by frog
If the public wonders why we seem to consistently get crazy things like this situation Russel was talking about on Thursday:
A new report, released today, says there will be a 75 percent increase in freight over the next 25 years but predicts little – if any – difference in the way freight is moved around: 70 percent on roads, 15 percent on rail, and 15 percent on coastal shipping.
“Without a substantial re-prioritisation in the way Government spends our transport budget, the number of trucks clogging our roads will nearly double,” Green Party Co-Leader Russel Norman warns.
Then their belief in a sensible public interest policy is probably not helped by learning the Road Transport Forum’s Trust is making donations to both the Labour Party ($20,000) and National Party ($30,000), laying as the Dominion Post noted, ‘each way bets’. For many people it’s fairly evident that we need to respond to peak oil and climate change with significant long term rather than piecemeal changes to our transport and freight systems. It doesn’t help our democratic trust to see big business donating to parties that consistently to do the opposite.
So far the Road Transport Trust is the only big business lobby group to openly declare, thanks to the Electoral Finance Act, that it is funding the major parties’ political campaigns. As I noted recently we are six weeks out from an election and we still do not know where the majority National and Labour’s $2 million dollar election campaigns are coming from. The public should be entitled to this information before they vote.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Justice & Democracy by frog on Sat, September 20th, 2008
Tags: donations, Electoral Finance Act, frieght, labour party, national party, Road Transport Trust, Russel Norman, transport
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
btw frog..
with the wisdom afforded by hindsight..
do you really think you should have just ignored the warnings of this impending global economic meltdown..?
..warnings i have been issuing since 4th august 2006..?
(that’s 2006..!..)
and some 160+ warnings to date..
http://whoar.co.nz/?s=meltdown
all dutifully ignored/not passed on..by you..
..was it something i said..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Indeed phool the frog should have listened to your wisdom.
Who needs to watch playschool at frogblog?
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… and who needs to read d4j’s pointless posts ?
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I seem to recall Frog mentioning it a few times, not as often as other things and usually in context. I know I have pointed it out in various threads where appropriate. I call your attention to this little tidbit….
Relating to the short sales ban put in place just now…
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50D15FC355A16738DDDA00994DA405B828FF1D3&scp=1&sq=short%20selling%201932&st=cse
February 19, 1932, Friday
“NEW EXCHANGE RULE PUTS DRASTIC CURB UPON SHORT SELLING; After April 1 Brokers Must Ob- tain Written Consent From Clients to Lend Stock. END OF BIG BEARS IS SEEN Market Rallies on Advance Rumors — Orders Sent to Coast After Close Here. BAN HAILED IN CAPITAL But Members of Congress Disagree on Whether It Will Head Off Legislation. NEW EXCHANGE RULE CURBS SHORT SALES”
Note that date… .two weeks later the market entered a 6 month decline to bottom out in the great depression.
+++++++++++++++++++
Discussing transport and roads, I think that Russell has missed the fact that as the other prices rise, the more efficient forms of transport will rise as well. The value of being able to put a bunch of trucks on a ship and move them down the coast, or of being able to handle containers easily…from train to local trucks, will lead to changes that keep the trucks from clogging the roads so completely as he is expecting. We will see, but roads are NOT evil. I wish we could make our points more accurately without confusing the public.
respectfully
BJ
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I think over the next 25 years with peak oil, global warming, overpopulation, inflation, the world running out of food and a big time depression looming in the very near future, there is more likely to be a 75% reduction in the amount of freight as opposed to an increase. I don’t know where the govn gets these figures from, don’t they know what is going on in the world.
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It is perceived as a big political liability to any major party that admits these sorts of things until the public is already saying it. Look at the Treasury forecasts of the price of oil. Always wrong and in always the same way, yet Labour use them in cost benefit analyses of their roading plans, so they don’t want them to change anything.
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If we persist with our current business strategy of needing “growth”, and continue with a policy of allowing our overall population to grow, we will continue to see growth in freight.
The same goes for energy. Under current policies we will continue to need more.
Unless we set a population strategy that limits growth until appropriate “green” modes of transport and energy generation are in place, we will just have more of the same, taking us further along the road of pollution.
The challenges are how to limit population, how to encourage super-lightweight vehicles/cycles on separate roads, and how to move freight door-to-door in a more environmentally friendly way.
Trains will only ever do for long distance depot-to-depot, so I don’t see any other short-term option other than trucks.
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bjchip Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
> We will see, but roads are NOT evil.
Indeed they’re not. I use them frequently. But at this point in time, spending money on further increasing the capacity of the roading network for cars and trucks is evil if it is at the expense of improving the roading network for cyclists, expanding the rail network or improving port facilities for shipping.
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“Trains will only ever do for long distance depot-to-depot..”
Long distance is what Frog’s post is about of course.
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The problem is that the last time we assumed that high petrol prices were here to stay, the country was almost bankrupted through a process of attempting to reduce our dependence on oil. Of course when prices feel in the mid 1980s, these plants not only needed to be given away, but I believe the state had to pay the private sector to purchase them.
Needless to say, the plants are mostly closed these days and the only things left still in use of Think Big are the Clyde Dam, the NIMT electrification and the debt that we are still paying off. Of course, the old saying, once bitten, twice shy works here – you need to prove that a rail project would be viable if oil prices drop; after all, the NIMT was supposed to have an 18% return, but that was with sky high oil prices.
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Where does Russell get the idea that “Nowhere does this study refer to the Ministry’s own Surface Transport Costs and Charges study which showed that trucks were only paying 56 percent of their costs while rail freight paid 82 percent. The Government has done nothing to reverse the perverse incentives that have led 70 percent of our freight to be moved on our roads.”?
The STCC presumed that since rail had to earn a profit then so should roads, and it assumed the profit should be greater than Tranzrail earned in 2001. The STCC figures reveal that without this need to earn an acceptable profit for investors both raod and rail freight would be within a few percent of paying their full costs. Labour has nationalised the rail thereby removing the reason profits were included in the STCC. By a single stroke of the pen Labour removed the perverse incentives that Russell refers to.
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kahikatea, How can spending roading revenue on roads be considered evil. Many would consider it evil to spend roading revenue on rail and PT instead of reducing the road toll. But as long as most of the roading revenue is being spent buying votes in Auckland none of the alternative evils are evil at all, compared with that particular evil.
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# Kevyn Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
> kahikatea, How can spending roading revenue on roads be considered evil.
Because a significant portion of the revenue collected from fuel taxes and road user charges is collected from people who are only travelling by car because the other modes of transport are not well provided for. So surely it is wrong for that portion of the revenue to be spent on building more and more road capacity which will keep those people locked into inefficient modes of transport, when it could have been spent on the alternatives that they couldn’t make use of because all the money had gone into roading.
> Many would consider it evil to spend roading revenue on rail and PT instead of reducing the road toll.
I would draw a distinction between spending on improving safety and spending on increasing capacity, and spend on the former but in most cases not on the latter. The same distinction exists in Green Party policy.
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Kahikatea, Your last paragraph and my last sentence make exactly the same point in completely different words.
As for your first paragraph, I haven’t seen any research supporting the claim that a significant portion of travel by car is because other modes of transport are not well provided for. I would like to read the studies if they’re readily available, even if in journals since the Uni library may have them.
A win/win solution is to replace the petrol tax with GPS-RUCs which can charge the cost of extra capacity only to those who travel or park where and when that extra capacity is needed. That, I think, would create the situation you referred to but, rather than justifying diversion of funds it would reduce the demand for spending on extra road capacity and would make it easier to borrow for PT peak capacity expansion secure in the knowledge that PT riders won’t be fleeing to “free”ways each time PT fares are increased to cover wage or fuel cost increases.
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Oil prices MAY drop somewhat from where they are now… My speculation was $85/bbl but more is possible in the context of a real economic armageddon such as we predicted was possible and even likely in the absence of more rational economic policies. Of course, in that context we’ll wind up with more debt anyway, as government will be forced to buy some project or another just to keep us all employed at doing SOMETHING.
However, likely that may be the long term price of crude is not going to decline a great deal. So far as anyone can determine we have already passed “peak oil” and we are now in a position where increases in demand cannot be met by increases in production, prices have risen and demand is responding to the price… and people who have made their economic demand for oil inelastic are suffering more.
respectfully
BJ
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bjchip wrote
“as government will be forced to buy some project or another just to keep us all employed at doing SOMETHING.”
All the other stuff doesn’t matter at all because you just said what the complete problem is.
Anyways, I think the price of oil is going to drop quite significantly. It has to otherwise the whole thing is going to grind to a stop. It’s almost stopped already and if the oil stays high it’s definitely a crash zone so that oils got to drop right down.
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Not to worry, the government has just bought back one of the best artificial job schemes we ever had, and with a limited supply of fuel for heavy machinery roadworks will become labour intensive to. So it’ll be the same old SOMETHING(s) to the rescue again.
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Happy Car Free Day today!
If you’ve chosen to live somewhere you can walk to work from, or walk then catch a bus or train, enjoy the walk!
Living Streets Aotearoa encourages more people to walk more often for health, vitality and to reduce pollution.
In Wellington, a group are walking from Civic Square to Hataitai, along the waterfront and through Town Belt – with a refuellng stop at The Realm. If you don’t live near Hatiatai, still join us – there are heaps of buses from Hataitai to the East or back to the City! Meet at 5:30 p.m. at the i-site in Civic Square.
Walking gives us a chance to unwind between work and home, it’s free and it’s a great way to enjoy marvellous views of Wellington!
See http://www.livingstreets.org.nz/press.htm
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