I must read the ‘common key’ the yellow bike n car pland that are ewxperimenting in switzerland and paris… we should use cars like we breath common air.. then we save half of the gas because we travel back in available transport .. just use a car and leave it at the destination///

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Thanks for the comment about the Methven Line; personally, I am of the view that we should take the New South Welsh approach and ensure that lines are mothballed and not ripped up until a good period of time has passed; certainly Methven is not the only example, you had the Moutohora Line, which might have eventually been used for forestry had it not been ripped up after closure in the 1950s.

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john-ston,

Yes! I understood that … however, as an interested observer, in my post I went off on a tangent that I thought relevant:

1. An example of the motivation of individual self interest by one person in power, unchecked by his colleagues, to the FUTURE detriment of the City’s options.

2. An example of the long term effects, on a system like our Railways, of the philosophy of the “Government of the day”.

Both are examples of the sort of motivations that, unchecked, have caused the demise of your (and many others’) sensible plans for the future …

(A few weeks ago, I gave the example of the railway line to Methven being closed and pulled out, co-incidentally, in the first year of Mount Hutt’s operation as an International Ski Area. (Local farmers, who were keen to have the wooden sleepers for use on their properties, were right behind this decision.)

We were part of a VERY small group, familiar with ski areas internationally, who opposed the removal of that line …

(Now is the time that a railway link to a potential cable-way system transporting skiers to the ski area, would have made the future of Mount Hutt more certain!)

eredwen

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julie – can you provide a link to the plug-in electric vehicle analysis that you mentioned?

Thanks,

Trevor.

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I wasn’t referring to the electric trams; I was referring to electric trains – you had an electrified railway line between Christchurch and Lyttleton from 1929 to 1970, with it being used by the Ec class locomotives. It could have easily been extended from Christchurch through to perhaps Rolleston and Rangiora (IIRC, they were the other suburban railway termini), and more easily than in Auckland, but for some reason, it wasn’t.

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John-ston,

A very interesting post.

“The weird thing, however, is why did it stuff up Christchurch?”

When I was a child Christchurch had a network of electric trams, including one to the top of Cashmere (hill).
They were replaced by diesel buses in the early 1950′s and I remember my parents anger at that decision because one of the City Councilors (who lived in our street) had obtained the “Import Licence” for the said deisel buses …

I think the Lyttelton passenger trains were abandoned because of the completed Road Tunnel, and “reforms” within the Railway system that downgraded the service. (The construction of the road tunnel was a source of night work for Engineering Student contempories of mine at University … 1959 and onwards.

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“The only acceptable form of suburbs are the railway/tram based ones. Everything within relatively easy walking distance of a tram stop, which today in the case of Wellington is a trolley bus stop. That is the only form of suburb which can survive a high oil price because it has existed before cars were widely used.”

How high must the oil price go before it becomes the only suburb to survive it? Certainly, I can see our current way of life remaining viable with oil prices of US$400 a barrel – that is roughly what the British pay, once all your taxes and so on are included. It will be years before we see oil at US$400 a barrel, unless Bernanke screws up.

“A modern apartment is hardly comparable to 19th century London. No one is going to do things like build an open sewer in the middle of Auckland.”

How long before that modern apartment becomes a slum? Globally, everyone has said, modern apartments, modern apartments over the last half century, and all of them have become slums (and the worst ones have been levelled).

Of course, you fail to recognise that suburbs and sustainable living are possible. The suburb was a product of the railway, and was further cemented by the tramway. You can have quarter-acre sections, and an easy trip to the tram stop.

“A proper public transport network is one that can be used for a wide variety of trips as you say, but the problem is there are still far too many trips done by car which are unnecessary. Even just spending a little on Aucklands rail network has seen patronage jump from 1 million to 6 million a year. A much expanded and electrified network would be able to take a lot of cars off the road.”

Of course, the only issue is that it would cost a minimum of $10 billion to fix up Auckland’s system – not that I think it is a bad idea.

“Traffic congestion is not caused by a few specialists. I can just see 20,000 specialists all needing to drive from the north shore to manukau. Traffic congestion is mostly caused by people who work 9 to 5. If anything by having people not working the same hours is better as the morning and evening rush hours become non existent.”

I never said that traffic congestion was caused by a few specialists. I merely said that we still need roads for the specialists to get from place to place. Furthermore, how do you propose having people not working the same hours? 9 to 5 became the workday, because that is when the sun is up, and people tend to be more productive in the daytime than at night. The only thing you could do that would have an impact (on both roading, and public transport congestion) is shift the school day to start at let us say, 9:30 and end at let us say, 3:30 or 4:00

“Aucklands existing road network and associated suburban development should not be further expanded upon, any new development should be based around rail/bus and be higher density.”

Why must any new development be both based around rail/bus and be higher density? Why not just rail/bus. What is wrong with developing houses around Waimauku? Taupaki? Huntly? Meremere? They are all near old railway station sites (in the case of Waimauku, an active station site).

Indeed, a good example of development has been the Gold Coast. In the mid 1990s, a railway line was constructed to there, and today, thousands use it to commute from the Gold Coast to Brisbane; and thousands of tourists use it to get from Brisbane to the Gold Coast. You have bus feeders linking up the various places. Indeed, when Robina Station was opened in 1999, it was in the middle of a field – it ain’t anymore.

“The way Auckland is currently shaped means that the existing motorways will unfortunately have to be used for a while but building new ones will make an existing problem worse.”

I am of the view that while we should protect corridors for future motorways and railways, that the public transport improvements should come first – once overcrowding on rail/bus services has been dealt to, then we can look at roading solutions where they are necessary.

“Why would you want freight between cities to be trucked? Freight should be railed between cities and only trucked within. Traffic congestion is not caused by trucks in cities so building more roads would be unnecessary if there weren’t so many private cars.”

There is a simple reason why I would want freight between cities to be trucked. NZR tried the approach of shipping the freight of every Tom, Dick and Harry until the 1980s, and it was a monumental failure (it was such a bad idea that laws were needed to keep NZR free of any competitors). Indded, in the 1990s, when Tranz Rail did not need to accept the freight of every Tom, Dick and Harry, it recorded some of the highest tonnage ever in its history.

The issue is with double handling; you would need gigantic yards (do you even know how huge the Auckland Yards were?) to accomodate the freight handling facilities. These yards would be taking up hundreds of hectares of land for almost no benefit.

Furthermore, we would need grade separated roads in cities. A local road generally has a speed limit of 50km/h; a grade separated motorway generally has a speed limit of 100km/h. If every truck had to rumble along Great South Road, it would take three hours to get across Auckland, instead of the one with the Northern/Southern Motorways.

“That was actually the biggest driver of traffic growth and declining walking and cycling.”

That is correct. The primary issue is the dispersal of workplace locations, and not with the dispersal of housing. With Wellington, you have three major employment areas (CBD, Porirua, Lower Hutt), and so it makes providing public transport far easier; of course, much of that came with terrain advantages.

What screwed Auckland up I believe was the division of it into about half a million boroughs, counties, cities and goodness knows what other form of division. Each area wanted to get rates revenues and so you ended up with industrial facilities in Glenfield, Avondale, Penrose/Onehunga/Otahuhu, East Tamaki and Wiri. The separation would have occurred anyway, had the town planning laws dictated it or not.

“The Roading Investigation Committee’s recommendation to reinstate full hypothecation of the petrol tax definitely stuffed up Auckland’s chances of getting urban rail improvements similar to those that had been recently completed in Wellington. But it shouldn’t have impacted on trams or buses as these were locally funded, although the scale of heavy vehicle fees and mileage tax recommended by the committee should have extended the life of the remaining tramways.”

In terms of Auckland’s urban rail improvements, I believe that the following helped screw us up

- Over-ambition (especially in the 1970s)
- Infighting between councils (and a general lack of unity)
- Infighting between government departments
- Flip-flopping

The weird thing, however, is why did it stuff up Christchurch? Remember that Christchurch to Lyttleton was already electrified (and remained so until 1970), and so it should have been able to extend it easily and use the English Electric Units of Wellington.

In terms of the tram and bus systems, IIRC, there was a law that required tram systems to pay for the construction and maintenance of the section of road that they used up to the standards of the surrounding road, and it covered an area of about 45cm either side of their ROW. Of course, when you only have a few trams using Garnet Road, and heavy trucks and buses tearing the road to shreds (and you have to pay for it), then you would want to pull up the tram system.

Also, I suspect that in New Zealand, they were not built to the Australian standards and the lack of maintenance during World War II had an impact. Certainly, it wasn’t until the 1960s that Australian cities started getting rid of their trams. Melbourne of course kept theirs, and Brisbane would have probably kept theirs, had it not been for the Paddington Depot Fire and the destruction of 65 trams.

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Julie, I can see only one major problem with the case you put. PT is only slightly more energy efficient than motorcars and it is relatively easy to improve the motorcars energy intensity – fill the empty seats.

Unfortunately your second-to-last paragraph applies at least equally to electric PT vehicles, so we are going to need to develop that industry ourselves which will be a lot easier than starting an electric car industry. We already have a multiplicity of heavy transport design, manufacturing and assembly expertise in this country.

It isn’t clear from the LTNZ report why PT investment is given a supernumerary role but I suspect the authors understand how much society, lifestyles and urban forms have changed since they heyday of PT in the ’20s and they know they foundations for effective and efficient PT is missing today, hence the focus on land use factors.

Have you done the analysis of how fully internalising the costs of road use will impact on businesses? I can see why large manufacturers won’t be too concerned as they can always switch to railfreight but businesses that can’t use rail, such as farming, tradespeople, taxi’s and so forth are going to be king-hit by charging the full cost of road use. Although as the biggest uncosted aspects of roading are parking and peak capacity it may be possible to target commuters and shoppers without impacting legitimate economicly efficient road users. At what level of cost will the middle classes avoid eating out, going to movies and concerts and all those other activities that are widely percieved by the middle classes as being too dangerous to travel to by PT?

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john-ston, Quarter acre and half acre sections seem to have been the preferred section sizes in most towns and boroughs from the very beginning of colonial settlement. In Auckland and Wellington the inner city working class suburbs were commonly eighth acre. But there wasn’t the total seperation of commerce, industry and housing that happened under the post-WWII town planning regime. That was actually the biggest driver of traffic growth and declining walking and cycling.

Quarter acre sections were the norm along the tram lines but with much narrower road frontages than in the post-WWII quarter acre suburbs. That makes a huge difference to the number of homes located within comfortable walking distance of the tram stops. This difference stands out like a sore thumb to anyone who has spent a lot time working with deposited plans at DoSLI. Although some Googlemaps include the DP’s it’s not at a scale that makes it easy to see. I guess a comparison of sat maps of Grey Lynn and Te Atatu would show the difference very clearly.

The other thing that made the trams viable in the 1920s was that all the major shopping/entertainment venues were in the CBD, which gave the tramways a reliable off-peak demand.

The Roading Investigation Committee’s recommendation to reinstate full hypothecation of the petrol tax definitely stuffed up Auckland’s chances of getting urban rail improvements similar to those that had been recently completed in Wellington. But it shouldn’t have impacted on trams or buses as these were locally funded, although the scale of heavy vehicle fees and mileage tax recommended by the committee should have extended the life of the remaining tramways.

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The only acceptable form of suburbs are the railway/tram based ones. Everything within relatively easy walking distance of a tram stop, which today in the case of Wellington is a trolley bus stop. That is the only form of suburb which can survive a high oil price because it has existed before cars were widely used.

A modern apartment is hardly comparable to 19th century London. No one is going to do things like build an open sewer in the middle of Auckland.

A proper public transport network is one that can be used for a wide variety of trips as you say, but the problem is there are still far too many trips done by car which are unnecessary. Even just spending a little on Aucklands rail network has seen patronage jump from 1 million to 6 million a year. A much expanded and electrified network would be able to take a lot of cars off the road. Traffic congestion is not caused by a few specialists. I can just see 20,000 specialists all needing to drive from the north shore to manukau. Traffic congestion is mostly caused by people who work 9 to 5. If anything by having people not working the same hours is better as the morning and evening rush hours become non existent. Aucklands existing road network and associated suburban development should not be further expanded upon, any new development should be based around rail/bus and be higher density. The way Auckland is currently shaped means that the existing motorways will unfortunately have to be used for a while but building new ones will make an existing problem worse. It took 50 years to get to where we are now it will probably take at least as long to undo the damage.

Why would you want freight between cities to be trucked? Freight should be railed between cities and only trucked within. Traffic congestion is not caused by trucks in cities so building more roads would be unnecessary if there weren’t so many private cars.

If your local school sucks that’s not a transport issue, that’s something else to consider but not for this discussion.

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“Saying that cities that do have proper public transport networks still require motorways is ridiculous.”

Toronto has a proper public transport network, the likes of Mees hold it up as an example of what (in his case, Melbourne) should aspire to be.

“There is likely no city in the world that has a proper public transport network because of the way the cities have been built since the 1950’s.”

Please define your definition of proper public transport network. My definition is one that is well used and is easy to use for a wide variety of trips (i.e. you can replace a car with it).

“Cities are built in a totally wrong way.”

Oh really? In the Western world, we have been sprawling since the invention of the railway. So are you saying that we should go back to the days prior to suburbanisation? If you are, then welcome to early 19th Century London, a stinky, smelly overcrowded city where cholera and other nasty diseases spread easily.

“A proper public transport network and a properly designed city will function far better than an endless unplanned sprawl of houses.”

Of course a properly designed city will function far better than an endless unplanned one, however, you could be planning till the cows come home and still have issues. Paris may be a properly designed city, but it came at a terrible human cost in the 19th Century (the poor were forced out of the inner city to make way for Haussman’s schemes).

“A plumber should not have to drive all the way across Auckland to get somewhere, things like that should be local not requiring any motorway.”

Yes, but they do? Why? People move all over Auckland, and often prefer continuing to do business with the tradesmen they know for reasons such as being able to use credit, or the knowledge that they will do a good job and not attempt to rip you off. Things like that are local (they behave in a monopolistic competitive manner), but they still have a regional reach.

Furthermore, what about specialised people? You would have tradesmen who are experts in particular items, such as fixing AEG electrics, and it just isn’t viable to have specialists in Ellerslie, Mount Wellington, St Heliers, Orakei, Glen Innes and every other flaming suburb of Auckland.

“Suburbs should resemble a village or town not just endless housing.”

Yes, but does a village or town have specialised services? No they don’t; you are still going to need centralisation for specialised services, and those people are still going to need vehicles to get around.

“You shouldn’t have to drive children to get to school somewhere far away.”

And what happens if your local school is crap? I wouldn’t want my children to go to a school that was crap, I would want them to go to a good quality school so they will actually be taught something, succeed and carry on to a good life.

“A motorway is only ‘required’ because the design of the city is non existent.”

A motorway is only ‘required’ because people have a variety of reasons for using their car. If it is for a blue/white collar worker, who is working in one location for eight hours a day, five days a week, then, yes, encourage them to use the train or bus. However, not everyone is a blue/white collar worker working in one location for eight hours a day. We would still need a good roading system to complement the good public transport system.

Furthermore, how about intercity freight? Let us not forget that it is not desirable to attempt to get all freight on rail services. We would need a motorway, if only to facilitate grade separation of freight and allow them to travel at 100km/h, instead of being stuck on 50km/h roads.

“Change laws about what type of housing developments can be built and where.”

Those sort of laws make houses far more expensive than they should be. Housing is already far too expensive in New Zealand, thank you very much. An average house in Auckland should, IMO, cost no more than NZ$250,000.

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The answer like anything is not simple. A good start would be the very obvious. Eliminate funding for new motorways, only spend on maintenance of existing ones. The only new spending should be on safety. Use money not being spent on new motorways to fund extensive public transport. Change laws about what type of housing developments can be built and where.

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fdaszx,

That is the problem,

What are your answers?

One thing to find the problem, quite another to decide, plan, fund and onstruct the answers that the cities populace can afford.

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Saying that cities that do have proper public transport networks still require motorways is ridiculous. There is likely no city in the world that has a proper public transport network because of the way the cities have been built since the 1950′s. Cities are built in a totally wrong way. A proper public transport network and a properly designed city will function far better than an endless unplanned sprawl of houses. A plumber should not have to drive all the way across Auckland to get somewhere, things like that should be local not requiring any motorway. Suburbs should resemble a village or town not just endless housing. You shouldn’t have to drive children to get to school somewhere far away. The problem is the entire way of thinking there is today. A motorway is only ‘required’ because the design of the city is non existent.

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Sigh. This argument is getting tedious, PB, John-ston and wat.

Nobody thinks that cars will dissapear completely. Yes some journeys will always be more efficiently undertaken in a car. However, the current demand for car trips is totally inefficient — because parking and road use are underpriced and (99% of the time) not charged directly to the user.

Since we have designed our roads for peak hour demand when roads/parking are unpriced, it is a very safe bet that if we price them at their true underlying value, the demand for roads will be low enough that existing infrastructure will suffice for many decades to come.

This is good news, because it means we can prioritise spending on maintaining and improving existing roads and expanding infrastructure for other modes for the next decade or so. This will be necessary because when we start internalising the costs of private vehicle travel, demand for all the other modes (and land uses that make it more convenient to use them) will grow. Even if we don’t internalise all the costs, demand will grow because of oil prices rising.

You want the evidence that supports this view?

Here is a lovely little report that explains the transportation market distortions and why we must rectify them if we want the economy to be resilient as oil prices rise.

http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/research/reports/357.pdf

Finally– the idea that we’re all going to get plug electric vehicles is laughable. We have done the analysis: for the average person, assuming the price of an electric vehicle is a reasonable $40,000 retail, it would not be an economic choice until petrol is well over $10 a litre.

Don’t forget, as oil prices rise, the cost of manufacturing and transporting vehicles to NZ will increase, even if they are electric, and global demand for alternative mode vehicles is likely to be higher than supply. So I think $40,000 per car is very conservative for the next 10 years.

In the meantime– with transport costs skyrocketing, the economy will suffer if we don’t provide affordable substitutes to private cars. In particular, we need more energy- and land-efficient modes of transport. Investing in PT, walking and cycling is the economically rational transport policy, once we cut away the planning regulations and subsidies that currently make them uneconomic.

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Even if, as you say, commuting by car in a niche, it’s still the peak hours congestion (caused by commuting by car) that makes some people wanting more roads in cities.

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>>A 2 lane road would be enough to carry traffic that cannot be done by public transport.

You are basing this on what study/analysis?

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“Pubic transport”, it does make the mind boggle a little doesn’t it!
It would be popular though!

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“If auckland had a proper pubic transport network it would eliminate the need for motorways.”

For starters, I lol at your typo. Secondly, Brisbane has a proper public transport network and it still has need for motorways; Perth has a proper public transport network and it still has need for motorways; Toronto has a proper public transport network and it still has need for motorways; London, Paris, I could go on forever, all these cities have proper public transport networks and they still have a need for motorways. Why?

Well, perhaps you fail to consider some trips that require road access. Tradesmen for instance; I don’t think that you would expect your electrician or your plumber to take the bus to your house to add plugs, or fix your toilet. How about salesmen? I wouldn’t expect them to take the bus to go to a presentation. What about freight? Not all items of freight can be efficiently transported by rail, and neither is it desirable to attempt to get all items of freight onto rail.

Also, the suburbs were never built in a way that forces people to drive, in Auckland, people choose to drive. One could get around with the bus in Auckland without any major problems. Also when the suburbs were first built, there must have been a demand for them, so people must have chosen to live there.

“A 2 lane road would be enough to carry traffic that cannot be done by public transport.”

Toronto, which has one of the best public transport systems in the world, has a motorway that at one point is eighteen lanes wide.

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The motorways in auckland are clogged mostly with traffic caused by people who commute to work, not by anything else. Most of those people could use public transport, if it were available. If auckland had a proper pubic transport network it would eliminate the need for motorways. Other traffic that isn’t from commuting is due to idiotic city planning, by having the suburbs built in such a way that forces people to drive. A combination of correctly planned cities and proper public transport would completely eliminate the need for motorways anywhere. A 2 lane road would be enough to carry traffic that cannot be done by public transport.

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