It might also be worth considering this article: ‘Cars and Demographics’ by Charles Lave, professor of economics, University of California.
http://www.uctc.net/access/access01lite.pdf

Or ‘The Marriage of Autos & Transit – How to Make Transit Popular Again’ by Melvin M. Webber, professor emeritasof planning, University of California.
http://www.uctc.net/access/access05lite.pdf

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The bill says the proportion of the national land transport fund to be spent on non-carriageway activities to gradually rise:
(a) 20% in the first year after the Act comes into force;
(b) 35% in the second year;
(c) 50% in the third year;
(d) 60% in the fourth year;
(e) 67% after the fifth year.

The bill would gain more traction if it mandated the same gradual replacement of existing street lights and traffic lights with LEDs. At least that way it would actually produce some direct immediate benefit for the planet.

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Emerald,

My apologies. I was looking at the old scale of charges before we got a “sustainable” government. CNG & LPG seem to be the only green fuels that have escaped Labour’s “improvements” to roading revenue.

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Emerald

At least one Japanese manufacturer has a small battery powered car ready to go however there is one little problem.
It creates more co2 charing the battery than it would as a petrol vehicle.

Battery vehicles will happen but not until there is a REAL oil shortage and that is not for some considerable time.

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You are wrong there Kevin.
I had a 3 Ton (2ton payload) LWB Transit, now have a 2500kg payload Hiace. For the heavy stuff. Payed the same RUC for both of them and the same as I pay for my new little diesel car that does nearly 100Km on 4 ltrs of fuel.
The scale stops at 3 tons going down.
Last time I looked electric cars also had to pay the same RUC as diesels.
Govt. greed in action again, screwing anybody that wants to make a difference.

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Emerald,

because RUCs were designed as a direct roading cost recovery mechanism. But a 3 ton Transit pays the fee for a 3 ton vehicle, a 2 ton car will only pay the fee for 2 ton car, likewise a 1 ton car pays the one ton fee. Before Labour mucked around with them RUCs were very simple. Approx $20 per 1,000 km to cover non weight related costs (this is the bit that has been increased by Labour), plus a fee based on the 3rd power of axle weight. The latter starts at less than 35 cents per thousand km on a 1 ton car and rises to approx $350 on a 40 tonne truck/trailer depending on the number of axles.

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Electric cars are not going to happen until there is a cheap decent battery. Imagine the explosion from a Sony lithium battery car!!
Do electric cars still have to have to pay road user charges at the same rate as a 3ton transit van?
And why do the little tiny incredibly economic euro diesel cars have to pay the same road users as a 3 ton transit.

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Trevor, those are argument I can agree with 100%. They are also true for hybrid technology, especially on suburban bus routes. Although the current mass produced models from GM cost 50% more than a EuroIV compliant commuter bus.

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>>it will be a long while before we have enough of them

Perhaps, but how often, on average, do people churn cars? Every five years, or so?

Production will ramp up, driving costs down. The technology is already here.

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The problem with electric cars as a viable alternative is that we just don’t have them, and it will be a long while before we have enough of them. To be practical for the average car owner, they need to be cheap enough so the car owner can afford to have them as well as a conventional car, or to have a good range and carrying capability so they can replace the existing cars. Both are tall orders with current technology.

Electric buses can be purpose made, so they are optimised for the type of use that they get. If they can be recharged at stops automatically, they don’t actually need much range. Size doesn’t matter that much, so they can have a significant volume taken up by battery packs or other storage mechanisms – flywheel energy storage comes to mind here. This means that the design can be focussed on performance and efficiency rather than range and weight. It is not unreasonable to consider modifying existing buses. They can be used nearly 24/7 so the capital cost is spread out over a lot of usage, whereas the high capital cost of an electric car might only be used for an hour a day.

Trevor.

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To clarify my last paragraph. By the time the bill has gone through all it’s stages and become law you are looking at 7 or 8 years from now before you reach the maximum 67% for non-roading. By then peak oil may have reduced the amount of money going into the fund by half or three quarters. While the bill will succeed in destroying the nation’s ability to look after it’s roads peak oil has a very real chance of preventing the bill from funding a viable response to peak oil. You might be better off getting a government gaurantee to fund a minimum amount from the Crown account, as they agreed to do with Tauranga’s RLTP to buy Winnie’s support.

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Stuey, the bill does not actually propose a split between sustainable transport and roads. It proposes a split between roads and other transport modes. Those other modes are not intrinsicly more sustainable than roads.
Your second paragraph seems to show a degree of awareness of this. I personally find it very alarming that the rigorousness that has been applied to proving AGW is not also being applied to the solutions on offer.
Combine that lack of rigor with the average politicians love of monumental public works with their myriad photo ops and I can see the money being poured into subways and lightrailways. In fact these are as energy intensive to build as a motorway and have not been proven to actually reduce traffic. This bill lays the foundations for c*ckups of epic proportions not seen since America’s urban freeway binge of the late 1950s. You’ve got all the same elements: too much money under political control, an “out with the old in with the new” ferver, a new school of thought on transport planning which has not yet been tested in the real world, and a blindness to any consideration other than the urgency of implementing the “solution”. Freeways were supposed to solve gridlock but they eventually made it worse. Wishful thinking about “sustainable transport” wont stop the same thing from happening again. Rigorous appraisal of the various proposed solutions will reduce the chances that the solutions to AGW will make AGW happen even faster.

I tend to agree with your last paragraph. If less fuel is sold less money will go into the transport fund. If this bill is passed all modes of transport are going to fall into ruin just as surely as the roads will, unless the general taxpayer comes riding to the rescue as they have in the past for rail but never for roads, apart from occasionally allowing all of the petrol tax to be spent on roads.

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Trevor, Surveys by Metro have found that half their passengers would not make their journeys by car if no bus was available. Surveys in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide have found this is the case for up to half their bus passengers. Using metro’s figures a ball park estimate makes the electric bus two or three time more expensive that any parking spaces eliminated at the destination, assuming most commuters would still have a car for other trips not suitable for PT which seems to be the norm rather than the exception for those who can afford to buy a car. It would take a ten fold increase in bus patronage to reduce car usage sufficiently to reduace the demand for road space sufficiently to reduce road cost, unfortunaely if bus lanes are used to attract the mode switch then the road space isn’t freed up for walking or cycling so their is no gain in that respect. An electric bus would definitely be quieter and less polluting than a diesel bus but that applies to the electric versus a petrol car. So I think the only sustainability advantage is in the amount of material and energy used to make the vehicles, and that may be a very significant advantage.

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Libertyscott said:
“To call a near empty bus sustainable (when a bus emits 8 times the noxious emissions of a car, meaning it better carry on average 10 or more people to break even environmentally) compared to a road realignment which may save a couple of lives a year and several more serious injuries, is nonsense.”

That might be true of a conventional bus, but not of an electric bus. Even with a handful of people on it for most of its trips, an electric bus will move more people during one day than a small fleet of electric cars which spend most of the day parked up. Also, what is the cost of one electric bus compared to the cost of car parking for the cars it replaces?

Trevor.

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Good point stuey, but I doubt that he will get sued. All he did was tell people that it had been put up and who did it, there wasnt even a link. They cant even take the guy who put the evidence up to court, im told he lives in America.

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Depends how high the cliff was, and if there was a luxury yacht at the bottom.

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if DPF jumped off a cliff would you do it too?

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Frog- If you get sued then so will DPF. He’s got a whole thread on it.

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thanks for your input libertyscott, but you seem to be saying that the bill proposes a split between public transport and roads. As I quoted above the bill actually proposes a split between sustainable transport and roads. It is more than just public transport. For example one of the proposed parts of this sustainable transport is “Travel demand management including education and information” which could be all about encouraging less single-occupancy car trips, or about encouraging telecommuting rather than encouraging public transport.

Yes empty buses are not sustainable but this suggests bus companies need to get smarter about their routeing and management. As does unpleasantly packed buses which I have also been on.

Your comment seems to be coming from a business as usual perspective. You seem to think that there will be no increase in petrol prices, that when peak oil bites we will just switch to alternatives. Yes there are alternatives, but none are as cheap or as available as oil. Hence there will be more price increases and there will be supply crunches and shortages in the near future. The cost of everything from stadia to roads is rising and is going to rise even further. I think when peak oil bites we are going to see the national road network fall into ruin whether this bill is in place or not.

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Sorry all, I’ve deleted a few comments that linked to or pointed how to link to the affidavit you have been discussing. Apologies, but not so much closing down discussion as protecting myself legally.

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