The empty land identified by Kahikatea running from Queens Drive in Kilbirnie to the Airport is a sewer reserve, probably one of the main sewers to Moa Point. It probably is not therefore available for rail.

A dedicated right of way like the J’ville line is not possible east of Mt Vic, there is simply no room. Light rail would work, just throw the trains down Rongotai Road.

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samiuela, The first part of your argument is quite correct. Increasing patronage on existing services does improve the efficiency and economics of public transport.

The last part of your argument is also quite correct. Adding more services means you have to add even more passengers to regain your original efficiency and economics.

As far as I can see, the only way to shift people from cars to PT that doesn’t result in medium term increases in carbon emmissions is to savagely increase the price of petrol and parking spaces. Those increased prices can then be spent increasing PT services to meet the new level of demand. This is essentially what was done with London’s congestion cordon. It is also what has been done with a number of other town centre traffic reduction schemes. The crucial thing is that car access is always made more expensive before or at the same time as PT services are increased. It’s a carrot and stick approach that actually works. Bus priority measures are a carrot and stick approach that doesn’t work because the increase in cost is in the form of a tiny increase in travel time for each car traveller.

It is a vain hope to think that spending more on PT will magically solve the global warming crises. Each sustained jump in the price of petrol has produced more increase in PT use than all of the increases in PT subsidies in the last 10 years. The government just needs to give those increases a helping hand so that kiwis can start pay post peak oil prices per peak oil, that way the switch from cars to PT will occur at a rate that won’t slam-dunk the economy.

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Kevyn,

The flaw in your argument about the efficiency and economics of public transport is that you use current patronage figures. If more people take PT, then the number of people per bus will increase, making the fuel per passenger kilometre figures better. At peak hours, the increase in patronage will mean more buses will be required.

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exceptions don’t prove rules, and nor do airport buses go via Moa point

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There’s always an exception to prove the rule toad.

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insider said: Given the existence of reasonable bus services already from the airport…

Humph! The one I was on yesterday afternoon broke down and I had to walk right round Moa Point with a heavy bag to get to my flight.

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BJ

As long as the wind is blowing (or not blowing too hard) when all those buses are needed to take us home in the middle of winter when we are turning the lights on and all those heat pumps the govt keeps encouraging us to install.

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Yes… I want to see those wind farms on the ridges all the way along SH1 and more… I think the damned things are gorgeous

Cause we DO need to have a lot more renewable electricity if we’re to keep anything like the lifestyle we’re accustomed to having.

Easier to expect that than anything else though.

BJ

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bj, That’s true.

But it does take us back to the reasons for replacing trams with buses. That all hinged around the future need to provide public transport services in the modern suburban cities. With the technology of the day it was cataneries or nothing. Advances in battery technology may mean that buses can charge their batteries while travelling on the arterial part of their route and run on batteries on residential streets. I don’t know how expensive diesel will have to get before that becomes a cost effective option.

If we expect electric PT to deliver even half the mobility we get from the internal combustion engine then we need to face up to the actual amount of electricity that will be needed to acheive that. The confounding factors I mentioned are crucial to working out a realistic amount of generating capacity to achieve the switch. Start with the fact that just over half of our vehicle travel occurs in urban areas = two billion litres of petrol. Convert to btu then kw/h then make some reasonable assumptions about how much of that petrol is consumed during the peak commute hours, the effects that peak oil will have on PT load factors and overall urban travel demand and confounding factors. The answer will be somewhere between 0.1 gW and 1 gW per during the peak hour of the peak period. Unfortunately that coincides with the current shoulder peak electricity demand in winter. We don’t have that much spare generating capacity.

At least New Zealand is in the fortunate position of having ample potential to get that electricity from either installing renewable capacity or reducing profligate consumption in buildings, unlike the USA. Europe doesn’t have to replace as much urban transport fuel consumtion but it also has less potential to either instal renewable capacity or reduce profligate consumption in buildings.

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Kevyn – Buses can be electrified using current technology. A car cannot carry that sort of kit on top of it. BJ

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samiuela, When I had a look at the maplink provided by StephenR I found that there are two Mt Vic tunnels, a single lane one for buses and a narrow two lane one for general traffic. One of the tunnel options is for a tunnel between Pirie St to Ruahine St. Since this is almost parallel to the bus tunnel it would be an effective solution to increasing bus frequency which is currently limited by the one lane bus tunnel.

If the WCC was planning for improvements only for traffic generated by the current activity east of Mt Vic. better roads would make sense. However the proposal to create satellite CBDs (WCC call them growth nodes) means they are planning for a huge increase in trips generated by these new actvities. Common sense says they should be planning to move traffic (including buses) out of the way of a future light rail system. The Pirie tunnel option allows buses to operate pretty much on their current routes without needing a tunnel of their own. This tunnel could then be used for light rail. Light rail vehicles can carry as many people as ten buses so this would make more efficient use of the single lane tunnel.

On your first point, sadly the argument should be stated “buses and trams (b)can(/b) hold many more passengers than cars” but in reality they almost never do. Firstly because the nature of PT services means they tend to gradually fill up or empty out as they travel along their route. Secondly because commuter traffic is one way in the morning and the other way in the evening means they are empty half the time. Thirdly to meet the needs of the transport disadvantaged without incurring additional capital costs PT must operate outside of peak periods with vehicles scaled for peak period demand.

Christchurch Metro pasenger surveys found that half their passengers would make the trip by car if there was no bus service. The other half would not make the trip or would have to walk or cycle. Thus even in Christchurch where there are an average of 16 passengers on each inbound or outbound bus this equates to a maximum 8 cars removed from the roads for each bus. The impact in peak periods will of course be much greater and these are often the only times when the road network is lacking capacity. Unfortunately PT also lacks peak capacity and it is the cost of providing buses and drivers for those brief periods that is the main barrier to PT improvements.

However from a sustainability perspective we also need to consider several confounding factors. First, the average car journey is less than three-quarters of the length of the average bus route. Second, buses are heavier than cars therefore they use between two and three times more fuel. Thus we reduce 8 by at least three-quarters then divide by two or three to arrive at the car carbon eliminated by a bus carrying an average of 16 passengers.

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Frog said “Well, that will certainly encourage democratic participation.”

Democracy often delivers the people what they deserve. If Auckalnd ratepayers hadn’t voted against a special loan to extend their tramlines in 1927 they might have ended up with a transit friendly city instead of a Transit friendly region.

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Kevyn and Bjchip:

There is already a tunnel through Mt Victoria. If there are less cars and more buses or trams, additional roads will not be required, because buses and trams hold many more passengers than cars.

I haven’t lived in Wellington for over four years now, so maybe it is different now, but when I did, I cycled from Strathmore to the city. There were three ways: through Newtown, which had quite a bit of traffic and was a little bit hilly, around the bays, which was flat but longer distance, and through the Mt Vic tunnel (on the footpath), which was smelly (exhaust fumes). I usually took the bay route, because it was more scenic, and felt safer.

Once they started screwing around with the roads near the tunnel, it became a nightmare for cycling that route (unless I biked illegally on the footpath). So I take your point about good routes for bikes, but I think this could be achieved without building more roads.

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Or Bicycles Kevyn…. going through tunnels beats the hell out of going up and down hills in the rain.

Samiuela, in this there is a measure of savings…. going over hills instead of through them is expensive in terms of energy unless you get very clever about your energy recovery mechanisms. We’ve not ever done that, but it could be done.

I want more routes, and roads establish them as well as anything does. The roads build for roman foot soldiers are still routes in old europe, with roads and rail both running through those corridors.

However, that said…. the question of what will be left as the sea level rises has to be asked. How long can the airport stay where it is? How long can the city stay where and as IT is? Our preparations are, in terms of planning for the future, laughable though I think the airport is high enough that it can stay where it is for another century or so… The question is actually what happens to the city?

Building a lot of long-term infrastructure along the shore seems one of the sillier ways to spend our children’s money.

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samiuela, “if this $250 million tunnel is built, how long will it be needed?” By cars? Maybe only a decade or three. By land transport? Indefinitely, provided it’s big enough for buses or trams. Ditto for all new roads and motorways really.

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OK,

So if this $250 million tunnel is built, how long will it be needed? Whether you believe peak oil has already arrived, or is still 20 years away, it seems like a poor investment to me, even ignoring all other environmental considerations?

I can understand why people don’t see the urgency of reducing CO2 emissions … after all, climate change is something which creeps up on you over decades. But surely the rapidly increasing price of petrol over just the last two or three years should be ringing warning bells with the people planning new roads???

Now this is pure speculation, but why has OPEC just decided to not increase oil production? Is it because they want to keep the price of oil high, or is it because they are not capable of increasing production? Personally, I think it is probably something to do with trying to maintain high prices, but one day soon, it will be because they simply can’t produce any more.

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kahikatea, StephenR provided this map link. Zoom in and select satellite view. This right of way flows into Queens Dr heading north. It appears to be the southern boundary of the proposed Kilbirnie growth node (satellite CBD). The other proposed growth node is Newtown with possible light rail along Adelaide Rd so that is the route light rail would have to take to be cost-effective.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Wellington,+Wellington,+New+Zealand&sa=X &oi=map&ct=title

The “motorway” is essentially an expressway duplication of the existing SH1 corridor east of Mt Vic. as far as Cobham Dr. There are two options for a tunnel, a duplicate Mt Vic Tunnel or a tunnel approx parallel to Hataitai Tunnel (Pirie St to Ruahine St.) The first option would allow completion of the foothills motorway plan (circa 1963). The second makes this impossible and unnecessary by continuing the separation of the east and west bound portions of SH1 all the way to the east of Mt Vic.

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> # insider Says:
> December 7th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

> Kahikatea – corridors may be identified but I don’t think they are reserved, ie there are no empty corridors waiting to be built on. I grew up in teh area and must have missed those empty tracts.

I fond this most intriguing, as I was walking along it only last week. So it’s definitely there. Unless it’s one of those magic places that’s there for some people, but not for others – and it doesn’t look magic, it looks neglected.

It starts at the bottom of Kilbirnie Hill, just North of Endeavour St, and it continues eastwards half a block north of Endeavour St. It skims the southern edge of the bus barns, then on past the southern edge of Rongotai College to the airport runway. Most of the way it’s just grassy, and I’d say it’s wide enough for double tracks.

I’d swear I’m not imagining it!

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The solution is obvious. Push Mt Victoria into the harbour entrance as landfill.

That will connect up Eastbourne, give lots of room for light rail, roads and bike tracks and as a bonus, the ferry trip to Picton will be 10 minutes quicker.

Now stop getting distracted and build transmission gully.

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Thanks Kevyn that seems to say light/rail is a waste of time based on passenger numbers unless you kill the alternatives, and that buses is the way to go.

Kahikatea – corridors may be identified but I don’t think they are reserved, ie there are no empty corridors waiting to be built on. I grew up in teh area and must have missed those empty tracts.

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