>>“Less than 20% of urban travel is from surburbs to CBD.� Really? Source?
http://www.petroltax.org.nz/PDF/AucklandTransportReview1976.PDF

1. Of the 2,000,000 trips generated daily in the Study Area, almost
two-thirds are made entirely within the sector of origin.
2. Approximately 353,000 trips, or 17% of the daily total generated,
have either an origin or destination within the CBD.

I have read the Harris paper previously and am well aware of it’s historical innaccuracies. No mention of the introduction of the Planning Act at the same time as capital gains was scrapped, and implying that the National Road Fund was completely new and was used to fund land transport.
http://www.petroltax.org.nz/documents.html

Would we have had any less sprawl under Labour’s state housing plans rather than under National’s cheap first home mortgages plan. Te Atatu and it’s motorway were planned by Labour (1946). National simply sold the development rights to Neal Housing.

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“Actually, it isn’t population density that makes public transport work; it is where the workplaces are�

This is correct and well researched. Residential density in New World cities has little correlation with public transport market share. The correlation is with major centres of employment with high job density.
The classic example is Los Angeles and New York. Los Angeles metropolitan area has a higher residential density than Metropolitan New York. But Metropolitan New York has a massive concentration of employment on Manhattan island. Hence the NY subway pays its way – one of the only two that do. (I think Chicago is the other).

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May I suggest some of the contributors acquaint themselves with the facts about carbon footprints and location etc.
The standard (albeit inconvenient) reference is Consuming Australia. (google it).
To their surprise they found that the households with the largest GHG emissions were those living in high densities in inner city neighbourhoods. Lowest were in peri urban areas or rural areas.
The main driver is household income not location.
The shortest commuter trips and with the least congestion in major cities are on the edge. The majority of household vehicle trips are non work related.
the private vehicle fleet is more fuel efficient in whole of day use than the public transport fleet.
Households typically have more than one member so families are the experts in optimising the travel/location trade-offs. Trip to school is as important as trip to work and they may not be in the same direction.
All my research to date suggests that high fuel costs will be a further force for decentralisation. Time to stop worrying about urban sprawl. Its been over for several years.
The fact that rural users have been most able to reduce their vehicle miles is an indicator that high fuel costs will promote the ongoing decentralisation of our major cities.
You should read the recent demographic studies by Phil McDermott and especially his submission to the Commission on Auckland governance.
The last US census showed that the main centres of popultion growth are the micropolises – towns or regional centres of 30,000 to 50,000 reversing the trends of the post war years.
In twenty years Auckland metropolitan area will probably have fewer people than it does today.

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“even in the 1920s, people had started to move into standalone houses on quarter acre sections, and this was in the era of the tram”

Hardly – those suburbs housed a tiny minority of the population (i.e. professionals, some management and business owners) – and were actually quite densely planned compared to modern suburban sprawl. The real suburban explosion didn’t happen until the 1950s and 1960s (after National had legislated it).

And yes, I do think there’s plenty of demand for low-cost housing – i.e. there’s a 100,000 person supply short-fall in Auckland at the moment.

“Why do you think house prices have soared so much in the Western world?”

Easy – massive amounts of cheap cash sloshing around the world’s capital markets for the last 10 years (look at interest rates in the US over that period – 2-6% – it was insane). A lot of that ended up in property market speculation.

And the evidence? House prices are up to 50% higher than their rental values warrant. That’s the definition of a housing bubble.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/house-prices-world-highest/2005/11/30/1133311106610.html

“Actually, it isn’t population density that makes public transport work; it is where the workplaces are”

I get a bit tired of your endless random, un-sourced illogical claims. Denser planning means more passengers per kilometer. Really you shouldn’t need a diagram to understand this.

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“You seem to think only one way was ever available, yet this is patenetly not true. Denser planning, centered around public transport infrastructure was often suggested, but was rejected by National governments and councils from the 1950s onwards�

Auckland had already developed from Coast to Coast by the 1930s, so the only way was to develop along the isthmus in a westerly and southerly direction, it doesn’t matter whether the transport link was by road or by rail.

Further to that, do you think that people would have willingly moved into four storey flats or not? I highly doubt it; even in the 1920s, people had started to move into standalone houses on quarter acre sections, and this was in the era of the tram – no level of central planning would have made a difference. Why do you think house prices have soared so much in the Western world? It is because people demand standalone houses on sections, while governments are trying to force them into medium density housing.

“Talking of public transport, it only works when people are crushed together. Without the crush you need massive subsidies to make it economic (as ChCh). And strangely public transport created the London crush, not the other way around.�

Actually, it isn’t population density that makes public transport work; it is where the workplaces are. If Auckland had the percentage of jobs in its CBD that Wellington has (about 35%), then public transport here would be booming. You don’t need crush to make public transport work; look at Brisbane, it has half Auckland’s population density and yet has a very good public transport network so popular that Adelaide Street (one of the main streets in Brisbane’s CBD) is full of buses at peak hour, and Central Station has a train going through it virtually every minute during peak hour there.

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I agree with Optimist that the past is instructive for the future. I disagree that too much planning is the problem however. If there was no planning there would be no sewerage system, and only ad-hoc coordination happening on a systemic level, which would mean ridiculous inefficiencies everywhere.

“By planning they force people to live where they don’t want to, to live at a higher density than they want to, and reduce peoples’ over-all quality of life.”

Ludicrous. Density and quality of life can and do go together. Higher density makes it easier and cheaper to get from point A to point B, using public transport (no being stuck in traffic for half an hour – ala Auckland). Furthermore, if you create beautiful public spaces surrounding and within the densely planned housing it can off-set any tension caused by living close to your neighbors. ie Dunedin is NZ’s most beautiful city IMO. It’s densely planned, has a green-belt and numerous parks, and apart from the cold is a joy to live in.

Then there’s the oil over-consumption problem associated with random suburban sprawl. Planning in Europe is usually denser than in the US, and they consequently have much better public transport systems, and use only half as much oil on a per-capita basis (of course less use of oil for electricity generation, plus higher taxes on fuel, and inefficient automobiles contribute to Europe’s superiority in this respect).

Also – the so called “street car” suburbs of the 1910s-1920s were densely planned, very walkable, and with beautiful public spaces i.e. plazas, parks etc. Contrast that with modern-day suburbia which is characterised by sparse development, not conducive to public transport, often with no footpaths and endless cal-de-sacs (not very walkable), and with ugly privatised public spaces dominated by massive malls/multi-national retail chains. People on this thread have been trying to draw comparisons between the two. There is none.

Then we have the dismissal of the idea that big oil and the automobile industry have colluded to turn NZ into an energy hungry nation of one person per journey car users. Never mind the fact that Standard Oil, General Motors, Fire-stone were convicted for colluding to destroy light-rail across the US. They literally bought it up and scrapped it so people were forced to buy more of their products (see 12:15 in “The End of Suburbia“). Are we really to believe that these sort of industrial pressures have never been brought to bare upon our political process (particularly considering the way suburban development went in in the 1950s, mimicking the situation in the US)?

Random suburban sprawl has been called “the greatest miss-allocation of wealth in history” – because the sparser the planning has got the more energy has been required – and energy is just going to get ever more expensive. So the US and NZ’s situation is going to get ever more economically inefficient.

Electricity supply, to make up oil decline after peak would probably need to triple in the next 20-30 years, otherwise getting around in a car could cost many times what it does now, making it simply untenable for most people. So who hands up who thinks that electricity supply can grow like that? Anyone get the feeling that we’ve painted ourselves into a corner?

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“..roger,

Though I have sympathy for your sentiments I feel that this phrasing is overly strong. Please refrain from calling people stooges and frauds..”

wot..!..we have to be ‘polite’ to the dissemblers of the climate-change fiction..

the fiction that is hurting our planet/sending us all to hell in a handbasket..?

you might have hit on one of the main problems in/of the greens..

icehawk..

being ‘too polite’..

when do you get feckin’ angry..?..icehawk..?

when the water’s lapping under your chin..?

mcshane is a leading name in the lies-peddling denial industry..

should we now look at how exxon mobil have ‘funded’ large hunks of that ‘denial’ industry..?

would that get you ‘angry’..?

possibly even spilling over into ‘impoliteness’..?..

heaven forbid..!

get some fire in your belly..!..icehawk..

and the rest of you over-polite greens..

you have to be warriors..!

for feck sake..!

this isn’t a feckin’ tea-party..!

eh..?

phil(whoar.co.nz)

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I’m with the decentralisers – even though Mr McShane is one of them. I come from a completely different perspective though.
As all forms of energy becomes relatively more expensive, we will have to, over time, evacuate the cities and say goodbye to urban sprawl. My belief is that we will relocalise and become much more self-sufficient, growing more of our own food, adopting alternative energy for our vehicles such as wood-gas, locally produced bio-fuels etc., electric vehicles, and re-creating local employment (particularly in the food industry), recovering lost skills and in every way becoming less dependent on our addiction to travel in all it’s forms.

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Big numbers sound great don’t they!
This is a reduction of circe 1.5 miles per week per person. Not a vast distance, and easily achieved by putting the kids on the school bus one day a week rather than taking them in the V8 SUV.

a national equivelant here (6 million miles) doesn’t sound anywhere near as good and wouldn’t make a headline I think.

What would be interesting would be a monitor of the average speed of traffic on a main road into and out of each of our major cities at (say) 8:30 am and 5:30 pm. Every time it speeds up, we are saving fuel, every time we slow down we are burning more. The reality is that miles travelled doesn’t mean a thing without some relativity to energy consumption!

HAppy Daze

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“Owen McShane is a stooge for these crooks – he even promotes the cause of global-warming denialism despite having little or no understanding of the science. What a fraud you are.”

roger,

Though I have sympathy for your sentiments I feel that this phrasing is overly strong. Please refrain from calling people stooges and frauds.

I know your comments are very mild compared to what is seen on-line elsewhere: but it would be very sad if this comment section degenerated into a sewer like Kiwiblog’s comment section.

i

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“Our exchange rate with the US is 32% above it’s long-term historic average since it was floated in March 1985. When we start trending towards that average, which economists say we will inevitably do, petrol prices here are going to go through the roof, even if world oil prices hold steady or decline somewhat.”

You confuse two things.

First our exchange rate is high compared with a long-term average of our trading partner’s currencies. That suggests our dollar is high and will fall back in time.

But that doesn’t mean that the NZD/USD rate in particular will move back to its long-term average in any great hurry. I know people like to look at their rate vs the USD as it’s the standard currency of comparison, but it can be quite misleading.

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The Energy Bulletins been off-line for an upgrade. Not knowing much running a web site I’m wondering why it takes so long?
http://www.energybulletin.net/

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Hi Gerrit,

My point is that the nature of ‘planning’ is that it creates ‘planning mistakes’. Planning is pretty close to a mistake in itself. The problem with the word planning, is that it now means to create a plan and force people to fit in with it. Planning *should* mean trying to predict what people will do and doing what you can to fit in with that.

Instead of planning, we should perhaps call it infrastructure building.

In terms of predictions…

Fashion and technology point towards electric cars at the moment but the method of propulsion won’t make a big difference to cities. Technology will eventually allow cars to drive themselves (perhaps by 2025 or so) and eventually when cars can organise a wireless networking amongst themselves, traffic lights will be able to be switched off, lanes narrowed and closer following distanced introduced. That will massively increase existing road capacity.

The only question is whether we will have cheap flying cars by then, or not. If so, then that could cause a more marked change in housing patterns as you can imagine.

For transport, the future certainly looks exciting.

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Optimist,

Fully agree that we look at past planning mistakes. What gets me is this reference to Labour this National that, and what they did in 1940, 1950, etc.

I favour the where are we now, where do we want to get to, how do we get there, approach to planning.

Would not matter if it was strategic planning of how New Zealand would be functioning and funded in 2020. Or the transport system available to us in that year.

Lets debate where we are going, not where we have been.

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Good morning Gerrit,

I think the arguments about the past point to the future. If you understand the history of transport then you are better able to make choices in the present.

Planners are part of the problem, not the solution. By planning they force people to live where they don’t want to, to live at a higher density than they want to, and reduce peoples’ over-all quality of life. Really we need to move away from planning and back to more of a free market.

Just one justification of this is financial. Does it really make sense for a young married couple to spend their entire working lives just paying off the mortgage on the LAND that their house sits on? This is the case in most parts of New Zealand now. It is a criminal waste of human effort. That money could be used to start a business, buy more electricity or buy some mercury-filled light bulbs.

Governments ask why NZers are so adicted to property – one reason is that planners have systematically worked to increase the price of land, thus benefiting those who own more land than they need.

Environmentalists talk about public transport as if it is a godsend. At least in ChCh it is expensive, noisy, uncomfortable and doesn’t go where you want to go. Plannings solve these probems by subsidies and trying to force people to live and work where the buses are. This is not free choice – this is just state control.

I would like to see much more reliance on private transport and more investment in roads. I very much hope that environmentalists can be removed from our councils, as they are doing terrible damage to our city streets in their effort to bring about the increased traffic they warn of.

Above all, widespread public transport is an admission of failure, an admission that the way we want things to be (everyone free to buzz around in a car when and where they want) is not possible. The reasons it is not possible are normally to do with bad government.

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Another load of comments that look at where we have bben and aportioning blame.

Talk about walking backwards into the future!

I really does not matter which government did what and when.

Political point scoring is what you are engaged in.

What are the plans for the future? What are the PT options being explored? Where is the budget? What are the infastructure developments plans to support electrification expansion for PT and possibly private tranport?

Will funding for the PT and supporting infastructure come from government cashflow (higher taxation), borrowing, or will Public-Private Partnerships be an answer?

Think about the future and leave the political point scoring in the past.

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Welcome optimist. Your problem is I’ve already invalidated every point you’ve made and can’t be bothered reiterating/humoring you.

Otherwise sleep well

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Roger Nome you just gave me another 30mins sleep, cheers!

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“The Optimist”

You just completely failed to make a coherent argument. None of your ‘points’ need rebutting.

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I have just read an interesting article from the UK regarding getting to grips with the big challenges of our future around climate and energy. Obviously this debate will be a bit beyond those that think oil is regenerated from rock, or that global warming is a great swindle, but I hope it might generate some decent debate about this from a NZ perspective.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/

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