Dangers on the rail trail.

Derrick from Thames

The following letter to the editor has been with the Hauraki Herald for over a month with zero results, so I now publish it here. I wrote it after seeing a young mother WITH A BABY along with a young child riding his own little cycle, cautiously making their way back to Thames over the concrete judder bar excuses for cattle stops. Concrete judder bars have caused serious accidents and I shudder to think of what could have happened.
Attention Farmers
"Having a number of farming friends that I very much like and respect, this letter is not directed against farmers per se (quite a few cycle with local groups) but it is most certainly directed at whomever among you are responsible for a local shambles. However, rumour has it that certain iwi may also be partly responsible. Politics must work in strange ways.
The shambles is the 54 hated cross gates and their dangerous concrete judder bars that make the RailTrail cycleway between Thames and Paeroa probably the most formidable so called family section in the whole of New Zealand. This danger has been brought to the attention of pertinent local authorities, principally TCDC, whom it appears have had to deal with one or more difficult landowners.
To remedy this problem affected landowners will be asked if they wish to retain the cross gates. If they are selfish then their accompanying judder bars will be replaced by much safer metal bar grids at considerable cost to ratepayers. Yes, we all pay for the lease of the rail corridor and its maintenance.
That these many cross gates were a totally needless expense is shown by the numerous cattle races on the plains that cross sealed roads and their verges which are four to five times wider than the narrow RailTrail. And none of these roads have obstacles ACROSS them. For those with computers, a perusal using Google Earth will confirm this.
Yet large herds on their way to milking across country roads in 4am darkness are surely more a risk to traffic than are cows from cyclists in broad daylight. I have seen a car crash caused by a black cow loose at night on a country road. It is not nice.
Even a first day farm worker can easily get cows across a few meters wide rail corridor. Indeed, lead cows show their herds exactly where to go. So why these utterly useless cross gates? They are an insult to the abilities of competent farmers.
From a commercial perspective, there is absolutely no doubt that Thames and its villages south are not gaining what they should from the ever growing cycling community. Word of mouth is vital and this section gets the worst comments.
The recent storm surge shows that Hauraki plains land is going to need ever more taxes spent on stop banks etc., to protect YOUR farms, so upsetting the wider community seems rather short sighted to say the least.
Some of the cross gates are particularly annoying such as the ones near Totara. These are not even dairy farms, so have virtually zero farm traffic, so why the cross gates?
The rail corridor is public land paid for by all taxpayers. So good luck with demands of unimpeded rights of way across it should fast rail ever be installed! And only the uninformed would discount such a probability should these lands still be above water.
Cyclist come here EXPECTING a very safe cycle way, consequently we are seeing families with young children, some even carrying babies.
 Soon we will know which landowners along the corridor care not for the safety of our children."