by frog
Most media commentary on Melissa Lee’s foot-in-mouth moment last week focused on her perceived racism, but there were, in the blogosphere, various attempts to understand her logic.
These are separate but related issues; an opinion can be offensive, but well-argued or vice versa.
What was never clear to me in Melissa’s comments was how she thought the motorway would work to reduce crime; would the South Auckland criminals just keep driving once National had bulldozed its way through Waterview? And if so, what is it about the motorway extension precisely that would encourage them to keep driving? Would these cunning criminal minds analyse the dropping GV of properties near motorways, re-calculate the cost/benefit of a break and enter for this demographic and move to more attractive targets in the lifestyle blocks of Helensville?
I gave up trying to unpick the logic particularly after the Prime Minister called the comments ‘silly’ and ‘stupid’ – apparently Melissa’s sympathisers could not figure it out either.
However, this period of puzzlement did lead me to the observation that Melissa’s logic is just as robust as National’s logic on the use of cars in Auckland.
When asked about their transport spending priorities, NACT invariably says that lots of Aucklanders use cars so we need to spend more on roads.
This line of reasoning does not acknowledge that Aucklanders use cars because public transport is poor, nor does it acknowledge that as public transport improves Aucklanders use it.
If you admit that fact, it makes sense to invest more in trains and buses which will cut congestion while doing the environment a favour. As Brian Rudman notes in Granny Herald this week:
Provide decent, reliable public transport and people will use it.
And if we can cut congestion, maybe we don’t need breathtakingly expensive Waterview extensions after all.
Meanwhile Melissa gets another chance to explain her thoughts about Auckland transport on Wednesday afternoon when the candidates are part of a panel discussion at the University of Auckland’s Ecofest. The candidate discussion is in the Quad at 1.30 PM.
And she might also get another chance to explain her South Auckland remarks when the candidates are on Niu FM Wednesday morning about 10AM.
Stay tuned for more NACT logic.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management by frog on Tue, May 19th, 2009
Tags: Brian Rudman, Melissa Lee, waterview
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Claiming that Aucklanders prefer getting about Auckland by car after fifty years of spending mega-bucks on motorways and milk-change on mass-transit is just silly. I call for the minister to talk sense.
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Yes the strong point to make is that vehicle numbers along Auckland’s state highways are at 2004 levels. Traffic flows peaked in 2007 and have declined ever since then – now we’re back to 2004 levels and we’re still decreasing.
In contrast, bus & rail patronage has increased by 20-30% over that same time period.
What businessperson would invest in further production capacity for a product that has declining sales at the expense of another product whose sales have increased by 20-30% in the past few years?
I thought Steven Joyce was a successful businessman – though it sounds like he’s an idiot to me.
More: http://transportblog.co.nz/2009/05/13/more-dodgy-workings-from-steven-joyce/
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“What businessperson would invest in further production capacity for a product that has declining sales at the expense of another product whose sales have increased by 20-30% in the past few years?”
Actually, a lot of businesses will make precisely that type of decision if a closer look at their production and sales stats reveal that:
a) the product in decline has substantial backlogs of orders and the growth product doesn’t, and/or
b) the decline and increase stats have only had a small impact on their product mix, ie from 85/15 to 84/16, and/or
c) the same thing has happened in the past and it turned out to be a short-run phenomena.
However history is replete with examples of businesspeople misreading market trends or dismissing emerging threats. Henry Ford’s persistence with the Model T is eerily similar to what the Nats are doing. Although the shift in focus from urban to rural highways could actually be an attempt to emulate Ford’s saving grace – the Model A and it’s flathead V8.
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jarbury, beware of extrapolating short term changes in patterns of demand into long term trends.
Over the long term the percentage of trips and the total mileage by public transport has been declining – and in recent years this has been in spite of a massive increase in spending on public transport.
The recent increases in patronage look large as a percentage but the actual trips means that typically over say the five year time slot the number of trips in private vehicles have increased by a much larger number than the increase in trips by public transport. The other change taking place is that large cities are generally growing very slowly or losing population as people migrate to outer suburbs or to small towns in the regions – often in order to escape urban congestion. So while some of the ‘stabilising” of traffic may be due to reduced driving because of the recent price increases in oil those same price rises encourage many people to relocate to where they do not have to spend time going nowhere and hunting for parking. There is also the demographic shift.
I do not know of any modern first world city where investments in public transport have reduced congestion. If you can give me some stats I can get them checked out. Even the most rapid growing means of commuting in the US – telecommuting – has a lower growth rate than commuting by private vehicle.
The forces of urban decentralisation are massive and broadband speed is part of it. Spending billions on systems focused on CBDs which are generating less employment and fewer trips every day does nothing to improve the efficiency of the overall network.
I suggest you read Freeman Dyson’s “the Sun, the Genome and the Internet” where he argues the case well including his famous phrase “we all want to live in a village – providing its a rich village.” Today he could add “and its a green village” We planted 80,000 trees and plants on our last property over a ten year period – which seemed to offend one of the bloggers n the standard to the point where he sold up to get away from me. We have had to downsize from twenty to five acres for health reasons. We have been here less than 24 months and have already planted a few thousand trees. And so are all our neighbours – largely because there are no tree regulations in the Kaipara so we are not planting resource consents.
Of course we collect our own water and treat our own sewage and raise much of our own food.
Why would a Green party want to pack us all into high density cities where biodiversity is zilch, energy efficiency is rotten, family carbon footprints are massive and public transport is both less energy efficient and more carbon intensive than the private fleet?
What’s going on?
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This would all happen when I’m NOT visiting relatives in Auckland…
Just have to entertain myself with Cath Delahunty talking ’bout the Green New Deal on VUW campus on Thursday – 12pm, in Student Union Building.
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Found this nugget on YouTube today. Although a bit long drawn, it states in clear and precise terms the folly of unlimited growth. Applies to the building of motorways to cater for exponentially growing traffic as well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=channel
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Owen McShane on exxon secrets: http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=146 – NZCSC
KEY PEOPLE
Bryan Leyland
active member
Vincent Gray
co-founder
owen mcshane
co-founder
Chris DeFreitas
scientific advisor
Bob Carter
founding scientist
Terry Dunleavy
Foundation member
Bob Carter is on the research committee of an organization called the “Institute for Pulic Affairs” (IPA). The IPA is an Australian-based organization that, according to Sourcewatch, has received funding from the fossil fuel industry. In reference to his involvement with the IPA, Carter stated in a March 15, 2007 Sydney Morning Herald article, that:
“I don’t think it is the point whether you are paid by the coal or petroleum industry.
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are you a ‘skeptic’ or ‘denier’ of peak oil and public transport too Owen?
btw I think all people cam agree that hunting for a car park and driving around the city to find one is stupid. the next stage is: what to do about it.
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ExxonMobil’s Disinformation Campaign
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf
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Aucklanders use cars because they choose to live, work and play at locations that it is cheapest to use cars to travel to and from, and because the roads are run on socialist principles (tragedy of the commons).
The evidence is not that the increase in public transport usage markedly reduces congestion and the evidence does not exist to show where the public transport users are coming from. How many users have come from other public transport modes? How many were car passengers? How many would never have made the trip in the first instance? To what extent has car traffic stagnation been because of fuel price rises?
Jarbury: What you’re forgetting is that the “business” you talk about (road transport) is subsidising the other “business” (public transport). Social benefits from road projects are still substantially higher per dollar spent than public transport projects, which users can’t even pay the full operating costs of.
Find the city that has substantially relieved pre-existing traffic congestion with highly subsidised public transport. It doesn’t exist. All cities that are cited as great examples of how successful public transport is have severe traffic congestion, which suggests that the improved public transport achieves more growth in demand than modeshift.
You see, the theory that building more roads generates more traffic (demand) also can be applied to public transport, more generates more trips which is NOT environmentally neutral. The exceptions are apparently provincial bus services, where a doubling of bus services in Hamilton resulted in an only slight increase in patronage.
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Dear me treesofttomorrow.
Do you really think my ideas are formed by bribes.
Do you not think I might have ideas of my own?
OR is this notion beyond your comprehension?
What on earth is a denier of public transport?
Public transport exists and I use it frequently – especially planes, taxis and shuttles. How can one deny something which clearly exists?
Peak Oil? It depends on what you mean by Peak Oil?
Which by the way depends on what you mean by oil.
But I suspect following this train of thought would soon be derailed by your prejudice.
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For a start, how on earth do roads fund themselves? This may be true for state highways, but last time I looked councils paid for local roads – and a huge chunk of most councils’ budgets are spent on building/maintained/tar-sealing roads.
Then we get into the hidden subsidies for roads, like minimum parking requirements, there being no cost on the CO2 emissions of cars or on their wider health effects (they attribute to the premature deaths of many hundreds of people each year).
I agree that public transport needs to be more self-funding. The best way to fund public transport would be from a capital gains tax around an area in which improving public transport would increase the land value of that area. This is how public transport was traditionally funded (the tram suburbs) and how it should be funded in the future – as property near a newly built train station or bus station does appreciate in value due to that new train line or busway.
Furthermore, buses pay RUCs so therefore spending on bus-based public transport is somewhat recouperated. Particularly if you consider that one bus load of passengers takes a number of cars off a road that would otherwise probably need to be wider to accommodate all those cars.
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Once Auckland’s rail system is electrified please tell me how more trips on it would generate adverse environmental effects? I guess it means we may need to use the Huntly Power Station a bit more, but even that power station is more efficient than the average internal combustion engine.
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treesoftomorrow – thanks for the link:
ExxonMobil’s Disinformation Campaign
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf
Rather disturbing…
Trevor.
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