by frog
President Obama summed up the Green party position on transport pretty well during a press conference in Florida yesterday. (at minute 55)
I would like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy efficient. And I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally…
The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody… recognizes that’s not a smart way to design communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this sort of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation.
That will make a big difference.
Sorry Barack, not everybody recognises that more sprawl is not a smart way to design our communities. Our new government is doing everything in its power to enable developers and silence dissent, all the while building new roads. Research supports Obama’s assertion.
From Todd Litman, Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation Victoria Transport Policy Institute 2009:
Increasing transport system efficiency tends to create far more jobs than those created directly by infrastructure investments.
The author further points out that vehicle and fuel purchases generate very few domestic jobs in the US (in NZ it would be even fewer as there is no domestic vehicle industry) compared with other consumer expenditure.
Each million dollar shifted from purchasing fuel to a typical bundle of consumer goods adds 4.5 U.S. jobs, and this is likely to increase significantly in the long run as international oil prices rise and domestic production declines. Each million shifted from general motor vehicle expenditures (purchase of vehicles, servicing, insurance, etc.) adds about 3.6 U.S. jobs. Public transit operations create a particularly large number of jobs.
So let’s get people out of their cars so that they can spend that petrol money elsewhere. It’s a straightforward way to create jobs and to transition New Zealand to a more sustainable economy.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare by frog on Thu, February 12th, 2009
Tags: green, jobs, new zealand, Obama, party, politics, stimulus, todd litman, transport
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Pity all his assumptions are without foundation.
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Owen,
Whose assumptions? What assumptions?
Urban sprawl is actually not a result of free choice, market forces, or the “convenience” or the motor vehicle. Convenience must be measured it terms of cost effectiveness, and since users haven’t faced the full costs directly, they haven’t been able to make their trade offs in a way that is efficient.
What we term “urban sprawl” was largely caused by urban planning regulations that stipulate that each new development provide for the 85th percentile demand for unpriced parking. (Further planning regulations that enforced low density and single use development also contributed).
Each site has to provide for their own peak, even if neighbouring sites have complimentary peaks. (Think of all the empty office car parks that are next to shopping centres.) Minimum parking requirements thus created an oversupply of parking in most urban areas, and made development in areas where land has a high value much more expensive and less profitable, because parking in and of itself is not an economically productive activity.
The over supply of parking means that hardly anyone ever pays directly for the land resources it requires. This is a subsidy for car drivers that (in most urban/suburban areas) actually halves the cost per trip.
All the evidence points to the conclusion that urban sprawl is inefficient in terms of energy and land use.
Many people have not realised that the inefficiency is caused by land and transport market distortions — which are created by urban planning regulations.
If we change those regulations, we have some hope of developing cities and towns that use resources efficiently, and this will flow through to increased economic productivity.
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I would have thought that, now of all times, the Greens would be keeping a bit quieter about their ill-informed planning zealotry:-
“STATE and federal governments have been accused of succumbing to pressure from the green lobby by abandoning responsibility for controlled burning of forests, despite growing populations in bushland suburbs.
As the death toll from the Victorian bushfires topped 130 yesterday, fire control experts said forest managers had failed to learn the lessons of past infernos such as Ash Wednesday in 1983 and the 2003 Canberra bushfires.
They said too little was being done to thin out the bush to protect lives and property against extreme weather conditions that fuelled the fatal Victorian blazes.
David Packham, a researcher from Monash University’s climatology group who has specialised in bushfires, said governments had abandoned responsibility for the one control they had over wildfires — the state of the forests that fed the flames.
“Due to terribly ill-informed and pretty well outrageous concepts of conservation, we have failed to manage our fuel and our forests,” Mr Packham said. “They have become unhealthy, and dangerous.”
Phil Cheney, formerly head of the CSIRO’s bushfire research unit, said the number of Victorian fatalities “absolutely” would have been lower with more prescribed burning.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25032972-5006785,00 .html
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Thanks Julie! Not sure I could have responded so well…
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“wat dabney Says:
February 12th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I would have thought that, now of all times, the Greens would be keeping a bit quieter about their ill-informed planning zealotry”
I would have thought that, now of all times, the global warming denialists would be keeping a bit quieter about their ill-informed denial zealotry.
“The bushfires and the extreme heatwave, whose death toll when tallied will probably be in the hundreds and exceed that of the fires, are global warming made manifest in the daily lives of ordinary people. Over the last ten days we have seen the future. The question is: will we face up to it or pretend they are one-off events?”
“If we were rational beings the events of the last 10 days would cause a massive reassessment of our whole approach to climate change. Yet it is a safe bet that over the next days and weeks the link between the bushfires and global warming will be avoided and downplayed.”
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090209-Dont-talk-about-the-warming -.html
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Wow Johan! – gold star for your rebuttal too!
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Except neither addresses the fact that public transport is not as efficient as private transport and switching to public transport will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions or reduce energy use and this relationship grows stronger by the day..
People do have more information than planners and make their decisions wisely – not perfecly but wisely. The centrally planned cities of the Soviet Bloc and South America sprawl more than modern western cities.
The study “Consuming Australia” found that the households with the largest carbon footprints where in high density inner city areas while the households with the smallest carbon footprints were on the urban fringe or in rural areas.
And the climate scientists of Australia and being very circumspect in blaming the current fires on global warming. These heat waves have happened before and so have the fires. The death toll this time is higher because there are more people living there. How can one blame the fires on global warming in Australia but claim that the terrible winters in the northern hemisphere are “just natural variation”.
There are many issues surrounding this tragedy and this is not the time to justify strongly held beliefs without real evidence – either way.
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I give it no stars. Religious. Not remotely scientific.
>>The bushfires and the extreme heatwave, whose death toll when tallied will probably be in the hundreds and exceed that of the fires, are global warming made manifest in the daily lives of ordinary people.
So the snow in England means….what, then?
And don’t give me that bull about “changeable weather” proves AGW. You need to name a scenario which would indicate AGW is not occurring.
For example, give me some predictions for the number of forest fires for the next ten years in Australia. What pattern supports AGW, and what pattern indicates it isn’t happening.
Meanwhile, we can point *directly* to a natural fuel mis-management issue (no burnoffs and tree felling due to Green lobbying)
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My reply above was to Johan
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wat dabney Says:
February 12th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
> “STATE and federal governments have been accused of succumbing to pressure from the green lobby by abandoning responsibility for controlled burning of forests, despite growing populations in bushland suburbs.
true environmentalists (as opposed to people who built a house beside the forest and want to protect the view, but don’t understand how the forest works) have been at the forefront of arguing for allowing forest fires in places like Australia and the west coast of the US where forests have evolved to have fire as a natural part of their life-cycle.
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Owen (and BP, if you were calling my reply religious),
I don’t think you read my post, or if you did, you didn’t understand it. I didn’t say anything about greenhouse gas emissions.
The reason PT appears to be inefficient now is because planning regulations have created and continue to create market distortions.
If developers did not have to provide an oversupply of parking because of city planning regulations, they would not. Because land is valuable, and parking is not as economically productive as other uses.
If there was not an oversupply of parking, users would have to pay directly for parking. If users had to pay directly for parking, they would often make different choices about transport mode and/or where to live.
Read “The High Cost of Free Parking” (2005) by economist Donald Shoup.
Some people would still choose to drive, or course. But the point is that people can not make trade-offs about efficiency versus cost if they do not face the full costs.
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hear hear Kahikatea.
What are growing populations doing in bushland areas prone to naturally occuring forest fires anyway? That was the first question I asked myself when I witnessed the terrible toll resulting from the fires.
Julie,
I bet if developers weren’t mandated to ensure there was the oversupply of parking in cities, there wouldn’t be such high land values that pressure people to move into the hinterland, would there?
All due to the fact that local governments kowtow to the real estate set and the property developers.
BTW Owen, how can you claim that the housing bubble in the U.S is caused by a lack of capacity due to “Smart Growth” policies, when most areas most severely affected were actually overbuilt?
http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/top-5-overbuilt-us-markets-in-2 007-51243.aspx
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Blue Peter,
My response to your comment is to refer you to the report that is refer to in the link I provided – in this report stats and analysis of the likely increase of bush fires was predicted based on increased frequency of droughts brought about by global warming – take the time to read it.
As I said to you in the past, I think climate change is proven by the research (on this we differ) but I hold the view that we should be careful to link single events with climate change – I think we should rather realise that it is an incremental process.
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They said that about hurricanes….
It’s beyond a joke. Every possible weather condition is a sign of AGW.
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Sleepy,
The most inflated prices are in dense areas because smart Growth promotes overbuilding in the name of “intensification.” to compensate for the land shortage.
Parking spaces around shopping centres are not mandated – if they weren’t there the customers would go to competitors who provided them. Tell me, how do you do you supermarket shopping while using public transport – other than taxis which provide much transport to such centres group hired by poor families.
And the parking is not free – the cost of the land and seal is built into the price structure. And of course you pay to park in the city.
Anyhow, no one should be surprised by these outcomes. Here is the intro to my report to the Reserve Bank 12 years ago in 1`996.
I documented the bubble in NZ in 1995/6, for the Reserve Bank but did not predict the effect of its bursting on the US economy.
Here is the opening summary. Not bad for the times, 12 years ago:
The Principle Findings of this Report Are:
General Principles
• General economic theory, and international experience, strongly indicate that the regulation of the supply of land should be light-handed, for reasons of both equity and efficiency.
• Policy makers must recognize, and must explain to their constituencies, that heavy-handed regulation of the supply of residential land carries a burden of significant economic and social costs. Such over-regulation affects prices, construction output and finally employment.
• In New Zealand those same price rises make a significant contribution to the CPI, which, in turn, forces a response from the Reserve Bank, which means that these distortions impact on the competitive performance of New Zealand’s trading sector.
• Many of these costs fall most heavily on those least able to deal with them. Those already comfortably settled, benefit from the increased capital value of their properties. Those struggling to become established, find themselves paying higher prices for housing, or are priced out of the market altogether. A large percentage of the population who have a mortgage on their home or who have borrowed to finance their business or other activities are paying higher interest rates that necessary.
• Some increased costs associated with protection or enhancement of the environment are to be expected. As populations become wealthier, they demand higher environmental standards.
Local Government and the Supply, Demand and Regulation of Land
• Local government has a responsibility to ensure that an adequate land-bank is available to meet rapid and unforeseen increases in demand.
• Unless sufficient sections are available and ready for occupancy, an increase in demand can lead to a vicious cycle, whereby, at the end of the cycle, the land-bank is no better supplied than at the beginning.
• Pressure on rural fringe land will increase rather than decrease over the next decade. Contrary to much planning mythology, economic efficiency and the need to make the best use of rural land, demand that the ‘lifestylers’ should be allowed to have their way. There is no shortage of agricultural land.
A page later:
The High Cost of “Providing for Growth by Containment”
The ARC policies of containing growth
The major cause of ongoing increases in housing costs is the ARC’s policy that Auckland’s growth should be managed by a policy of containment which restrains growth outside the present urban limits, (which are currently under review) while concentrating development within the present urban limits. These policies rest on the unfounded assumption that the present city form is unsustainable. These arguments are without foundation both in fact and probably in terms of the Act. Opinion surveys and Census Data, indicate that the Regional Policy Statement seeks outcomes which the majority of Aucklanders do not want, and are likely to resist, and are contrary to present practice. Such a massive re-direction of preferences must introduce high costs with downstream effects on the whole economy.
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Owen,
Your claim that developers of shopping malls are not mandated to provide parking is not based on evidence.
Here in NZ, developments outside the CBD fall over all the time because of minimum parking requirements — most recently the Crystal Palace on Mt. Eden Rd.
The Westfield at New Lynn wanted to expand their retail area and were unable to because the district plan parking regulations would have required a significant expansion in car parks, which would have been unaffordable.
Incidentally, a parking study undertaken at New Lynn last year concluded that the total peak demand for car parks (and this is demand for unpriced parking) was less than 6,000. The total supply of car parks in New Lynn was around 11,000, almost twice the peak demand. And the total supply is LESS than what the district plan mandates.
My point is that car parks are NOT free, but they appear to be free to people who use them. You are right that the cost is bundled with the development. That’s why it is a subsidy to car drivers — consumers cannot choose to pay less for not using a car park, even though they should be able to.
So Owen, I take it you do not support the principle of consumer choice and user pays?
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Julie; I couldn’t agree with you more. The quantity of valuable land being squandered in partially-utilised car-parks really needs to be factored with continuing to operate cities as car-centric.
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Owen,
if you follow your own point “General economic theory, and international experience, strongly indicate that the regulation of the supply of land should be light-handed, for reasons of both equity and efficiency.”
Would that not also apply to removing minimum parking requirements?
If you remove minimum parking requirements and the MUL, I guarantee that the market will respond with more smart growth and it will be more affordable (from a housing+transport cost point of view).
Market research carried out in the states in 2007 showed that the demand for housing in communities that are “walkable” is about 30% of the market share. The supply of housing in communities that are walkable is 2%.
So, that is why smart growth is unaffordable! The demand is 15 times greater than the supply. Why is that? Because of market distortions like minimum parking requirements.
If you look at where house prices have fallen the fastest in the states, it has been in suburbs that are highly car dependent and are far from the centre of towns. This is because as oil prices were rising, home values in areas that were highly dependent on oil were falling. So, homeowners had increasing transportation costs, and reducing home values (and rising food costs due to the oil intensity of food production, and biofuel subsidies).
You focus so much on housing affordability, but housing affordability is worthless if it exacerbates transportation unaffordability.
I’m all for an efficient market! Remove transport market distortions and car use will continue to fall.
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“I bet if developers weren’t mandated to ensure there was the oversupply of parking in cities, there wouldn’t be such high land values that pressure people to move into the hinterland, would there?”
You’ve got it Sleepy! That is exactly the problem — minimum parking requirements have at least as significant influence on land values as does growth containment.
Of course, a capital gains tax on property investment (not home ownership) would also go a long way towards achieving home affordability and is perfectly in line with sound economic theory, not that we ever hear Hugh Pavletich or Owen McShane advocate for a truly effective economic instrument for acheiving housing affordability.
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Why not a capital gains tax on home ownership as well? You’d only pay on the increase after improvements were deducted. Keep it simple stupid
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Owen,
“The most inflated prices are in dense areas because smart Growth promotes overbuilding in the name of “intensification.” to compensate for the land shortage.”
How overbuilding leads to high prices just does not make sense to me so there must have been other more significant factors at play, though perhaps the initial high prices encouraged developers to overstep themselves as they tried to take advantage of high prices. Kind of like how the run up in oil prices occured last year, where initially the prices reflected underlying fundamentals, but became disconnected when speculators who didn’t want to be left behind and resulted in too much money pouring into the market at the point when supply became exceed demand.
It sure explains the catastrophic collapse in values after the bubble burst though.
I think it ended up just another investment mania fueled by greed, lack of foresight, and cheap credit, ending inevitably in collapse.
“Parking spaces around shopping centres are not mandated – if they weren’t there the customers would go to competitors who provided them.”
Thats what shopkeepers in Pasadena, California feared when the city’s officials considered mandating the introduction of parking meters in Old Pasadena, but the proponents of the scheme claimed that, “employees rather than customers occupied many curb spaces, and making these spaces available for short-term parking would attract more customers. Any customers who left because they couldn’t park free would also make room for others who were willing to pay if they could find a space, and who would probably spend more money in Old Pasadena if they could find a space.
In 1994 they conducted a study which compared their policy and Westwood Village, a now fading business district, who did not have a policy of expensive meters. The study vindicated the city’s contention where it found “In contrast, Westwood’s curb parking is underpriced and overcrowded. A 1994 parking study found that the curb-space occupancy rate was 96 percent during peak hours, making it necessary for visitors to search for vacant spaces.”
The explanation was. “Underpricing curb parking cannot increase the number of cars parked at the curb because it cannot increase the number of spaces available. What underpricing can do, however, and what it does do, is create a parking shortage that keeps potential customers away.”
Turning Small Change
Into Big Changes
by Douglas Kolozsvariand and Donald Shoup
I actually echo your opposition to so-called “Smart Growth” policies, though perhaps for different reasons. I found your publication, Alternatives to Smart Growth, rather illuminating and found much in it that I agree with.
“Tell me, how do you do you supermarket shopping while using public transport – other than taxis which provide much transport to such centres group hired by poor families.”
Speaking from experience, shopping weekly at a supermarket and using public transport isn’t particularly onerous, though admittadly I am single without dependants. An intiative like the new TaxiBus would have been car more convenient when I lived in Christchurch.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4503938a13.html
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# samiam Says:
February 12th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
> Why not a capital gains tax on home ownership as well? You’d only pay on the increase after improvements were deducted. Keep it simple stupid
because if you have to shift to another city after prices have risen in both the city you’re moving from and the one you’re moving to, you won’t be able to buy a new house of the same value as your old one (you’ll only be able to buy a house of the value of your old one less capital gains tax). The logical solution to this is to give a tax rebate when you buy the new house, so that you get all the tax back if you buy a house worth as much as or more than the old one, but get only some of it back if the price of your new house is less. The main problem is that this is not keeping it simple, and will therefore confuse people.
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Julie: You said “What we term “urban sprawl” was largely caused by urban planning regulations that stipulate that each new development provide for the 85th percentile demand for unpriced parking.”
Hardly, it is caused by the underpricing of roads and the demand by property owners for space in suburbs. In NZ planning requirements on parking only applied to commercial land and were done away with 20 years ago. As a result, property owners can reallocate parking to other purposes if they so choose.
If roads were charged on commercial grounds according to demand, then it would moderate commuting distances and congestion, as well as put public transport on a level playing field (without subsidies).
I’m against any planning regulations on parking, it should up to landowners.
This post was about what Obama believes in – it’s the same nonsense about government provided public transit that has failed miserably in the US before. What the US needs is road pricing and commercialisation of the highways. Providing public transport without pricing roads effectively will do virtually nothing to fix congestion.
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Liberty Scott, I am sorry to say you are 98% wrong about NZ planning requirements.
Min parking requirements are effectively enforced in NZ through district plans and they apply to all uses. There are a few exceptions such as Akl CBD, Wellington Central, and some old town centres.
Waitakere City is one of the only councils considering changing this, and they were just consulting on it. It will be 3 years probably before they get the plan changes through. http://www.waitakere.govt.nz/Abtcnl/pp/draft-policies/parking.asp
The cost of providing parking is actually far higher than the cost of providing roads — beacuse it takes up far more land!
If we priced parking effectively, we might not even need congestion charging.
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Example:
The peak peak (11 busiest hours) demand for unpriced parking in New Lynn is 6,100.
The total current supply is 11, 200.
This supply is less than the district plan technically requires.
If we assume that even during the peak peak we want 15% of car parks open to facilitate turnover, and we want to keep subsidising parking (ie not charging users) we would need 7,176 car parks.
That means that even without charging user directly, we have a surplus of 4,024 car parks. Engineering standards require about 25 to 35 m2 per car park (when you count the turning radius, exit/entry area). Let’s say 30m2 per car park.
That’s 12 hectares of totally unproductive land that cannot be used for anything else, in a town centre where land is relatively valuable!
Average land value (unimproved) per m2 in New Lynn is $774.
$93 million dollars. And that’s just the land value, not the engineering costs which are much higher for structure parking.
Yes we have minimums and yes you should be lobbying the govt to remove them if care at all about property rights, consumer choice and user pays.
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Ha! Own and Liberty wrong again. So wrong. Man you guys need to get out and talk to some ACTUAL transport engineers and planners.
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Sorry, I dashed my comment about parking off in a hurry.
Parking around shops did not used to be mandated and in normal lightly regulated market will self regulate – although one might want to regulate for emergency vehicle and handicapped parking.
But unfortunately just about all District Plans do now mandate parking and at an excessive rate of requirement. I have never understood this. Why would the planners who claim to care about the environment want to mandate for more asphalt on the ground than necessary. I am having this battle with engineers here at Kaipara who want the parking for a museum increased and want it all sealed while we are promoting either gravel or gobi block in grass.
But the major point is that blaming ’sprawl” on shopping centre parking lots seems naive given the percentage of urban land actually dedicated to mall parking. You may as well blame sprawl on football fields and golf courses.
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Owen, I agree with you. Transport planners/engineers are often their own worst enemies. The impacts of parking, however, can in no way be written off as minor.
As you acknowledge, District Plan parking requirements are excessive. Manukau City, for example, require childcare centres to provide one car-park per employee.
The average car-park takes up 30sqm while the average employee requires 15sqm. So TWICE as much land is provided for parking as is allocated to for employees.
Manukau’s requirements are typical – current requirements will see 50-75% of a sites area used for parking. The amount of land used for golf courses and football fields does not even come close.
Open up Google Earth and have a look at New Lynn, Manukau, Albany …. Approximately 50% of the (usable) land in these town centres reserved for parking. Parking requirements are affecting land use density.
Not only do minimum parking requirements suppress density in town centres, but they are a massive subsidy for vehicle users – spurring vehicle dependent residential development on the urban fringe.
Ask yourself what the impact on travel and land use patterns would be if vehicle OPEX doubled overnight? That is the magnitude of the subsidy for parking provided to the average vehicle user. The suburbs would gasp!
The simple solution is:
1. Remove minimum parking requirements; and
2. Price demand for parking where demand exists.
To be honest you and the National/ACT/RTF/NZCID crew would have a whole lot more credibility if you argued for deregulation of parking as vociferously as you support building more urban highways.
Ultimately parking reform will deliver congestion reduction benefits far in excess of any highway. Plus, benefits are locked in and amplified over time – A WINNER! Economically, socially, and environmentally …
Drive forth with new found insight and passion, Mr McShane.
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Owen,
Great! I am glad you know about minimum parking requirements. They have existed since the 50s. They have been increased over the years, due to conservative design standards and a failure to recognise the price elasticity of driving.
But, I actually didn’t blame sprawl simply on shopping mall parking lots.
My argument is that minimum parking regulations have been the single most important economic incentive driving the type of urban development people often term “sprawl”.
They force large amounts (30 – 50%) of land to be reserved for a use that is not directly economically productive. Therefore, they drive up the cost of land that can be used for other uses (because they restrict the supply and make development more expensive).
So developers have found it much more profitable to develop in areas where land is cheap (far from centre) because they can provide the required parking for less cost. And if they are already forced to pay nearly as much for the parking as for their entire development (which is often the case in my experience), they have no economic reason to locate near where people can walk, or to be near public transport, or to offer free delivery services.
If they could make the trade off and undertake the financial analysis (which we are doing for a developer overseas) they would find it much cheaper to manage their parking supply and potentially charge for it (as people who are willing to pay for parking are more likely to spend money in their shops anyway) than to provide a large supply of parking.
Yes, of course there would still be a market for large shopping centres on the edges of town and they would provide some parking of their own will.
But if the value of the land started increasing they might redevelop a lot of the parking and put housing and commercial in its place because then they have a captive market and their retail remains sustainable, whilst they get far higher rents from commercial and residential uses. And there would still be some parking of course– just an economically efficient amount.
Also, when people have to pay directly for the cost of parking there is less demand. We know this from price elasticity studies. Some people (who find it worthwhile enough) would of course still drive and pay for parking. But others would make fewer trips, or car pool, or walk or cycle to a smaller shop that is closer, or take public transport, and some may request home delivery. And then all of those modes and services would be more efficient, because there would be greater demand for them.
This is the case in Europe, where there is much higher mode share for PT and walking and yet there are still people who drive and there are some commercial centres that provide some free parking far away from urban areas where land is cheap.
My final point is, PT is inefficient because of market distortions that have subsidised parking. Get rid of those market distortions, and then we’ll see what the most efficient and desireable urban form is, and the most efficient transport modes.
So, tell the govt! Property rights — remove minimum parking requirements from district plans. It should be up to consumers and developers to make their own trade offs.
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Hi Julie,
We appear to share a commen perspective on many issues, particularly surrounding land use management and regulation.
I would like to get in contact with you, as I am now contemplating setting up a policy institute whose remit will be developing critical analysis of public policy that recognises the inevitably of conventional assumptions being challenged in the future. I am searching for people with expertise in a variety of areas who also possess a perspective that matches the intent of the policy institute to serve in an independant consulting capacity. I believe you would be a perfect fit. Would you find contacting me via email at bluecollargreenie@gmail.com so we can discuss it further?
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Hi Sleepy, sounds cool.
For LibertyScott, I just happened to find this in a journal article that analysed the impact of employer provided parking subsidies in Los Angeles.
“Parking subsidies have such a strong influence on commuters’ travel choices because the subsidies are so large. For those who park free in downtown Los Angeles, their average parking subsidy is equivalent to 11 cents per vehicle mile traveled to work. Thus, imposing a congestion toll of 11 cents per mile traveled would raise the cost of driving to the Los Angeles CBD by only as much as employer-paid parking already lowers it for 69,500 commuters.”
Of course, that article was published in 1992, so we’re looking at 1990-92 US $. Been a bit of inflation since then…
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Wow Julie you really really do know what you’re talking about. Great rebuttals, although trying to talk Owen around on this subject is like banging one’s head against a brick wall. Perhaps if we paid him off like the developers do then he might see the sensible side of the argument.
Sprawl is hugely inefficient, which is starting to show in the USA over the past few months. Over the next couple of years I think we’ll see huge tracts of abandoned sprawl throughout the USA – that sounds like a pretty failed planning paradigm to me.
What you say about public transport being screwed over by the proliferation of free parking couldn’t be more true. I think minimum parking requirements should be banned for residential dwellings within a set distance of train stations and bus route, while in the CBD the Regional Council should tax off-street parking places like the NSW government does for downtown Sydney. That policy has the two-fold benefit of discouraging the provision of off-street parking in the CBD (and therefore reducing private car congestion and the need to spend billions on more motorways) while also giving the government (in our case the ARC) a whole pile of money to spend on public transport improvements.
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Nice blog, Jarbury! We definitely are on the same page.
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“…get people out of their cars…” “…a straightforward way to create jobs…” – by increasing public transport capacity?
Sweet dreams! It still increases the total transportation capacity and thus the moving of goods and people.
For increased sustainability the opposite is needed: a re-localisation of living and working, with a minimum of transport. The costs saved on transportation can be used for slightly less efficient (for the companies, not ecologically) local manufacturing. A bakery in every suburb, for instance. Although I’m at a loss with regard to other activities. We should analyse why people have to travel downtown and which of the industries can be re-localised.
“Job creation” is a universal endeavour but environmentally this starts at the wrong end. We must not create jobs but manufacture what we really need, in quantities and ways that can be supported by the environment, by the planet. Tragically, with all the jobs we have we are overconsuming resources far beyond the earth’s carrying capacity.
Resources is not energy only. It’s all, water, soil fertility, minerals, biodiversity, old-growth forests, space, a non-toxic environment, a normal climate. This is all developing in the wrong direction because of economic growth and population growth. Please note: “immaterial” or “sustainable” growth etc. do not exist.
In the impending after-peak-oil times industrial and agricultural production, and transportation will go down because for many activities and processes there is no alternative for oil and gas.
Then those communities will be best off who are largely self-sufficient with the basic necessities of daily life.
For such a transition our mindsets need to change from the perceived freedom of mobility and immediate satisfaction of desires towards a spirit of organising life with more patience and planning around a minimum of transportation.
Difficult, I know. But “sustainability” means a state that can be continued unchanged for a long time. We can’t carry on without drastic changes for very long.
Helmut Lubbers
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Peak oil is our friend then ecoglobe. More than anything else, peak oil will ensure a relocalisation of pretty much everything. The days of shipping wood to China to have it turned into furniture and shipped back to New Zealand are numbered.
Peak oil works quite well in that the skyrocketing price of oil means that it should end up being rationed quite effectively over a long period of time. Therefore we will still have enough oil for useful stuff like making plastics for a long time yet.
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Sydney Morning Herald
‘It wasn’t climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn’t arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.
So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.
In July 2007 Scott Gentle, the Victorian manager of Timber Communities Australia, who lives in Healesville where two fires were still burning yesterday, gave testimony to a Victorian parliamentary bushfire inquiry so prescient it sends a chill down your spine…Gentle complained of obstruction from green local government authorities of any type of fire mitigation strategies. He told of green interference at Kinglake – at the epicentre of Saturday’s disaster, where at least 147 people died – during a smaller fire there in 2007.
“The contractors were out working on the fire lines. They put in containment lines and cleared off some of the fire trails. Two weeks later that fire broke out, but unfortunately those trails had been blocked up again [by greens] to turn it back to its natural state … Instances like that are just too numerous to mention. Governments … have been in too much of a rush to appease green idealism … This thing about locking up forests is just not working.”…In nearby St Andrews, where more than 20 people are believed to have died, surviving residents have spoken angrily of “greenies” who prevented them from cutting back trees near their property…’
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/green-ideas-must-take-blame-for-deaths-2 0090211-84mk.html?page=-1
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jarbury
We’ve got more than enough oil to power ships, and even if we did run out, we’d power them with alternatives.
The days of shipping will be with us for as long as there is sea.
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Devine commented: “You are contesting ideas and you have to do it in a polarising way. When you write a column, you can’t sit on the fence.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_Devine
http://www.kieranbennett.com/2009/02/debunking-miranda-devine/
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ecoglobe
>>For such a transition our mindsets need to change from the perceived freedom of mobility and immediate satisfaction of desires towards a spirit of organising life with more patience and planning around a minimum of transportation.
Go live on a commune, then. Right now. Off you go.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will live as we always have. We’ll trade, refine our technology, and enjoy the benefits of comparative advantage.
Hope your local crops don’t fail. Don’t come crying to us for help.
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>>You are contesting ideas and you have to do it in a polarising way
The Delahunty/Bradford approach.
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I don’t know why it is but many Green reformers have the Manhattan model of cities locked in their minds. Manhattan is a central nodal city and is quite rare.
Most modern cities are mult-nodal (more like London and Los Angeles) and of course post Henry Ford cities are multi nodal and becoming more so as all our technologies are promoting decentralisation rather than centralisation.
The end result is that in most cities of the world non work trips now account for more trips than work related trips. And most commuter trips are from suburb to suburb rather than from suburb to the CBD. Indeed from memory only 6% percent of all vehicle trips in Auckland have the CBD as their destination.
Auckland congestion problem is mainly caused by the failure to built the network of roads which a multi nodal city demands. We have a major state highway barrelling through the city and no by passes and no circumferential routes to speak of.
YOur plans to prevent people parking so they would have to take public transport would actually create massive unemployment. The range of jobs availale to a person with a car is many times the number of jobs available to people without a car. The difference between white and black employment is directly related to comparitive car ownership. Radial public transport into the CBD serves the white collar workers who live there but hardly anyone else.
When I studied BART while at Berkeley I got used to Black leaders complaining that the whites get the stations and the black folk get the tracks.
Just think about what would happen if none of your destinations had any parking nearby. You would simply change location to find somewhere more amenable to modern life.
All systems make their demands. Prior to the invention of the car the city streets were open sewers for horse urine and shit.
Horses ate 40% of the grain grown on US farms. And horses dropped dead daily in the streets and were often not removed for days.
The grid locked streets of New York at the turn of the century were unbearable mainly because of the stench. That is why wealthy New Yorkers went upstate for summer.
Cities churn and adapt to new technologies and new lifestyles and demographics. That is why cities are losing populations in the west and New World and more and more people are living in small towns and rural areas.
The dominance of the CBD is over and most of the “solutions” posed here will only hasten that. I live near a tiny town with its own Italian Baker. I still drive to pick up my bread just as a drive to pick up my meat at the butcher and the groceries at the supermarket. Fortunately , in each case I can park at the door
and the shopkeepers help me load up if necessary and they all know me by name.
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Wat dabney,
I don’t understand what the fires in AU have to do with Green Party or their town and transport planning processes.
I don’t know enough about what happened there to really judge what the ultimate causes were.
But in any case the NZ Greens as far as I am aware do not have a policy that is against controlled burning in fire prone areas in Australia. So how could this be their fault?
What they might be against is opening up land for residential development in sensitive areas that are prone to fires, flooding, and coastal erosion.
In any case, it’s an invalid argument to say “greenies” all have the same position and if one environmental activist group is against controlled burning than Green Party planning policies are wrong and hurt people.
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>>>Meanwhile, the rest of us will live as we always have. We’ll trade, refine our technology, and enjoy the benefits of comparative advantage.
Oh. It must be so nice to smugly have a world view that is so blinkered so as to not even consider alternative lifestyles that may be superior to the status quo. No paradigm shift in thinking is evident here. Sorry ecoglode, in the words of Don Mclean: ‘They’re not listening still. Perhaps they never will’.
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Dear Owen,
It would be really nice if you would actually respond to the points I have made.
I never suggested that we should prevent people from parking. I said that if people paid directly for the costs of parking, our transport system and the distribution of land uses would be more efficient.
It’s your own point about economic efficiency being realised when we limit regulation and subsidies.
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Owen you’re just sounding incredibly 1980s here with your whole “death of the inner city” diatribe. There are plenty of signs that the inner-city is reviving while in fact the outer suburbs or exurbs are starting to show signs of becoming abandoned – just like the inner city was in the 1970s and 1980s. Just look at the revival of inner-city in many US cities (San Francisco, LA, New York and Philadelphia are the classic example). Same sort of process has happened in London and Melbourne, with significant dockland redevelopment, and will happen in Auckland once Tank Farm starts moving ahead.
I suggest you need to wake up and realise it’s 2009 and not 1989 Own.
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I presume then that you want to have people pay the full cost of their public transport?
My data come from the latest census figures for cities around the world and for Auckland in particular. SEe Phil McDermott’s latest analyses.
I am pleased to say I played a major part in the inner city revival back in the mid sixties by deregulating land use in places like Freemans Bay and Ponsonby which the Govt of the day planned to flatter in the name of urban renewal. I also invented the word town house for Auckland and helped the team write the ordinances for townhouses and infill houses and courtyard houses.
I was unable to persuade the system to allow people to live in the CBD before I went to the US and that only happened when the crash of 87 left a whole lot of empty offices which were converted into apartments.
Yes there has been an inner city revival but not sufficient to make CBDs the major employment centre they once were and in particular there is virtually ZERO manufacturing or light industrial activity there any more.
The growth centres of the US at the last census were the “micropolises” – towns of 15,000 to 50,000 people.
So I suggest you get up to date.
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Owen
“I presume then that you want to have people pay the full cost of their public transport?”
Yes, that is my point.
If we didn’t have parking regulations that subsidise single occupant vehicle use and create economic barriers to anything but sprawling low density (urban) development, then public transport would be more efficient and would not require subsidies (although some routes may be used to cross subsidise others if we think it is important to provide that complete level of mobility.)
Do you think cities just randomly spring up in a certain pattern and then we have to build roads to provide access to them? Why do you think cities have become multi-nodal in a way that only work with private cars? Why are people’s employment centres located so far away?
It is a myth that the real estate market decided with no interventions to develop away from the centre. It is not because the car is new and superior technology. Yes, sometimes cars are the best way to get somewhere for the price. I see no problem with taxis and and rental cars to go to the bush. But you are lying to yourself if you think that every person driving their own car is an efficient way to move people through an urban area every day. Why have we ended up with this inefficient system of transport? Because of govt regulations!
All real estate development follows a function of the cost of land vs accessibility. Cities are sprawling because minimum parking regulations made it too bloody expensive to develop in the central areas and artificially cheap to store vehicles at multiple destinations. We all pay for parking all the time, whether we choose to use it or not.
My friend, all I am asking is that if you lobby against the MUL that you also lobby against minimum parking requirements. Demonstrate that you are not ideologically attached to the private car, and that you actually care about consumer choice and user pays. Demonstrate some intellectual coherence.
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you are a funny frog.
land for development will be opened up across all borders soon,
new RMA rules will be tested in High Court dequickly
decisons early coming your way fwwog.
that is Fwwog NZ GOVT has a test case in fundamentals already set up
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also fwwog, look soonish for changes in the Supreme court
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Is this the 2000 census date Owen? Hardly up to date.
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Census data* sorry….
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BluePeter wrote 14.2.09:
“We’ve got more than enough oil to power ships, and even if we did run out, we’d power them with alternatives. The days of shipping will be with us for as long as there is sea.”
I believe BluePeter is living in the widespread realms of illusionary and wishful thinking. Maybe some closer looks at environmental resource facts may bring some light in his rainbow vision.
“Go live on a commune, then. Right now. Off you go. Meanwhile, the rest of us will live as we always have. We’ll trade, refine our technology, and enjoy the benefits of comparative advantage. Hope your local crops don’t fail. Don’t come crying to us for help.”
I believe BluePeter may need to study “Comparative Advantage” a bit closer. David Ricardo’s 1817 theory exclusively works for products that depend on the local land/soil. It does not apply for anything that can be transported. Your (BluePeter) and my (Helmut Lubbers) enjoyment will fade at the onset of real scarcities of basic necessities. Peak-Oil, Peak-Water, Peak-Population, etc. are not far off. NZ is part of this same overcrowded and overexploited planet. One NZ frigate is not going to stave off environmental refugees or ensure continued supply of imported goodies.
Cheers … ecoglobe dot org dot nz – ecoglobe dot ch
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>>I believe BluePeter is living in the widespread realms of illusionary and wishful thinking
Believe what you like. It’s called science. What you’re spouting is religion.
>>works for products that depend on the local land/soil
Tell that to Silicon Valley, the fashion houses of Milan, and the financial district of London.
>>It does not apply for anything that can be transported
We are good at creating cheap milk. We transport that milk to China. China swaps it for TVs. We’re no good at making TVs.
>>Peak-Oil, Peak-Water, Peak-Population, etc. are not far off.
And only a few months ago, peak oilists were saying we’d never see sub $100 barrels of oil again. Their credibility when it comes to predicting the timing of future events is low. The other two won’t happen in our lifetimes, if ever, so no need to panic.
>>One NZ frigate is not going to stave off environmental refugees
Like to see you cross that ocean on a raft.
In any case, your scenarios are outlandish. If you do believe this garbage, then
what are you waiting for? Go live on a commune. Off you go now….
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Dear BluePeter,
Are you not interested in a non-emotional discussion?
You appear ill-informed or at least you’re shooting from the hip. You need to study “comparable advantage” a bit more.
Your “evidence” is more opinion than fact. Market prices, for instance, do not reflect environmental scarcities or predict futures, in many cases.
“Refugees” can also come with war ships.
“Outlandish scenarios?” Compare this, for instance:
http://ecoglobe.ch/scenarios/e/wef-9128.htm#referencescenario
Do you think wishing me off your world makes it more sustainable or the problems go away?
Kind regards … Helmut Lubbers
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Owen McShane says:
Developers, using other peoples money, make the decisions on what will produce most profit and then sell to the public. This way the old Villa is knocked down by the Hummer driving developer as he can outbid the middle class person who loves the villa and its garden. Population and migration ensure there will (just about) always be upward price pressure. Developers fund the political parties ensuring favorable policies.
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>>Are you not interested in a non-emotional discussion?
Double negative.
>>comparable advantage
Comparative.
>>Market prices, for instance, do not reflect environmental scarcities or predict futures, in many cases.
True to an extent. But that does not therefore mean we’ll act against our long term interests by trashing the country. Wealthy countries tend to have better environments than poor countries.
>“Refugees” can also come with war ships.
I suspect you’ve been reading too many comic books.
The Green scenario is just that – a scenario. There are many scenarios. The problem with predicting the future is that there are too may variables. You need to respect the laws of nature, and stop being so certain about things you cannot possibly be certain about.
An additional problem with the green scenarios are that they are heavily politicized. Just look at the number of far left people within the green movement. That hasn’t happened by chance.
>>Do you think wishing me off your world makes it more sustainable or the problems go away?
I couldn’t care less what you do. You and I, as individuals, make no difference. The world, and nature, will exist long after we’ve all disappeared.
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>>Are you not interested in a non-emotional discussion?
Double negative.
>>comparable advantage
Comparative.
>>Market prices, for instance, do not reflect environmental scarcities or predict futures, in many cases.
True to an extent. But that does not therefore mean we’ll act against our long term interests by trashing the country. Wealthy countries tend to have better environments than poor countries.
>“Refugees” can also come with war ships.
I suspect you’ve been reading too many comic books.
The Green scenario is just that – a scenario. There are many scenarios. The problem with predicting the future is that there are too may variables. You need to respect the laws of nature, and stop being so certain about things you cannot possibly be certain about.
An additional problem with the green scenarios are that they are heavily politicized. Just look at the number of f** left people within the green movement. That hasn’t happened by chance.
>>Do you think wishing me off your world makes it more sustainable or the problems go away?
I couldn’t care less what you do. You and I, as individuals, make no difference. The world, and nature, will exist long after we’ve all disappeared.
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filter test: far left
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FYI chaps – I’ve spotted one of the filter terms:
f** left
…is deemed a swear word.
Funny.
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Frankly, Julie makes a great deal of sense here. I was unaware of the degree of planning interference in the provision of parking. I would simply remove mandatory requirements for minimum OR maximum numbers of parking places. If a property owner wants to provide parking gratis for employees or customers then fine, it is a cost of doing business, but it should hardly be compulsory – nor should councils limit the amount of parking.
I’d also commercialise roads so property owners paid an access charge for offstreet parking facilities. The road company would price it appropriately, such as paying for any intersection improvements.
Of course the fact she wants public transport to be user pays is an anathema to Green Party policy. However, if there are no planning requirements to provide parking, on street parking is operated commercially and road space is also allocated commercially, then public transport would thrive and whither as demand dictates – much as it does over longer distances today.
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# frog Says:
February 12th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Not every issue the greens back has such rebuttability thanks to the phar left members. A lot of it is squidgey squashey stuff as in your next post [the maiden speech].
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libertyscott
I think you need to explain this aspect a bit better. Dont we currently pay road user charges? Would these still apply?
While we currently have an all uncompassing and comparatively simple system of road user charges depended on vehicle type.
What you are suggesting is that irrespective of the type of vehicle you are using, access to the publically owned highways will be a fixed cost.
So a shopping complex carpark owned by westfield with many thousand of daily visitors (customers and suppliers) would pay the same as me who has one or two customers a day coming into the factory drive.
Somewhere I see an adminastrative nightmare. You could end up with westfield shopping centres not providing any public car parking and arguing the toss how many customers and suppliers they should be paying for.
Not saying your idea wont work, it just seems a complicated alternative to what we have now.
And why should the public (which includes workers, owners, customers and supplies at any business venture) pay again for access to a public thoroughfare? They have already paid for the access through the taxes and rates.
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Thanks, Liberty!
Glad you agree about doing away with parking regulations.
I have two things to say though.
1) Because these market distortions have been in place for such a long time, it will take years to reduce the parking supply enough that users will have to pay the true cost of parking. I support continuing PT subsidies in the interim. As long as we commence removing the subsidies to car travel and car-oriented development then PT will become more efficient and will eventually pay its own way. It is totally counterproductive to subsidise competing forms of transport.
2) I don’t think that fully privatizing urban transport (PT, roads, or parking) is going to get an efficient outcome because the transport system is a natural monopoly. In that situation, you just get private monopolies or at best an oligopoly. I can see the interest potentially in private PT or toll service operators who compete for contracts, but the network planning and integration is best managed by a public authority with an independent oversight group.
If you can’t get a truly competitive market, privatisation produces a less efficient outcome — as evidenced by the privatisation of bus services in Auckland in the early 90s. Ridership reduced by 50% and in recent years private bus companies have found it more profitable to lobby for increased subsidies than to provide a better service.
Also, private parking operators often work against measures to reduce congestion by offering early bird parking at peak hour or offering free parks to lure commuters away from PT. This is because it is more profitable for them to provide for commuters.
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“f** left
…is deemed a swear word.”
Not so fast, BP. “filter test: far left” was your test and it got caught in the spam filter, not the moderation filter. Go figure.
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Dear BluePeter
I may have mixed up the term comparative and comparable. “Comparative advantage” is inextricably linked to products that cannot be transported, the fertility of the land, for instance. Nowadays one speaks of “competitive advantage” since in the globalised world skills and manufacturing can be almost freely expatriated to the site with the lowest costs. Thus David Ricardo’s term has passed its “best before” date.
Yes, we are trashing the country and the world.
Yes, green and left do go together, since capitalism/feudalism is bad for people and the environment.
But even the greens and greenz believe in sustainable growth, at least publicly.
In private some prominent greens of the greenz admit that one must abolish the growth scripts.
Warships: why do you think the USA invaded Iraq? They depend for 55+ percent on imported energy. What will the Chinese do when their degraded environments can no longer support their 1.4 billion? I don’t know. They may start sitting and meditate their fate. South-Koreans have bought swashes of land in Madagascar for food and fibre. The Chinese are buying parts of Africa.
No, there are not many scenarios. There are only two:
(1) Depletion of the planet till humanity crashes.
(2) A U-turn, stopping growth and start shrinking.
Resources are finite, technology or hope or optimism or intelligence/creativity cannot replace depleted resources and extinct species. We have overshot the planet’s carrying capacity by far.
If we don’t reduce resource depletion and start living on a drastically lower level of resource throughput we are soon finished.
You might admit this once you’ve looked at the data of resource stocks and increasing depletion rates with rising population and per capita consumption levels. No religion involved, just number-crunching.
This graph is a pretty sure outlook, if we don’t change:
http://www.ecoglobe.org/scenarios/e/adx0.htm
This series by George Harrison is an artistic picture: all things must pass:
http://www.ecoglobe.org/scenarios/e/atmp-0.htm
Note the Gas Prices at £995 pound before collapse.
Cheers … Helmut
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Hate to throw a spanner in the works but so-called natural resources are infinite because with the exception of alluvial gold and meteoric iron they are all human inventions and there is no limit to our ability to invent.
We do not use up the stuff on the earth we just transform it – so it does not disappear except for the few bits that end up in outer space or vapourised in the sun.
Our power of invention is why natural resources have become ever more plentiful and never run out – except locally. This is also why resources get cheaper during times of population explosion – there are more minds to invent new resources.
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OF course we can send species extinct but the great megafaunal extinctions were before industrialisation.
And farmed animals do not go extinct.
And wolves are at no risk of extinction – they have evolved themselves into dogs a species which is in a rich symbiosis with human beings. Once wolves learned to smile and embedded that in their doggie genes their future was assured.
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Owen – You obviously don’t have a background in physics or an understanding of entropy. We are not “transforming” many of our resources. we are raising their entropy beyond redemption. The aluminium thinly spread on the inside of every tetra-pack is a good case in point. As we scatter this finite resource throughout our landfill systems, we will likely never recover it. No economic theory mumbo jumbo will ever bring it back. As we burn our coal and oil, getting it back into the ground in the form it started in to be re-used again will take millennia.
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Owen – You appear a follower of the late Julian Simon:
http://www.juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
One critic is here:
http://www.mnforsustain.org/partridge_e_j_simon_and_perilous_optimism. htm
Even happiness is finite because you can only rise to the seventh heaven.
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ACtually, I studied Physics, Maths, Applied Maths and Chemistry to stage 2 level at University and I have written quite a lot about entropy.
Life is anti entropic and hence bacteria can be used to recover the gold out of tailings and with enough energy you can reverse entroy for just about anything.
The concentration of aluminium in clay is very low but we extract it with high powered electrolysis.
If Al ever got very expensive we might find some process to make it worth extracting the Al from the tetrapac. It is not impossible.
I only want to remind people that our use of stuff does not destroy it – but just changes it.
Actually the carbon dioxid from fossil fuels enters the food chain quite quickly. We do not need to transform fossil fuel back into its ‘original” state to make it useful again. By turning it into carbon dioxide we actually area returning it to its original state. where do you think the coal comes from?
Maybe you should have studied biology? But them maybe you did and have forgotten.
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Owen, sure what you’re talking about may be theoretically possible but relies on technology yet to be invented. your assertion that “there is no limit to our ability to invent” is not in fact true. there are many limits including food, resources, knowledge, time. the fact that we live in an age where some parts of the human population have more than enough of these things does not justify your assumption that this will be the case in perpetuity.
your first comment in this thread is “Pity all his assumptions are without foundation”. yes… pity…
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Owen,
“with enough energy you can reverse entropy.” Nice. But this needs technology and each technolgical step has an energetic and material loss (efficiency). Try, for instance, to calculate the EROI (energetic return on investment for the alu of your tetra pack.
“we might find.” What if we don’t find?
I ‘m in favour of applying the Precautionary Principle: better safe than sorry.
Sorry, I don’t understand your carbon logic. I think most people believe fossil fuels are burned and then gone forever. It took fossil energy stocks many millions of years to be formed in a long ago era that was vastly different from todays world. Maybe there’s some oil in the process of being formed on the bottom of the oceans, as far as rapturous fishing is not destroying whole ocean bottom habitats. I have not heard of any coal being formed anywhere nowadays.
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