very much.
Ben can’t be here today because ten years ago he was killed by a careless driver in Karori when he was cycling home to Mount Cook. Ben had just finished cooking my birthday dinner and he said to me ‘don’t worry, I’ve got my lights.’ I know he would have been here today because loved politics, and cycling, and local Government and was a giant nerd.
You have a choice today about how much investment is right to put into cycling safety infrastructure. There are four options on the table, but only one of them delivers the full programme within ten years, option four. This is also the only option which will deliver a cycling network Ben would have taken that night, from his house in Mount Cook and back all the way out West to Karori.
I know this question has been framed in terms of cost, and debt, and rates, “nice to haves” and certainty, and competing priorities. I know all of you feel the pressure of keeping rates down, and being re-elected, and doing the right thing.
I also know that many of you in this room understand that the only real way to everybody safe on the roads is to build physically separate infrastructure. All drivers make mistakes. Safety isn’t an individual matter – the power is in your hands to create systems that prevent injuries, and death. I know this because I spoke to many of you at the time of Ben’s death. I hugged some of you. I have watched as you have increased investment in cycling in Wellington, and I thank you for it so much. I wrote to some of you and I read your heartfelt replies that you would do everything in your power to make our road networks safer, if only you had the agency and the support.
I’m here to tell you today that you do have the agency, and you have my support. You all know that Wellington city has a dismal record of keeping cyclists safe and alive. You have seen the Waka Kotahi report. If any of you in this room does what you know in your heart is right to create, to create a full cycling network, and you cop flak for it, I will stand by your side and I will explain to anyone why this isn’t about rates, or numbers or debt or even votes but it’s about protecting people like my brother Ben.
Ben’s funeral cost $12,000 dollars. His death was cheap. NZTA put the full cost of each road death at $4 million dollars. His death was expensive. Ben’s death was the worst thing, that has ever happened to me and my family, in a hard life. We will never ever be able to explain to you the full cost of losing Ben in the dead of night on a rainy Wellington road.
This little boy in the picture is my son. He lives in Karori and he will be 12 this year. Ben in this picture was 22. This was the year he died. In ten years time, this little boy will be 22. If he gets on his bike and goes out the door at night, I want to be able to sleep, knowing that you did everything you could today to keep him safe, and everyone else who goes by bike. A whole generation is a long time to wait for real change. Please, be bold. Your decision today could protect another family from sitting here in ten years time holding a picture of someone they will never see again.
Nga mihi nui, thank you for your time.
Jennifer Lawless
Cycle Wellington 