Roads, roads, roads
I love Slane’s cartoon in this week’s Listener. I like to imagine he had roading initiatives in mind when he penned it.
Labour’s transport plan as climate change and peak oil both collide onto the political agenda = spend a record breaking amount of taxes on building new roads for more cars to drive on.
National’s plan = yup that sounds good, but we’ll spend even more. Here’s the credit card. What do you mean ‘insufficient funds’?
Image credit: Chris Slane
Bookmark to:
August 5th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Wonder if he has been to Public Address lately:
http://publicaddress.net/5189#post
August 6th, 2008 at 12:22 am
It’s only record breaking spending if you live in the Province of Auckland. All the other provinces are just paying a record amount of roading taxes and getting the same investment they got from Mickey Savage’s Labour Government or Walter Nash’s or Norm Kirk’s. The West Coast trumps all the other provinces by being the only one to get more funding under every previous Labour government, including the abysmally skinflint Lange government..
August 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
This analysis of transport modes by a Green is one of the most reasoned, and comprehensive, I have read on the topic on the Green status of different modes of transport.
He confirms what I have read in a large number of reports but this brings so much together into one paper that it is a truly valuable resource.
HIs policy recommendations are excellent if only because they do not attempt to reshape our cities overnight or demand massive changes in human behaviour.
Unlike most writers on this topic he also identifies the unknowns in his calculations and suggests where more work needs to be done.
He also seems more aware of the ongoing technology developments in the wings - especially robotic cars.
Anyhow enjoy it. It is refreshing in its candour and cool analysis.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Sorry, forgot the link after all that. Here it is:
The author is Brad Templeton, the chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:38 am
You talking about Kevyn?
August 6th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I’ll try for a third time.
Search under “Is green U.S. mass transit a big myth?”
and author: Brad Templeton
Is it not possible to post a URL?
August 6th, 2008 at 11:01 am
it’ll probably turn up in a few days…
Hmm. Heavy rail for all!
August 6th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Hi Owen, I’ve freed up your post that had got caught in our spam filter. Sorry it got lost. In the future don’t worry about triple posting, I always get there to rescue the lost ones eventually.
August 6th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Owen,
When you post a URL, don’t put a full stop on the end. This stuffs up the url. I can get to your url if I take the full stop off the end of it.
Yes, it’s a good article, but I don’t agree with its conclusions. What can we do today to improve our transport energy efficiency? We can change to bicycles, scooters, use buses or smaller cars, in that order. To state the obvious, electric cars are not an option at the moment. (Even when they become available, they won’t be a real answer to our problems).
Yes, there is huge room for innovation in transport - reducing trips, improving responsiveness and flexibility of public transport (integrated taxi, shuttle, bus & private travel, etc).
In the not too distant future, the more energy expensive modes in the table will simply be unaffordable, no matter how wealthy your society is. However, bus and train modes have more scope to improve their efficiency than cars - through electrification, streamlining, scaling up and especially increasing passenger loading. Public transport will try to stay affordable, while cars cannot.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:30 am
alexking,
The least energy expensive modes were all commercially available electric vehicles, and a bicycle.
The crucial point that you are overlooking is that in the US and NZ there are currently 20 trips by car for each trip by PT. The cost of switching even one-tenth of those trips to PT is going to be huge simply because it requires tripling PT capacity, unless the mode switch only occurs off-peak. In reality the mode switch is likely to occur mainly in the paek period so it may quadruple peak loads when most Pt is already running at capacity during peak periods. The same shift can be made overnight, at zero cost, simply by shifting one-tenth of drivers to one of the passenger seats of another car. Theoretically three-quarters of all car traffic can be eliminated in this manner resulting in a four-fold increase in energy efficiency.
In fact all of the verifiable information to date confirms that the changes that have led to a decline in per capita petrol consumption over the last 5 years can be ranked as follows:
PT
1) trip chaining
2) eliminate unnecesary trips
3) smaller vehicle
4) ride share
5) work from home
6) walk
7) bike
The biggest initial response was #2 (especially pleasure trips to the beach or bach) but then people get smarter and start combining errands into their commutes or social trips so they get the same benefit with less cost. Households with more than one vehicle often have different sized vehicles so it is quick and free to downsize which is why it is high on the list for NZ and USA. #5 is definite for the US only - it might be true for NZ too but it’s not something that’s actually referred to in any NZ info sources.
Cycling and motrcycles might be # for teenagers, judging by the doubling in deaths in that age group for those modes, but not for walking. That’s actually happened very time the price of petrol has soared in the last 40 years.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:33 am
Jeez, I wish I’d been clever enough to make that happen on purpose. Freaky coincidence or a sign from the transport gods?
August 7th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Kevyn
Re #5
You are right – we don’t keep such statistics here which is why so many of us are dependent on the US for such data.
However, The North Shore City did a survey and found that more people in North Shore worked from home than used public transport and that was about ten years ago. I suspect the ratio is higher now.
We now have to add in telecommuting which is the fastest growing form of “commuting” in the US and the ranking is directly related to broadband speed.
Telecommuting offers huge benefits. 25% of Sun Microsystems workers telecommute in San Jose – which is about 30,000 people. That is a lot of cars off the road and a lot of other benefits.
August 9th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Hello ARC. Let’s go halves on an electric trainset, and on a regional petrol tax too. Here’s the credit card. What do you mean ‘insufficient funds’?
Don’t worry, your children are going to end up paying for it one way or t’other.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:07 am
California Moving to Block Sprawl
“The California proposal seeks to limit sprawl not by enacting some manner of harsh prohibition, but instead by limiting state participation in providing easy highway access for new communities in the outlying exurbs. If the state is unwilling to build new highway interchanges, access to the new areas will be more curtailed, and there will be less incentive to turn these areas into new tracts of carpet-bombing houses. Without ready freeway access, new developments in more outlying regions will be less attractive to commuting families, and the growth of these developments will be less rapid.”
http://greenbuildingelements.com/2008/08/28/california-moving-to-block -sprawl/
August 30th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Huh. Very interesting jh. Something to ponder.