Just because someone can afford to do something, it doesn’t always mean they should do it. 

Which is how I’m feeling about Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger using his own money to pay engineers to design a replacement for the controversial Park Terrace cycleway which, he says, is under-utilised and causing traffic congestion. 

According to council data, 648 cyclists use it every week day. Which doesn’t sound under-utilised to me. 

What’s more, I don’t like the idea of the mayor circumventing his in-house transport staff and getting some private engineers to come up with another design. I think it’s very sneaky. 

You may remember the row over this one a couple of years back, when council transport staff blocked-off one of the lanes heading north on Park Terrace and turned it into a two-way cycle lane. 

Marking it off with bollards and reducing that stretch of road to one-lane, instead of two. 

If you can’t quite envisage where this is, it’s the stretch of road that goes from the Antigua boat sheds, past the museum, past Christ’s College and The George hotel, up to Salisbury Street.  

Which, as I said at the time, was the outcome of the council transport people over-thinking things because they were concerned about cyclists and pedestrians being put at risk by the development work going on at Canterbury Museum.  

So they thought that closing a lane of traffic, turning it into a cycleway, and making that stretch of road one-lane, instead of two, was the answer. 

When this all flared-up back in 2023, Phil Mauger got into strife when he said council staff were “running amok and they need to be reined in”. 

He also described staff as "the anti-car brigade". 

Two years down the track - and with an election coming up - Phil has paid some engineers to come up with an alternative design. 

Which would see the traffic lane used for the cycleway being reinstated and the 2.5 metre-wide shared footpath that runs between the road and the Avon River being widened to accommodate cyclists.  

Personally, I think the idea Phil is pushing is a good one - but I don't like the fact that he’s worked around his own council engineers and paid other, private engineers to come up with a new design. 

I know some people will think he’s being a bit of a legend and putting his money where his mouth is. But I don’t. Even though I think it would make much more sense to use some of that space between the footpath and the river. 

The reason I don’t like what he’s done, is that he is riding roughshod over his transport staff and he’s riding roughshod over his council’s processes. 

Because this cycleway is due to be in place for another three years. Some concillors didn’t like it at the time. But that’s how things ended up. 

Even though the mayor has spent his own personal money getting these engineers to come up with a different design, it will only happen if he’s re-elected. And it’s not as if he’s going to pay for the work. 

He says his plan will cost ratepayers about $300,000 and will be done within 100 days if he is still mayor after the election. 

He also says it depends on him getting a working majority of what he calls like-minded councillors. 

But just because he can afford to pay the outside engineers to come up with an alternative design - and even though I think the alternative design he’s proposing would be much better than the set-up at the moment - I don’t like what he’s done. 

He’s top dog at the council and he needs to show the council and its staff more respect.