Rural public transport
I was a bit surprised that my rather flippant comments about the relationship between cyclists and cars drew criticism yesterday that I secretly wanted to ban all cars and didn’t care about rural people. I would have thought people living in rural areas have the most interest in townies like me saving petrol, kyoto carbon allowances and health dollars, because they are going to need them far more than me and my neighbours. And they can’t really afford to have us profligately wasting all that stuff on short journeys to and from work. Some of the people who will benefit most from sustainable urban transport are rural people.
But let’s talk about public transport in rural New Zealand too.  There is no doubt that traditional public transport does not and will not work in our rural heartlands. The costs are too high per rider due to long distances and low population densities. But let’s not also forget that there are many poor people in rural New Zealand, some without cars. And for them lack of transport, long convoluted commutes and isolation are significant barriers to their chances of a ‘fair go’.
Rural people need a transport system too that gives them access to employment, education and training, medical services, and independent living, even when they can’t afford a car. They need a public transport system tailored to those specific goals. In many cases it needs to be personalised and door to door, rather than the mass transit focus of inner city public transport. Its schedules need to integrate both with individual people’s lives and with local medical, educational, employment and social opportunities. Because the key goal of a rural public transport system is equity and opportunity the fares need to be subsidised and affordable for all rural people, especially those in poverty.
A public transport system should be an integral part of social justice for rural kiwis and something our transport planning desperately needs to prioritise.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:24 am
I grew up in the rural heartlands of New Zealand. I used a form of “public” transport every school day. The humble school bus! Now unless the practice of transporting your children to school by car has spread there is sure to be a strong communal transport ethos.
Not only that but for winter sport there was always a car pooling option available - If there was a team member who lived within practical distance.
But as soon as you can drive then the humble school bus is often forgotten. Townies moan about the bus service being inconvenient but having two runs a day one going in one coming out is somewhat constraining for children undergoing after school activities.
I can forsee that the passenger quota of the school bus could be increased to allow adults and pre schoolers to utilise. If we were to move into a severly oil constrained environment.
Addtionally the rural post delivery along with online shopping could be utilised to reduce the necessity for travel for everyday goods. The only downside of this is that this increases isolation.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Some of my colleagues in the US and Hawaii are developing software etc designed to harness the cellphone, GPS and the internet to provide a “public transport” system which will serve public access well but will of course use the surplus capacity of the private transport fleet.
They called it PDP (representing some geek terms) but I suggested that PDP stand for pensioners driving pensioners - to make the point that PDP could be a means whereby pensioners who could not drive benefited from improved mobility while the drivers supplemented their income whether from dollars or vegetables or olive oil or wine or whatever.
The video cellphone downloading images of driver and passenger removes the “fear” element. Already, my friends and colleagues check with each other about trips. This morning my PA told me her husband was driving to Whangarei to visit a relative in hospital and did I need anything in Whangarei.
The development of PDP simply builds on these rural networks and hence will al most certainly arrive in rural areas first.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Where I live we had a rural railway line, which would have got me to work and back on a daily basis. Instead I commute about 130KM a day, albeit in a vehicle that achieves about 6.5L/100KM.
That railway line - oh yes, it got pulled up in 1959…
June 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Owen- that sounds like a really awesome scheme. It’s great to see the creative solutions people come up with to bring traditionally urban ideas (like carpooling) to rural areas.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Nice idea Owen, high tech hitchhiking.
It would need a change in NZ law though. Ride for payment = taxi
June 27th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
this one is for you..owen mcshane..
..you and any other doubters..
http://whoar.co.nz/2008/climate-chaos-is-inevitablewe-can-only-avoid-o blivionumthis-is-a-must-read/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 27th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
“In many cases it needs to be personalised and door to door, ”
Yes, it’s called a car.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
ecogeek.org/content/view/1800/69/
“In less than 7 years, Mercedes-Benz plans to ditch petroleum-powered vehicles from its lineup. Focusing on electric, fuel cell, and biofuels, the company is revving up research in alternative fuel sources and efficiency.”
June 27th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Backyard ethanol.
physorg.com/news129557670.html
“A Silicon Valley start-up called E-Fuel is showing exactly how ethanol can live up to its name as “the people´s fuel.” The company recently announced that it will soon start selling a home ethanol system, the E-Fuel 100 MicoFueler, which will allow anyone to make ethanol from sugar, water, yeast, and electricity in their own backyard. inedible sugar can be bought from Mexico for about 2.5 cents per pound under the North American Free Trade Agreement effective this past January. Then it could cost as little as a dollar a gallon to produce ethanol with the MicroFueler. Quinn also noted that he´s used leftover alcohol as an alternative feedstock to sugar, and the only cost is for the electricity. “
June 27th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
tinyurl.com/62deg9
“Low Cost Gas Engine Innovation Doubles Fuel Economy. Revetec, a little known company from the Gold Coast region of Australia, may be on to something huge: they’ve created an engine that is 50% smaller, 50% lighter, has 50% lower emissions and is cheaper to manufacture than a conventional internal combustion engine of the same horsepower. Oh yeah, did I mention that it doubles the fuel economy too.”
June 27th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Owens plan would help rural areas, except as Andrew W says it would be illegal in NZ. Yet another ‘urbancentric’ law that makes no sense for rural areas.
Another little problem is that most of NZ (by area) doesn’t have cellphone coverage.
So really another daft impractical townie idea!!
Tuatara is living in the past a bit, the school bus network and rural post are not as extensive as they were.
The ‘developed’ part of NZ is contracting quite fast. But is this a bad thing?
There is no current or prospective alternative to the car for people living in 98% of NZ. What is needed, and perfectly possible, is much more economical cars.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
“Long distances and low population densitiesâ€? and “access to essential social servicesâ€?, which are the key issues would be considerably ameliorated by applying the Green’s policy of sustainable organic husbandry.
Inadequate access to services is a direct consequence of the long distances and sparse population. The sparse population itself is due to the drift from country to cities. This itself is a consequence of two main factors: farm mechanisation and the lure of an urban lifestyle glamourised by commercial advertising and consumerism. School, Post Office, and Bank branch closures, medical and veterinary losses are all due to population loss. However, the rapidly rising fuel and fertilizer costs, which are an early harbinger of the coming petrochemical crunch, can be expected to bring about the conditions necessary to make rural public transport a viable proposition.
Farming and horticulture will be forced to revert to traditional organic methods, with limited supplementation from agro-chemicals. Organic husbandry is considerably more labour intensive than current practices and therefore drift to the cities will be slowed and then reversed thereby increasing the rural population. Sooner or later it will have increased sufficiently to allow essential services to be reinstated in the small rural centres with consequent reduction of travel distances. Rising urban unemployment will accelerate this process. The film “A Sense of Community� telling how Cuba overcame its own peak oil crisis shows that this is not necessarily a pious hope.
Of course, corporate agri-biz may grow faster than the conversion to small scale organics and the population will be held captive in the cities until the final collapse of civilization.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
While the sound of rural public transport might be nice and all; let us not forget that we need to spend billions scrubbing up our big cities first. For Auckland, it could cost anywhere between $5 and $10 billion to get a rail and bus network of the likes of Brisbane and Perth; and Wellington would need another $2 billion to help get their system in shape. If we wanted a rail network (light or heavy, it doesn’t matter too much) for Christchurch, that would likely be another $2 billion.
We have already spent anywhere between $10 billion and $15 billion on getting our three major cities in order; this isn’t small change ladies and gentlemen. Then don’t forget the costs of operating such a system - it wouldn’t surprise me if the Brisbane Rail Network, for instance, cost $200 to $300 million per annum to the Queensland Government. Of course, for New Zealand, you should probably multiply that figure by two to factor in Wellington and possibly Christchurch. Once we have gone through all that, would there really be money left to pay for rural public transport services. I don’t think so, unless you want to cut expenditure drastically, which would be difficult, or increase taxes, which would reduce our competitiveness.
“Where I live we had a rural railway line, which would have got me to work and back on a daily basis. Instead I commute about 130KM a day, albeit in a vehicle that achieves about 6.5L/100KM.
That railway line - oh yes, it got pulled up in 1959…”
dbuckley, do you really think that the Oxford Branch would have services today, even if it had been left there? The Beaudesert Branch near Brisbane, about 70 to 100 kilometres from there is still extant (at least the tracks are there, their condition does not look all that good), and yet does not have a single passenger service? Why? The loads don’t justify it - it is better for the Queensland Government in that case to spend money on rail lines to places where there are people. We need a similar approach in New Zealand, spend the rail money on places where there is demand; spend the money on Auckland to Hamilton first before the miniscule centres.
To be honest, the only places where I could see rural public transport having a chance is within 150km of Auckland and Wellington, and maybe within 100km of Christchurch. Even that in my opinion would be pushing it.
June 28th, 2008 at 12:42 am
john-ston
The Vice-Chair of Transport for London, made a proposal that a tax should be imposed on the value of properties bordering public infrastructure, because they receive capital gains through no effort of their own, which would at least contribute towards its cost.
http://tinyurl.com/5xyrrx
Arthur Grimes also floated the idea of a property tax as a way of reducing income taxes. I’d actually advocate a graduated property tax on undeveloped land and generous depreciation rates for new buildings, compined with far stricter energy efficiency standards so as to encourage more intensive and dense development in the cities, which also would have the added bonus of controlling real estate prices. I’d also recommend that forests should be exempted as a means to provide an incentive for farmers to retain or even plant trees on their land rather than convert it into pasture.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4258411a13.html
June 28th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
SleepyTreehugger, wake up, that land tax is a blatant and effective way to concentrate land in the hands of the rich. Luckily it would be unconstitutional in NZ.
I don’t think that increases in fertiliser costs etc. are going to drive NZ agriculture towards organics michaela. Both horticulture and pastoral organics are limited by labour availability and cost in NZ at the moment. With pastoral being more effected.
Most regions of NZ are hard places to do pastoral organics. 3 to 5 times the labour is required for the same output. This labour input is required for at least two years before any extra income starts.
Pastoral organics is very low and not increasing in area terms. I can’t see fertiliser prices changing this.
My guess would be that the fuel price increases will see more of a move to urbanization and an increase in the intensity of commercial farming.
Is is a pity that with two entirely different models to copy the NZ government picked the wrong one.
Europe’s massive effort to put development money to the periphery and bring outlying areas into the mainstream has been a huge economic and social success.
So of course the Wellington circus has to copy the old UK and current USA style of concentrating money on those areas already developed, which was and is a miserable failure.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Emerald,
“SleepyTreehugger, wake up, that land tax is a blatant and effective way to concentrate land in the hands of the rich. Luckily it would be unconstitutional in NZ.”
You make a bald assertion, but wheres your argument to back up your claim?
Its well within the rights of the government as representatives of the Crown who are holders of the allodial title to all land in New Zealand.
http://www.linz.govt.nz/core/crownproperty/crownland/bonavacantia/inde x.html
Not to mention the fact that prior to the 1980s a land-value tax was actually imposed, only to be scrapped by Roger Douglas.
It was actually successfully used for the opposite of what you claim, because speculators are now able to hold land off the market, so as to drive up prices, because the price isn’t determined by how much land there is physically, but how much is available to purchase. Land is a sellers market, when theres alot of money available, but a limited supply of land.
If a graduated land tax were imposed, combined with higher capital reserve requirements, minimum level of required deposits, and ringfencing capital gains would lessen the chance of real estate bubbles in New Zealand and thus substantially reduce living costs for New Zealanders.
http://tinyurl.com/3p4ggs
http://tinyurl.com/4n9ckg
June 28th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
It would be cheaper, especially once the ETS kicks in, to give poor rural people a car instead of bus or, heaven forbid, a railcar.
June 29th, 2008 at 12:38 am
“The Vice-Chair of Transport for London, made a proposal that a tax should be imposed on the value of properties bordering public infrastructure, because they receive capital gains through no effort of their own, which would at least contribute towards its cost.”
Funnily enough, I agree with the idea as it covers the capital cost aspect of it. The only thing is that I would still like my public transport system to cover its operating costs; and rural services just wouldn’t do that. Furthermore, I doubt that expanding public transport services to rural areas would have the impact that you propose - certainly, the land values of properties along the Brisbane Valley Line, the Helidon to Rosewood section of the Western Line or the Doomben to Pinkenba section of the Pinkenba Branch (all these are near Brisbane by the way) did not go down when their passenger services were cut in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Your increased land value would only occur within an urban context (up to 100-150km from the CBD of the city)
“If a graduated land tax were imposed, combined with higher capital reserve requirements, minimum level of required deposits, and ringfencing capital gains would lessen the chance of real estate bubbles in New Zealand and thus substantially reduce living costs for New Zealanders.”
Alright, so how would this idea benefit people? The investors may be driven away from real estate, but such a policy would only benefit the minority of renters who would be able to easily get into the housing market. How about housing for those who cannot afford to maintain a mortgage, or for those who want flexible housing arrangements? This approach would not benefit them.
It would be far easier to get rid of the green belt around Auckland and get a few halfway decent rail corridors secured in areas set for development. That would not only cut down the price of housing, but would also deal to the speculators, most of whom hoard land because rural land skyrockets in value when it becomes urban land.
“It would be cheaper, especially once the ETS kicks in, to give poor rural people a car instead of bus or, heaven forbid, a railcar.”
Not only cheaper, but a better use of resources. Who should get a billion of the public transport budget spent on them; ten thousand farmers spread miles around, or a million Aucklanders? The answer is very simple.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Just don’t restrict petrol cars and rural people will get along just fine. Most do at the moment. Just make sure no-one increases the minimum drivers license age or introduces compulsory insurance (thereby making transport more expensive) and the rural poor will be fine.
If you do want to help the rural poor you could repeal the warrant of fitness and registration systems, and remove all tax from fuel, then they could get back into the old bomb parked under the trees and get around quite happily… Short of that (which is a joke by the way) I can’t really see how you can improve much on the current system. Focus on public transport in cities, where it will actually work and benefit heaps more people for the same investment.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:13 am
Hi John-ston,
“Funnily enough, I agree with the idea as it covers the capital cost aspect of it. The only thing is that I would still like my public transport system to cover its operating costs; and rural services just wouldn’t do that.”
I should have been more clear.
I was actually referring to your point that public transport in cities requires considerable investment and my reply was to offer a means by which it could be funded so that those who derive the benefit from it should pay for it.
“How about housing for those who cannot afford to maintain a mortgage, or for those who want flexible housing arrangements? This approach would not benefit them.”
I think the with local government being more fully resourced through being able to collect property taxes, they could perhaps then participate more fully in alternative housing development arrangements that up to this point remain marginalised because lack of capital and other resources.
http://www.converge.org.nz/chaanz/chnz6.html
“It would be far easier to get rid of the green belt around Auckland and get a few halfway decent rail corridors secured in areas set for development.”
I agree though I’d also disband the rediculous zoning system that mandates a strict division between commercial/industrial/residential, because as you say the only beneficiaries of that approach are property developers.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
bump