The debt-laden Christchurch City Council NZ seems to have a spare $50K to splash out on a rainbow pedestrian crossing.

 The cost of a zebra pedestrian crossing can fluctuate wildly in New Zealand. An internet search has thrown up costs anywhere between $35K to hundreds of thousands of dollars. For this blog, I’m going to settle on a cost of $50K, on the understanding it may be more or less than that, depending on location and complexity.

A pedestrian crossing is designated a “priority crossing”, according to NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) traffic legislation, where vehicle traffic is required to give way to pedestrians approaching or using the crossing. Also, “a pedestrian crossing must be marked in reflectorised white, or if white does not contrast with the colour of the adjacent roadway then it must be resurfaced or marked to provide contrast”.

For as long as most of us can remember, a zebra pedestrian crossing has consisted of thick white horizontal stripes painted from one side of the road to the other. After we were taught about pedestrian crossings as youngsters, we expected them to be the same wherever we went in this country, and they were. This standardisation serves every member of society well, both the fit and the lesser abled. If either pedestrians or vehicles encounter ambiguous or variably-painted crossings, where neither party is sure what rules apply, it’s unconducive to road safety.

How, then, does a ‘rainbow crossing’ comply with road safety? The NZTA has nothing specific to say about these crossings on their website, but it’s possible they may come under the category of a courtesy crossing, which is a “non-priority crossing”. Amongst other things, a courtesy crossing is “Intended to facilitate eye contact between pedestrians and drivers resulting in a mutually negotiated position of who goes first”. This means a vehicle doesn’t have to stop for a pedestrian approaching or using a courtesy crossing, but can choose whether or not to do so. Obviously, if a collision is imminent, we would hope the driver stops.

A courtesy crossing is usually a crossing with no stripes, although it may be painted one solid colour.

A rainbow crossing, on the other hand, has stripes which run any which way. Sometimes they run horizontally –

Sometimes they run vertically –

And sometimes they have stripes and colours in all directions all over the place –

Now, the $2.3B debt-laden Christchurch City Council (CCC) is looking at getting one of these, because some of the LGBTQIA+¹ community want a “visible sign of inclusion”.

The CCC has already spent considerable time and money on “inclusion”. It has thrown women and girls under the bus for the sake of “inclusion”, by implementing policies which allow any man who says he’s a woman to have free and unfettered entry into women and girls’ spaces in CCC facilities². However, the LGBTQIA+ community says that’s not enough - they want to be in our faces with a rainbow crossing feature, as well. So, the Council did what our Council does with any request with the word ‘rainbow’ or ‘LGBTQIA+’ attached to it, and agreed. Well, not quite yet - they’re “investigating” it, but my money is on them tripping over themselves to do it. Would our Council be quite as enthusiastic about investigating the possibility of a multi-coloured crossing requested by any other minority group to give them “visibility”, I wonder?

If the Council has a spare $50K to splash around, which admittedly may be peanuts in its overall spending, why don’t they give it to something like the Women’s Refuge? A source tells me that any man who says he’s a woman needing a safe place to stay can rock on up to a women’s refuge in Christchurch, instead of going to another shelter, and he’ll get sent to a motel at the refuge’s expense. At least he doesn’t get put in with vulnerable women and children, but the refuge pays for a motel room on a continuous basis seven days a week, so that it’s always available for when it’s needed. I’m sure a cash injection of $50K would be most welcome to help with that expense.

My own experience with the CCC is that they are like a bulldozer on steroids when it comes to implementing anything ‘rainbow’ or ‘LGBTQIA+’. As one of the favoured class, Claude Tellick’s petition claiming that a rainbow crossing is needed in “response to all this hate”, is barely believable. Try being a woman who speaks out about losing our rights to any man who says he’s a woman, and she will show you what hate looks like from the LGBTQIA+ community and their advocates. Naturally, the biased mainstream media won’t give that the time of day, because in their world those women ‘asked for it’.

However, for those who live in, or near, Christchurch NZ, it may still be worthwhile sending feedback here to the CCC about spending ratepayers’ money on a rainbow crossing. If they have the spare cash, why not put it to better use by giving it to a charity where it can demonstrably help lives? I’d like to see the evidence which shows a rainbow crossing does that.

• ¹ I’m very aware that large numbers of the LGB do not consider themselves a part of the LGBTQIA+ acronym, and I don’t include them in this here.

• ² I have written about this, or referred to it, in a number of pieces on my Substack blog - aboldwoman (dot) substack (dot) com