by Keith Locke
The latest twist in Auckland’s Waterview motorway saga is that more of it will go underground and less houses will be threatened. The New Zealand Transport Agency says that the number of houses affected will now drop from 365 to 205.
Of course, that is a good thing. But we are yet to be convinced this hugely expensive project – $1.4billion for 4.5 kilometres – should be given such a high priority. I should say $1.4 billion and counting because the NZTA’s Wayne McDonald said on Radio New Zealand that they haven’t yet worked the extra cost of Waterview Connection Mark IV. Could be $100 mil, or $400 mil – who knows? The tunnelling will now have to be pretty deep under the lower reaches of Oakley Creek.
The government/NZTA priorities are all wrong. On the same day NZTA announced the revised project, Auckland’s airport company complained about the draft Auckland transport strategy which envisages a dedicated city-to-airport public transport corridor by……2040!!
The Waterview Connection is due to be completed by 2016, just four years shy of peak oil – according to the International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol – when the price of petrol will go through the roof.
When peak oil arrives won’t it be more use to have a dedicated rail line to the airport, with an extension between Onehunga and Avondale (as has been projected since the 1950s) to carry the people who won’t be able to afford much car travel.
As for Waterview School, which has led the fight against many of the detrimental affects of the motorway, the revised project doesn’t seem to be of any help. The school kids will still suffer cars from the fumes and noise of cars coming out of the tunnel right next to the school.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Featured by Keith Locke on Tue, December 22nd, 2009
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
This money would be much better spent building the CBD tunnel which will at least double the capacity of the rail network overnight upon completion…
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People who fly unnecessarily and irresponsibly in the context of their carbon footprint will continue to do so.
And please don’t begrudge me my winter holiday on the Gold Coast earlier this year – at least I am committed to doing fun stuff close to home and didn’t fly to Italy, Greece or the Bahamas to get away from cold weather here.
Better public transport to the airport will reduce the carbon footprint of getting to the airport. I don’t think it will have any likely effect, one way or another, on our off-shore footprint.
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Scan and post the back of your your envelope please,
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Rather than what is the solution you are trying to justify”…
Funny, I was was thinking the same thing myself…
Do we want to move people and freight for the lowest overall cost [including the off Balance sheet costs, and they are real costs!]…
or are you just trying to justify a “Roads of National Significance” policy Because it’s a Policy for some other reason than it making Business sense? – Where is the report on Road vs Rail or other sustainable modes option?
KiwiRail reports to Messrs Joyce and Guy directly, not via LTNZ… there is not independent or logical analysis happening here…
This is National delivering on some policy that they did not campain on, dreamed up in a back room… and they are not making the business case publicly available.
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Air travel is below 2%.
For NZ, I guess we need to get our own forests in order, then look at our imports and what else we can do to sustain forests worldwide.
For road transport, we need to be encouraging public transport and other transport modes especially for places like Auckland. We need to put long distance travel and freight onto electrified trains and ships.
We need to increase the energy efficiency of our housing and commercial buildings.
We need to do research on ways to reduce agricultural emissions, and implement those we already know about.
This is all pretty familiar stuff.
Air travel is down the list in terms of the biggest emitters, but personally I think we need to scale it back by a large degree. Switch to fewer sea and land transport journeys for holiday trips, and the same with more video conferencing for business travel. Also more localised enterprises so we don’t need to travel.
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Like the green party members that went to Copenhagen and contributed so much to the negotiations. People, heard of video conferencing.
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If people decide to fly less on scheduled flights, there will be a reduction in demand, a reduction in flights, and a reduction in emissions. In the news today (http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/3188424/Air-NZ-returns-to-Australian-market) air NZ cites a 3.7 per cent fall in demand and a 10.2 per cent cut in capacity. They don’t state what emissions reductions this resulted in, but it is a reasonable assumption it will be significant, in the order of say 5-11%
sweetdisorder – Criticising green politicians for their emissions for traveling to Copenhagen is an easy cheap shot. Yes, their travel resulted in emissions and contributed to global warming. However, the travel of “business as usual” advocates and their stooges to Copenhagen will result in far more emissions.
If we had more green leadership representing countries, we could get past this unhelpful political bickering and actually start the work that is urgently needed.
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Keith syas in his post that people won’t be able to afford to drive to the airport as oil prices increase so we should instead give people a PT option out to the airport…
But why build a rail line out to the airport at all when presumably air travel numbers will significantly reduce as air travel costs similarly increase..?
My point has nothing to do with emissions but if peak oil is the reason to build a new PT link why not build it in the poorest designed part of Auckland, the area crying out for a non-car based option, East Auckland..?
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PT good for moving lots of people, but has high startup costs (and high construction emissions). Its foolhardy to spend shedloads of money on building a resource the need for which will significantly diminish over time.
It can be argued that come peak oil we’ll all be driving electric cars or whatever, but we dont have a similar plan for aeroplanes. Thus flying anywhere is going to happen a lot less and a lot sooner than the end of the petrochemical powered automobile.
Those far fewer folks flying can then get to the airport by non-PT means.
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Zeppelins are better than planes in this regard (more like ships). There is no induced drag component. They are however, slower.
I know I have claimed that Zeppelins are better before, but now I want to try to quantify this because I am not THAT sure.
However, people who do offset their flights tend to think in terms of the total picture, and since the Airlines do not do offsets for the mass of the plane less passengers and cargo, adding this to their overheads and adjusting ticket prices accordingly (which would be the most correct way to arrange this), so that the additional Carbon offset for the passenger was due to the passenger and their luggage mass. It is reasonable for us to take responsibility for both the market demand we represent (leading to the existence of the flight) and the carbon we ourselves contribute by being on it.
For maximum advantage a Zep has to be long, large and slow. The same characteristics that make ships efficient make Zeps efficient.
A bit longer winded comparison. Lets say a LOT longer winded
Merry Christmas.
Overall one might persuade a Zep to an maximum velocity of 150-200 kph (dependent on the prevailing wind and the Zep does not have the flexibility of altitude that an aircraft has, as 3000 meters or so would be its best loaded effort). At 135 kph cruise you get to Sydney 2150 kilometers away, in about 18 hours and it took 2940 KW to achieve this speed back in the 1930’s using 16 cylinder diesels. Current diesels get 155-160 grams of fuel per KWH about a 10% improvement. Assuming similar aerodynamics and mass this would mean that a Zep would take 470.4 KG of fuel per hour of flight or about 8,500 kg of fuel to go to Sydney. At 0.85 kg/liter that’s just exactly 10000 liters. Which makes it about 4.65 liters per km or 8.6 liters per nm.
At full load the generally documented consumption Jumbo Jets is about 17 liters of fuel per nautical mile. Nautical miles are convenient for navigation (due to the relationship to degrees of lat) , not comparison:-), equivalent to 1.852 kilometers… so call it 9.182 liters per kilometer, by all means round it to 9 liters…
That isn’t actually bad on a per-person basis… compare it to cars… and the reason it isn’t makes sense in terms of the packing of the passengers (loaded buses are more efficient than cars on a per-person basis), which is in turn, only really feasible because the flight is quick enough.
Hydrogen vs Helium:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,786149-2,00.html
The Jumbo can haul a max of 134000 kg. They are big at 76 meters long yet the Graf Zeppelin was 3 times longer at 244m (only 41 meters in diameter and not the optimum aerodynamic shape).
So, the Zep is at least 2 times as efficient as the Jumbo for the trip, can stop and hover, can fly slower for better efficiency. and while the largest zeps only had a payload of 10-12000 kg (40 passengers and 40 crew) from a total mass of 232500kg, that was with 1930’s structural techniques and aerodynamics, and the limiting size of the construction shed at Friedrichshaven.
The Zeppelin NT which is more modern tech, has a payload of 1900 kg out of 8040 using Helium (10% penalty). IF that scaled up to the volume of its Grandparent it would carry 45000 kg. I think it would not precisely scale and take 10% for comparison. Call it 40,000 kg. The max Take-Off weight of a 747 is 442000 kg. This would be require roughly double the gas volume of the big Zep to get equivalent lift. The nice thing about the Zeps is that it does not need as much more power to drive the bigger airship.
http://www.zeppelinflug.de/seiten/E/zeppnt_techn.htm
The questions around this are interesting to me.
So – Does any of it make SENSE?
I think yes… but not as much as before and the business case is damaged by the weather sensitivities.
Initially I would expect it to be useful for things that take air-freight now. Flights would require sleeping accommodation for anything longer than Auckland-Sydney. That cuts into mass a bit, but the size limitations of the usual airliner don’t stop you from making such arrangements. The food requirements for the humans embarked are more serious impediments.
For NZ, Auckland to Sydney or Brisbane would be accessible and in overnight trips, would be not particularly painful. Much would depend on the scale of whatever was built. For smaller Zeps the lower capacity would mean for equivalent mass you’d need more trips. This would cut against the efficiency argument. Dropping back to 80 KPH from 120 will double the efficiency of any Zep… but makes the trip a full 27 hours. For Cargo the extra 10 hours isn’t that significant. For people it is. There’s a lot of surface for lightweight solar collection. Not energy dense, but perfectly good – in the daytime.
The Zeppelin NT might also be good for fair weather maritime patrols. The ability to hover and drift makes it useful for surveillance, but no Zeppelin is a foul weather flier.
Larger Zeps would be able to beat on the Jumbos but they would be only 4 times as fast as a big surface ship… and the big ships are damned efficient too.
Hope this helps someone somewhere. I certainly am tired of it.
respectfully
BJ
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Surely they would switch to turbo-props first..? A lot easier on the fuel for not too much loss of speed…
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Rail priorities in Auckland should be:
1) Electrification (happening)
2) CBD Rail tunnel (study underway)
3) Howick/Botany/Flat Bush Line (the public transport out that way is horrifically bad)
4) Airport Line
5) North Shore Line
An airport line might be a nice sounding project for politicians to promote, but really its advantages over good dedicated bus lanes(to Onehunga station with transfers onto the Onehunga Line perhaps?) are not worth the cost at the moment.
We should still protect the route ASAP though.
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It is simply the most important transport project in Auckland and Joyce will only fund it after we’ve tarmaced the entire country…
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