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Cycling Lobbyist Says Police Should Not Be Allowed To Inconvenience Cyclists

When cyclists think they're more important than police.
Controversial cycling lobbyist Ed Hore from The Australian Cycling Alliance says Police shouldn't be allowed to park wherever they want if it means a cyclist will be inconvenienced. Our regular columnist Matt Wallace says Australians are starting to get heartily sick of cyclists like Ed Hore. Primarily because they think they're more important than everyone else on the planet. Even Police.

When I turned on my laptop this morning,  there it was in my News Feed.  The latest rubbish from the multi-untalented cycling lobbyist Ed Hore on Twitter.   

Look,  I get it.  People say regrettable stuff on the internet all the time.  Cyclists listen to Ed Hore because he’s a ‘cycling advocate’.  (Supposedly that means he’s an authority,  allegedly.)  When the TV news channels need a ‘talking head’ to give a cycling perception on things,  Ed Hore is one of two cycling advocates in Melbourne they call on.  

Obviously,  if people like Ed Hore are the best minds they can call on for a soundbite,  clearly the pickings must be pretty bloody slim,  but I digress.  Don’t take my word for it.  What I’m going to do is let you read his latest online tweet,  and after that,  you can make up your own mind.

Ed Hore having another whine about Police blocking cycling paths.
Controversial cycling lobbyist Ed Hore from the Australian Cycling Alliance says Police should not be allowed to park wherever they want while doing Police business. Not if it means inconveniencing cyclists.
Just in case you don't know who Ed Hore is, this is a guy with such poor situational awareness he was oblivious to how much he stunk when would show up at work in his sweaty lycra. His body odour reeked so bad he was asked to leave.
Ed Hore was asked to leave his job for offending women.
Perhaps no better example of a cyclist who insisted on showing up to work in tight sweaty lycra is well known cycling advocate Ed Hore - a cyclist who is also known for being on the verge of obese. He was asked not to ride to work because his odour was offending his female coworkers.
On a scale of one to ten, how obtuse do you have to be to take a photo of a Police vehicle parked in front of a sign which says "NO STANDING AUTHORISED VEHICLES EXCEPTED" and then complain about what they're doing?

If perhaps it’s not immediately obvious,  what Ed Hore is saying here is Police shouldn’t be allowed to park anywhere they need to if it means inconveniencing bike riders on their way to and from work.  And the reason?  In Ed Hore’s view,  cyclists are more important than police business.   

Most reasonable people would agree that’s a pretty poor argument.  For your reference,  this photo is the intersection between Flinders and Swanston Streets in front of St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne.  It’s one of the more most intense police districts in Australia.  Flinders St Station is a mere 50 metres away.  Just like Times Square in New York,  police presence is required in these locations.

If you look at the photo,  you’ll see a push bike which is locked up against a steel pole in the foreground.  Well,  that’s THE parking sign which says “No Standing,  Authorised Vehicles Excepted”.

If negotiating a Police van is so scary,  (it isn’t by the way,  Ed Hore is simply a fool who thinks everything is better back in his native New Zealand)  why is it so insurmountably difficult for a cyclist to temporarily leave the road surface and go to the left of the parked Police van? Is someone putting a gun to the heads of cyclists and forcing them to ride on the right hand side of the parked Police van?  

Cycling advocates clearly have no sense of perspective.  Indeed,  you may have heard a new term being thrown around everywhere at the moment called the ‘cycling superhighway’.  Essentially cyclists are demanding a separate road system built just for them.   No pedestrians or cars allowed.

Perhaps this is a good time to remind Ed Hore less than one percent of Australians ride a bike to work.  That means every single dollar which is going to be spent on this new super expensive separate road system ‘just for cyclists’  is going to be paid for by the 99% of tax payers who don’t ride bikes to work.

If you’d like an example of just how expensive fully separate cycling infrastructure is,  read this article about some bike lanes in Geelong which worked out at $40M a kilometre.  A decision was made by Geelong City Council to rip these bike lanes up because they weren’t being used.

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