the whole works as a whole, not as the sum of each of it’s parts – therefore an overall plan, constantly updated to account for changing conditions is essential to have any chance of long term success. Each part of a roading, rail, or any transport project only works when connected to other schemes designed to integrate with it. This is so obvious as to be almost school-pupil stuff !

From
Maintaining a floor

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Don’t worry Peter, a 50% increase in the price at the pump only requires a 33% reduction in petrol use to stay withing the current household or business transport budget. As with conserving electricity there are many free ways to save petrol and just as many ways to make big savings when people or businesses are prepared to invest a few thousand up front. The problem at the moment is that petrol isn’t expensive enough to convince most people or business decision makers to commit to those modest capital investments.

A new Johnson Controls survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, finds that 88% of US adults believe the United States must become a leader in hybrid vehicles and 84% that the government should support the advancement of battery technology in this country.

At the same time, 84% see incentives and tax credits as an effective way to encourage consumers to purchase hybrid cars. Among adults who do not already own a hybrid, more than one in three (35%) would buy a comparable hybrid vehicle as long as it was priced the same as the gasoline-powered equivalent, and more than one in five (23%) would be willing to pay more. However, one-third would expect to pay less.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/05/jc-survey-20090520.html

Of course hybrids aren’t the only option. Downsizing repmobiles from a Falcon to a Mondeo will achieve that 33% saving at a lower capital cost but with a small reduction in load space. Like all good things, coping with peak oil can be a win-win situation.
Have a quick browse of the older posts [<<] to see Ford and Audi’s cheaper alternatives to hybrids. They’re very important because a majority of the car companies are developing variations of these alternative approaches.

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With the price of oil heading back up again will we be able to afford to drive on these new roads. A fitting end to the end of the age of oil. Riding our bicycles along these beautiful three lane motorways without a car in sight. I think the govn is spending the taxpayer’s money in the wrong places.

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Perhaps the biggest gap in all of the discussions is price. Roads at peak times are underpriced, public transport at peak times is underpriced as well (just not so much). Fixing this pricing issue, and then letting each mode keep the money it generates (and expand capacity where it is efficient to do so), would be more sustainable than arguing over building roads or building public transport. The Greens are in the same boat as the AA and RTF in worshipping people and goods moving, when in fact as long as transport is user pays, and pricing is used to manage demand and supply, it doesn’t matter.

If you fix peak pricing of roads and public transport, it would cost more to drive and ride at the peaks, probably the same as now in cities off peak to drive (but less to ride) and the response would be:
- Relatively free flowing traffic on roads, for the vehicles that value road space the most (commercial traffic);
- A significant shift of discretionary trips to off peak periods;
- Strong encouragement to time shift employment, telecommuting and the like spreading demand;
- Strong encouragement for cycling and walking (modes that aren’t underpriced);
- Encouraging regional development and for business to shift to locations with lower transport costs;
- Less emissions as there wouldn’t be excessive supply or congestion induced wasted fuel;
- People living closer to where they work;
- Less taxation of those not using transport (ratepayers);
- Higher mode share for public transport at peak and off peak (because driving at peaks would be relatively more expensive, and off peak fares would be cheaper).

Improvements to roads would end up being for those that significantly benefit users all day (safety, or capacity where there is a chronic undersupply issue), and public transport likewise. However, most importantly, the overall cost of transport would drop.

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Almost everything jgg says is correct.

“First, people don’t value time linearly – this “inconvenient truth” has been known for around 30 years.”
Einstein published a paper getting to the very heart of this issue. I can’t recall the full title but it included the ‘Time Dilation’ Einstein observed that an hour chatting with a pretty girl and a minute sitting on a hot stove can appear to last equal amounts of time to the person expereincing those activities. It is only a small step to conclude that value of time will also dedepnd on what the time is being used for.

“Add to this the well-established empirical findings that (i) roading capacity tends to generate new journeys leading to little overall change in travel times; and (ii) improved public transport capacity tends to reduce travel times for motorists and public transport users.”
(i) recent studies by Robert Cervero has found that the pre-eminent mid & long term source of this generated traffic following capacity increases on a specific roadway segment is the ‘location, location, location’ phenomenon so well known to real estate agents. In fact, the very phenomenon that is promoted as a benefit of building light rail. Of course, the rush to locate on a less congested corridor leads to rapid traffic growth.
(ii) the greatest short term cause of accelerated traffic growth following capacity increases is triple convergence and suppressed demand. Every study I’ve seen for PT initiatives, and also for London’s congestion cordon, has come to the same conclusion that free-up road space was quickly consumed the same as if a bypass had been built. The problem with the congestion cordon was that car trips entirely within the cordon remain uncharged so of course the removal of a huge amount of ‘foreign’ traffic unleashed the suppressed car trip demand for those trips within the cordon. The effect is so strong that, even though the number vehicles crossing the cordon had barely increased in the five years after the cordon’s introduction. the traffic volumes on roads within the cordon experienced 20% traffic growth. In fact, that makes central London the only major metropolitan center in the EU to have more traffic growth between 2003 & 2008 than between 1993 & 1998.

Nevertheless, Copenhagen seems to have decided to have bob each way. A congestion cordon, more PT, more ring motorways and more road widening.
http://www3.kk.dk/PolitikOgIndflydelse/Byudvikling/Trafik/Traengsel/~/media/Politik%20og%20demokrati/Byens%20planer/Traengsel/green%20urban%20mobility%20%20-%20copenhagen%20capital%20region.pdf.ashx

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I agree bigbluekiwi, however the funniest thing is that their “flagship” roading project – the Waterview Connection – has a pretty low cost benefit ratio and is based on very very debatable time-savings benefits.

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Dinosaurs is a kind description of this lot – To argue that each project must show a high cost benefit is missing the point entirely when considering transport infrastructure – the whole works as a whole, not as the sum of each of it’s parts – therefore an overall plan, constantly updated to account for changing conditions is essential to have any chance of long term success. Each part of a roading, rail, or any transport project only works when connected to other schemes designed to integrate with it. This is so obvious as to be almost school-pupil stuff !

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on’t forget robbing the research funding also, which gives a 17% return on investment:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/politics/2424845/Nats-set-to-cut-science-budget

The road lobby must be getting the best return on their investment! I wonder how much they donated to the NActs?

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I agree 100% jgg. Well said!

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Hi

Benefit-cost analysis is generally pretty abysmal in transport. The biggest influence in the direction of dumb decisions is the way time is valued.

Traditional roading CBA says “take all the small changes in trips resulting from a new roading project and assign the time changes a monetary value” These tend to be very large for motorway projects but have little connection with reality. First, people don’t value time linearly – this “inconvenient truth” has been known for around 30 years. Second – small time savings are not realised in any meaningful sense unless they excess the variance of journey times. Thirdly – it is increasingly apparent that people operate using time budgets rather than a linear (ie per minute) value of time.

Now add in the fact that in general new road capacity is an inefficient use of land, and raises the share of income spend on transport since it disperses journeys and destinations. Add to this the well-established empirical findings that (i) roading capacity tends to generate new journeys leading to little overall change in travel times; and (ii) improved public transport capacity tends to reduce travel times for motorists and public transport users.

Put all these together and you find out that 1. In general B/C ratios are pretty low in transport and 2. sustainable transport does better than traditional road capacity increases.

Our current transport policy seems determindedly leaping backwards to the 1950s and the days of the Federal Highway Programme in the US. If we want to emulate a US President – how about we choose Obama rather than Eisenhower

Stepping out further the basic problem is that transport planning is not about projects and engineering. Traffic is simply an every changing group of people who are temporarily in the same space. Proper transport planning looks at how to meet people’s needs cost-effectively.

For example in Wellington there is a debate about whether to build a flyover at the Basic Reserve but little discussion of why there is traffic congestion and alternative solutions. Invariably a package of measure aimed offering more choice in how to meet people’s needs will create a much more cost-effective response than building a piece of road to shift a congestion point.

The whole language needs to change – instead of corridors we need to recognise land as a series of living rooms and travellers as temporary guests. Destinations need to be privileged over journeys. The roads lobby needs to be exposed as denying choice rather the protecting it.

Sustainable transport advocated are the ones advocating choice. The current government’s transport policy is all about compelling car use and denying choice.

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What is the new Waterview BCR? Does anybody know the answer to that question?

Is anyone actually making sure that time savings benefits are actually real, when international literature suggests they are often just a short-term phenomenon? How was that $2.6b of time savings benefits for Waterview actually calculated in the first place?

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Nice use of language to distort the truth Russel.

1. The cut in funding public transport services is a cut in the rate of increase in spending. Spending is still going up, just not as fast.
2. The cut in funding public transport infrastructure largely reflects rail network capex being funded from the Crown account not the NLTF. That was explicit in the GPS, so why evade it?
3. Walking and cycling and TDM funding is flat lined, so it will be static in real terms, not a cut (just no growth).
4. Sea and rail freight is being cut, yes, but then again rail is being addressed through ownership (and subsidising capital).

Nice to see the Greens caring about BCRs, since you fought so hard before to ignore them. Also you evade that new road spending needs to have a good BCR, priority given to those with BCRs over four, with much more scrutiny over those with BCRs less than 2. Transmission Gully hasn’t a hope in hell under this, and changing the scope of Waterview increases the BCR.

Jarbury: Waterview would never address the congestion at Victoria Park, and Newmarket Viaduct has structural issues demanding its replacement. You wont find a NZ rail project with a BCR of 2 or above either.

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Four questions:

1) Isn’t it just a bit brave referring to this as robbery when the money being stolen is actually roading revenue?

2) Are the reduced amounts less than what Labour actually spent in the last three years or only less than what Labour was planning to spend over the next three years before the economy went down the gurgler?

3) Has the construction price index fallen, softening the blow at all?

4) Why isn’t this re-diverted money being spent on really important things such as providing local authorities with assistance with repair costs following major weather events, meeting the Road Safety 2010 Strategy’s target of no more than 240 road deaths next year and, of personal interest, fixing the atrocious mid-corner bumps on SH1 in Weld’s Pass..

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…in regard to what exactly?

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Mark, what are you on about?

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Let the Record show: – the first Act of the AKU is to install suicide barriers on the Grafton Bridge;- what is this ? A new anti-fashion?

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Melbourne is Brilliant too, if your’e interested Kiwi.

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Well, San Francisco was the best blend of over/underland I studied; left all the Spanish Missions intact; wow.
Similar to Wgtn – San Fr., civil engineers are needed. Fine tuning is more than smart – it’s right!

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The ARC is actually looking at long-term plans for an Auckland Metro/Subway.

I chatted on bFM about it yesterday: http://www.95bfm.com/default,191340.sm

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well the recent upgrade o’seas has meant a subway for the likes of you AK/WG passengers – been to see it – electically driven – no smog no hassle – looked good to me. Gonne spend a fortune anyway huh?

Q; If you like animal rights – what r u doing about ‘uman rights in Numb Country?
Unless of course, you Love Animals More.

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