Tuesday December 13th, 2005. 3:32 pm by frog
The new Future Auckland describes itself as “A blog which discusses how Auckland could re-invent itself as a truly INTERNATIONAL city.”
It gets a bouquet from me for lots of pics in its first few weeks, particularly the 1950’s view of future Auckland :).
Posted in Environment & Resource Management | by frog | Tue, December 13th, 2005 |
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Environment & Resource Management.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can email this article to a friend. Printable version of this article.
You can leave a response, but trackbacks are not allowed.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Looks to me like it is just about grand expensive plans for trains, almost entirely paid for by people who don’t use them - nothing about buses or ferries, or (heaven forbid) roads, or even road pricing. I like trains, but the results of virtually all new rail networks in new world countries have been dismal - there is virtually no shift from car to rail.
December 14th, 2005 at 6:38 am
Welcome to New York, or London or Moscow or Paris or Tokyo - where the trains get you where you want to go faster than the cars, and they are massively used… and still require subsidies.
You want it all to happen at once, but for rail to work well it has to work BETTER than the cars do, get you where you want to go faster for the same money… and not be really uncomfortable or inconvenient. Those systems were built by government, and paid for by people who don’t use them. They’ve been in place for a long time. Without them the named cities self destruct.
LA which tore out ITS mass transit system in the 1950’s has been trying like mad to replace it. The Blue line is working, the others aren’t quite fast and frequent enough to replace the cars and the layout of LA has become “car and freeway” oriented, in that there is no center worth going to, you stop downtown to change trains. Bad… and you wait a fair few minutes … worse, and they don’t go to all the places you want to go… fatal… but the ridership is growing. When the world finally gets $100/bbl oil and the oil company ownership of the US government is ended, those “losing” propositions will be the only thing that hold the city together. Your time horizon is short compared to ours.
The initial investment in rail has to be done by government, and like all libertarians you can’t countenance government making that sort of decision… or any decision. This is the pathological part of Libertarianism. This hatred of government even when it is necessary.
respectfully
BJ
December 14th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Well, libertyscott clearly didnt used to live in Croydon, South London, where I did. Tramlink, the new tram / light rail network opened in Y2K its been (in terms of shifting people about) a fabulous success, and has taken traffic off the roads.
Have a look at the unofficial website: http://www.tramlink.co.uk
Rail works very well in congested areas. The presence of an affordable rail transport option allows people a choice, and as the cost of fuel continues to rise over the coming decades, the presence of a choice is what may allow Auckland to contine to operate.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:31 am
When I was a schoolboy I travelled on London’s old tram system, also
on trolleybuses. Then they were phased out in the interests of something or other. Good to see such an efficient method of transport coming back.
In addition to the excellent unofficial website Frog mentions, there is the
official one:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/trams/
Free transport for under 16s!!
When in Adelaide a few years ago I travelled by OBahn:
http://www.adelaidemetro.com.au/guides/obahn.html
http://www.adelaidemetro.com.au/guides/glenelg2.html
I was very impressed by this system! 110 km/hr at times with
the driver folding his/her arms.
I have some photos if anyone cares to ask me.
Perhaps all ccity councillors should experience both the above systems:
or at the very least, look at the websites.
Greengage
December 14th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
I think that 50’s guy had a good imagination, and car designers should look to his sleek lines and vibrant colours. As for rail, yes please. I work from home so I won’t be using it. But if it keeps commuters off my road, out of the way of my moulded rounded futuristic overpowered car, I’ll pay for it.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
Bjchip you are wrong - London, New York and Tokyo subways were all privately built and financed until the 1930s and 40s, and part of the Paris one was also. The subsidies for the Tokyo subsidy are less than 10% of revenue, and the Hong Kong system is 100% commercially funded. These are high density cities with a high proportion of employment downtown, so rail works - the subsidies are only justifiable on economic grounds as long as road pricing does not exist (as congestion pricing would level the playing field between cars and public transport). Rail does not work in low density cities with very little employment in the CBD - it is NOT working in LA. In LA buses carry 10x the trips that rail does, at one-fifth of the cost, but since the buses are publicly owned and only serve the poor parts of the city, they are not of interest to the politicians who control them - they get very little investment, unlike big sexy rail lines which serve wealthier areas and which politicians like opening (then they forget them). Rail does not work in LA, it has made no difference to traffic congestion and wont - there aren’t enough people at any one time going from one place to another within walking distance of a rail line - because THAT is why rail works in the other cities.
I want congestion to be reduced dramatically - but the illusion of rail fixing things in most cases is just that, a starry eyed bit of nostalgia for a mode which works well with very very high amounts of ridership to justify specialist equipment and dedicated infrastructure.
You should be wary of figures quoted about public transport trips replacing car trips - the free bus rides for under 16yos largely replace walking and cycling - hardly a good outcome in terms of health or the environment.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
Well the facts simply don’t back up what you are claiming:
1. New York, London and Tokyo metros were privately financed and built and operated until the 1930s and 40s. Paris was partly so. Moscow was publicly built - Stalin was such a good role model for breaking a few bones to build a city. Some big city services receive little or no subsidy (e.g. Tokyo and Hong Kong).
2. All those cities have far higher populations in much higher densities than Auckland, and also have a higher proportion of employment downtown than Auckland (or LA) does. This means enough people are travelling at the same time to the same place to justify high density public transport.
3. LA’s rail system is a disgraceful waste from politicians who chase photo opportunity and votes in middle class parts of the city, vs ignoring the public transport system that work. Buses carry ten times the people that rail do in LA, get one-fifth of the subsidy per trip and are largely ignored, because they mostly take poorer people from where they live to where they work, which is certainly not downtown. Downtown has 1% of all jobs in the LA metropolitan area - rail has had no impact on congestion, but has cost a fortune - a delusionary exercise in nostalgia. Trains are sexier than buses, and I love trains, but they are grossly uneconomic without very high levels of patronage.
The solution to Auckland is ultimately road pricing, pricing congested roads to reduce demand, which will make public transport more competitive - some motorways will be finished and it is economic to do so, but trains wont work. 87% of Auckland employment is not in the CBD, and most Aucklanders do not live anywhere near a railway station - buses are far more flexible, can reach into the suburbs and are more likely to take people where they want to go.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
“Rail does not work in low density cities with very little employment in the CBD”
I must say I have to agree with you there, and I have seen similar things expressed about Auckland, that only 10% of commuter journeys are to the CBD, and that therefore trains are bad and buses better.
But it is not as though the country has decided to back trains at the expense of other options, integrated networks of different transport modes are the rage in planning.
Nor are we are wasting money on trains - they are going through tremondous growth, and when extra trains are put on they are a success.
I say light rail is the answer, bring back the trams. They would travel to where people want to go to and from and they are very tourist friendly.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:43 pm
Agree with stuey and libertyscott: urban rail only works where there are high densities, useful concentrations of work places and (my addition) either existing rights-of-way which can be utilised, or good tunnelling conditions for a typical metro. Auckland lacks the latter two: there are no designated rail corridors, and the tunnelling ain’t easy. That’s if the RMA would permit it in the first place: just look at how successful it’s been at delaying or denying power generation even of the renewable sort - wind and water.
The examples chosen (London, the original metro and a massive network of suitable ROW’s), New York and Sydney - all have great tunnelling substrata. After all, it’s one thing to have good ideas, but it’s engineers who actually build them.
As to that density: last time I was in Victoria station, up on the western side mezzanine (one of the six or so main entrances to the show) there was a corner shop site which carried an advertising pitch, to the effect that ‘750,000 people pass this site every week’.
Whatever the truth of that, it should as hell doesn’t describe Auckland, even in Show week.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:15 am
can’t imagine that number of Aucklanders even know where to find the public transport, let alone use it… I was up staying with friends on the North Shore once, who weren’t even aware of the buses going past the end of their street until I announced I was heading into town on one the next morning; they couldn’t beleive that I could do what I wanted in their city without a private vehicle involved!!
December 15th, 2005 at 12:54 am
Liberty, the original NY subway was indeed private, but the bulk of the construction was public. The original NY subway was build as a pneumatic tube fer crying out loud, and at the turn of the LAST century, it goes back a long way. The rail being made available early in the development tends to make the development of the CBD happen rail-centric rather than road centric, as I alluded to initially.
Rail works even in the lower density cities if the cities are grown around the rail instead of adding it on after the fact. It works if the people planning the city actually plan, instead of doiing what’s convenient at this very second. That can be seen throughout the former Soviet Union. Train works better for them than cars. It will turn into a big advantage over the USA Interstate Highway System as the century wears on.
LA has the problems you mention and some geographic problems as well. The amorphous blob of LA grew around the roading grid, and absurd amounts of money were poured into the concrete web there without ever spending a dime on rail. They need a loop in the worst way, (you will find that systems build on a loop tend to become economic far more readily as the loop systems supports higher densities of trains at a given stop per hour, using less rolling stock, making it attractive in terms of wait time, and also help with the distributed vs centralized cities problem) but are wholly unlikely to build it. The buses work in LA but only as quickly as the sea of automobiles they are immersed in. They are not a good solution without an Adelaide style O-bahn available to them. That would, if it were implemented, make the most sense for LA. It has been suggested - I know because I suggested it when I was there, but there’s no intelligence guiding the development of LA.
Auckland is similarly a candidate for an O-bahn system… possibly with some sections elevated. Building a rail loop around the city would probably involve tube type tunneling and as waymad correctly points out, severe engineering difficulties. However, what I actually SAID about rail is true. The assumption that I think it is always the best answer, is not something I said or believe.
Those cities would not exist in their current form without efffective mass transit, and that mass transit is paid for, in the main, by government. It is not self-supporting in NYC and cannot be self supporting until the ridership density approaches that of a place like Tokyo and has the wherewithal to afford the prices. So it IS subsidized everywhere but Hong Kong . Hong Kong is owned by “Communist” China now though. (You’re SURE there is no backing from the government? )
But rather than have government plan a cohesive transport system you want it to collect money for the use of the roads to make it economically unattractive to use them. WOW! A use for government! … a misuse, because it will invoke additional layers of inefficiency in ultimately creating ANY transit solutions that actually mesh with one another, but a use.
Sigh…
I’ll settle for that much, it seems enough to get you folks to actually agree that government has a use.
Light rail is what they’re building in LA Stuey… for the purpose it actually still sucks. They’d have to build a dedicated mass transit linkup through the Sepulveda pass and set it up to loop with dual tracks and trains following each other at 5-8 minute intervals continuously. Rail has trouble with grades too.. the pass is a low spot but it isn’t THAT low.
respectfully
BJ
December 15th, 2005 at 1:45 am
Trains are not a success when 80% of their costs are paid for by people who don’t use them. Simple as that - given that transport is one of the great energy users (and sources of atmospheric pollution) I would have thought most environmentalists would want transport users to pay for the costs of moving - train users shouldn’t be exempt.
BJ- I don’t know about you, but the planned cities of the former Soviet Union and its satellites are dire - filthy, ugly and dehumanised monstrosities. Go there, I’ve been to some of them!
In LA, I think the solution for buses is for them to use dedicated lanes (also for trucks and cars willing to pay a toll) - this would have far greater usage than any rail line - which is largely an empty corridor compared to a road (in LA). I’m glad you are willing to accept other solutions, and the fact remains that rail in most cases will need other people’s money to pay for it - roads and buses don’t. Yes I am sure about Hong Kong, it is unsubsidised, as is the operation of Singapore’s public transport - but again, none of these are like Auckland.
Around half of Auckland’s buses were unsubsidised until very recently, not helped by the highly subsidised rail system competing with buses, and making several bus routes uneconomic- the trains are largely taking people from buses, not cars.
and no
I dont want government to collect money for the use of roads to make it economically unattractive to use them. Privately owned highways could do this, like what happens with hotels, airlines, car rental, food and just about anything else you can thinkof. The problem is that people drive cars without considering the marginal cost of doing do, making it “cheaper” to drive and cause congestion that take public transport. Pricing people off the roads will make public transport cheaper relative to driving, increasing its patronage and making it more economic.
Light rail is, in most cases, the worst of both worlds. It basically is a very expensive busway - buses can do the same job at similar speeds with dedicated roadways at a fraction of the cost. Rail works with dedicated corridors and running trains (multiple carriages not just the single light rail units) for adequate capacity. At best, light rail may be worth maintaining when there are legacy networks which are a sunk cost- but building new light rail lines is almost never economic. Busways like the one being built on the NorthShore of Auckland are far better.
December 15th, 2005 at 11:20 am
“Auckland” is not a city - its a region. There are four major cities - Manukau, Waitakere, Auckland, and North Shore. Most people work in one of those!
Density is not a fixed external variable but a product of policies including transport policies. Auckland is car dependent because it was planned that way in the 1950s. Treating that as permanently fixed is a mistake.
A combination of a rail backbone based on linking the four cities plus a good bus system plus New Urbanist town planning will see Auckland become much more livable over the next 20 years or so.
If you want to see if this works go see Freiburg, Portland or Curitiba. They aren’t exactly Eastern Bloc - but strangely these policies keep getting voter support. It might be because they make for prosperous, high quality urban environments.
And to Libertyscott - don’t believe everything you read in Cato Institute publications and similar about public transport and rail. They aren’t exactly objective journals.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
I suggest that people read
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmtran/378/ 378we36.htm
to get the cost of trams.
“Comparison costs against buses, annualised over a 30 year period are:
— Conventional bus £46 million.
— Bendy bus £32 milion.
— Tram £20 million.”
You can also download a brochure with information at
http://www.tramlink.co.uk/extensions/SLTBrochure.pdf
December 15th, 2005 at 12:50 pm
that first link has lots of benefits of trams…
- property prices have risen by 4% more than in areas [without Tramlink]
- Trams are environmentally friendly as they run on 750 volts of electricity on overhead wires and do not cause pollution.
- Trams carry large numbers per vehicle (200 per tram for Tramlink).
- Trams are thinner than buses and take up less road space.
- Tramlink achieved a 4% reduction in traffic levels
- helped reduce road accidents, which fell by 11% in Tramlink’s first year of operation.
- Unlike buses, the tram is used across socio-economic groups.
- An increase in investor confidence and new developments in the area served by Tramlink, all of which are in close proximity to tram stops.
- Typically, light rail achieves six times the level of traffic reduction achieved by major improvements to bus services. Around 20% of rush hour light rail users have switched from the car—compared with between 4% and 6.5% for bus improvement schemes. At the weekends, up to 50% of light rail passengers previously travelled by car
- Trams have a good image, offering speedy modern travel.
- Trams raise civic pride.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
Oh yeah, the problem with the cities in the eastern bloc countries isn’t the rail links, but the cities being constructed of entirely uniform apartment blocks.
-off topic-
They have celebrated this with an absolutely wonderful story about the New Years, in which someone gets drunk with his mates, gets loaded on a plane by mistake, goes to “his” apartment in another city, lets himself in with “his” key and is discovered asleep there by the actual owner of that particular apartment.
However, the character of the apartments is that of any bulk housing project in the region, and given my experience with their absolute horror at actual ventilation, the stuffiness and stillness in those buildings is not accidental.
Auckland was “planned” the same way LA was planned, and it shows. The fix for it will take years to build up and it will take more years to have any real effect, but fixing it is necessary. LA will get better in time, but it will not be “good” until there’s a loop in the system allowing people to move about efficiently and CBD operations start making more money and sense than the malls.
respectfully
BJ
December 15th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
I expect I am not the only one who has tried to get into his/her car only to find the key doesn’t fit… and after a while, that it’s the wrong (but identical) car!
December 15th, 2005 at 11:24 pm
Curitiba is a good example, and the buses are all privately operated, commercially provided (no subsidies) although moderately regulated. Portland is hardly a success when it is the urban region with the 3rd highest growth in car traffic in the US, when 0.4% of trips are by rail and there was an increase in overall trip share for bus and rail from 1.88% to 2.08% between 1990 and 2000 (census figures).
Tram figures do NOT take into account the cost of infrastructure - it’s rather simple - the road is there, trams need more infrastructure and either take up road space (like a bus lane, which can be used for taxis and trucks and other vehicles that could have preference) or a separate right of way. UK figures for trams for high density London are hardly applicable for Auckland.
The so called Smart Growth strategy is about forcing people into housing they do not want - most people in Auckland in the suburbs want to live in houses, with backyards, they do not want to live in apartments near railway stations. High density living is something that people either choose because they want to live near downtown or because they can’t afford anything else.
In Auckland trips to the CBD by public transport have a 30% market share which is very good, and most of those are by bus. You’ll be hard pressed to increase that without road pricing - the Auckland central/local government joint officials group work demonstrated that. Modelling results I have seen indicated that even making public transport free (and increasing it to meet the demand) would make only a small difference, because when it comes down to it, you can’t beat a car for door-to-door speed and flexibility, except when driving downtown.
Again, it is road pricing. You can force people into high density housing (worked great after the war with public housing ghettos in the UK and US didn’t it? great social experiment THAT was) or you can manage demand on roads by pricing them, so people meet the full marginal cost of road use - and then you’ll find people will change behaviour - it has worked in London and Singapore. Even the removal of the toll on the Tauranga Harbour Bridge suddenly saw traffic increase 30%.
December 16th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
Hmmm - I think before you go quoting traffic growth for Portland you need to look at the region versus the city statistics. Or talk to them directly.
Public transport in Curitiba is subsidised - have a look at the parliamentary commissioner for the environment’s report to see how.
Smart Growth is nothing of the sort you describe and has been a huge success when implemented properly - again see Freiburg for example. New urbanism is about improving quality of life and has very little to do with the modernist fantasies referred to above.
Road pricing works really well when you have invested in a decent public transport system first so that people have real choice.
It might interest folks to know that at least two ideas ‘perfected’ in Hitler’s Germany have really taken hold in the West. The first is selling by association with human needs rather than product qualities (eg this car will make you sexier, wealthier, give you more freedom “free your spirit” etc - as an ad exec once said to me “we don’t make car ads with more than one car in them”).
The second is the concept of the motorway punching through communities. This was a refinement of Mussolini’s Autostrade but added the refinement of “punching through” obstacles - like people’s homes - as an embodiment of Nietschian philosophy in traffic engineering. Yeah really - go read Albert Speer if you don’t believe it.
Must fly - toodle pip!
December 16th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
Lets see
Curitaba a government planned and managed community built by original design around a mass transit system (possibly subsidized in operation as well).
vs
laissez faire privately owned, managed and priiced roads of varying quality, safety, policing (who sets the speed limits? Who enforces them? Speed is an important qualifier on the wear that occurs on a road) who’s principle design feature is that they are “market priced” to compete with mass-transit which is also organized along private enterprise “survival of the fittest” lines.
In a few generations it might actually become as efficient as a planned system if it were somehow forced to run honestly… (Libertarians have the same view of honest corporations that Marx had to government expansion - a blind spot ).
I like that government works when it works or is answerable to the people when it doesn’t. Corporations are NOT answerable to the people, and profit is not the only guideline that developers need to contemplate.
respectfully
BJ
December 16th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
JGG it is an awfully weak argument to say Hitler perfected things that were popular in the West subsequently automatically makes them “bad”, so vegetarians and anti-vivisectionists are also “bad” then. My concern about Smart Growth is that it is not driven by what people want, but by what people want for them - it is paternalistic, and is philosophically anti-car. I am car neutral - if people want personal mobility, the fine, as long as they pay for the vehicle, and for the use of the road and accept that when demand outstrips supply for the road, they will pay a lot (and many will choose to use public transport, walk, cycle or travel at different times).
BJ I know private roads is a big jump, but most transport provision is currently private. Shipping, airlines, road freight, taxis and buses are all privately provided- shipping and aviation by and large work well. Telecommunications networks do as well. There are private roads now, either big toll motorways (as in Australia) or small cul de sacs owned by the adjacent property owners, both work - it is not a big deal to extend that further.
BJ, my problem with you saying government is answerable to people when it doesn’t work is that it is NOT. The government may end up pouring $1.1 billion into Transmission Gully - which is an inefficient project, as wasteful as Auckland rail - it may blow out to $1.5 billion, but hey it doesn’t matter - government can force you and everyone else to bail out a stupid idea with your taxes. If the private sector makes a mistake, the shareholders lose THEIR money (and the state should stand back and let it fail) - the assets remain. Look at the inordinate waste of the Think Big projects - did ANY of the Cabinet Ministers involved in that go bankrupt or have to recompense the long suffering NZ taxpayer for that? No. There is NO accountability when:
1. A politicians decides to spend my money without my consent;
2. Ends up failing with the investment or having to spend far more to complete a project that is questionable;
3. All I can do is vote within 3 years in the hope that the said person wont do it, but some other politician may do it in some other area.
I can’t sell shares, I can’t choose to spend my money on the road or the train, whether I use it or not. I CAN choose to spend my money on a flight, bus ticket or car, house, shoes, books etc - if I make a bad decision, I lose. There are precious few incentives on politicians to make decisions that are economically efficient, only incentives to make ones that give them 51% (roughly) support.
I think fundamentally - this is where we differ. You believe the state can be a major force for good, I believe it largely is not - you believe that businesses are a major force for evil, I believe - as long as they work within laws to respect the personal and property rights of individuals - they are a major force for good.
regards
December 17th, 2005 at 2:25 am
Scottfree:
you’ve really got a bee in your bonnet with this idea about “forcing people into housing they do not want” — I’m not sure how you expect this to work, are they going to round up people and force them into high-density housing at gunpoint?
The market will decide. But if we don’t plan now, based on what the market forces are going to be like in 20 or 30 years, then we’ll have closed off a lot of affordable housing options.
Once petrol is five bucks a litre, I don’t really think you’ll have to coerce people, to choose a flat near the railway station in Glen Eden rather than a house in Dairy Flat or Waiuku with a 90 minute drive to work.
December 17th, 2005 at 2:31 am
Moderately relevant anecdote : on Wednesday, I finished work at my client’s site in an industrial suburb of Madrid. I called a taxi to go into town to my hotel. About 20 km. The taxi guy wrinkled his nose and said, it’ll take two hours. He had a better idea. Fifteen minute taxi ride, twenty minutes on the train and I was there.
Moral of the story : people tend to overestimate the need for a private car. Your mileage may vary.
December 17th, 2005 at 2:42 am
Another anecdote, completely irrelevant to Auckland I’m afraid (for obvious reasons of density and topography) : a new public-transport option which is changing the complexion of the city of Lyon, where I work.
Free public bicycles … here’s a comprehensive description
http://simon.nuttall.name/bicycles/velov.html
I’ve been using them intensively over the past two months. In the rush hour, unless your start point and end point are close to metro stations, it is by far the fastest way to get around (short of a helicopter). At any time of day, it beats a car on most routes.
I’ve had lots of little problems, mostly due to the runaway success of the scheme, but I can truly say I have seen the future, and it works
December 17th, 2005 at 3:57 am
Alistair - if the market will decide, then let it - you don’t HAVE to plan. Nobody knows what market forces are going to be in 20 nto 30 years time, and planning limits like the growth boundaries, or refusing permission for low density housing within zones designated for high density housing is the use of force - it puts up the price of the housing people want, it prohibits the construction of housing people want. Prove to me that it is a good idea to do this rather than letting people choose as long as they pay for the cost of the infrastructure and services they use?
Two different ways of achieving the same ends. Your example of living near a railway station wont matter as 4 out of 5 jobs in Auckland are not within walking distance of a railway station.
Free bikes are interesting, Porirua tried it with some cheap used ones, and they all got stolen and repainted. I presume Lyon found a solution to that
. Of course I have a problem with other people being made to pay for bikes - why subsidise ANY transport?
December 17th, 2005 at 9:32 am
There it is folks - “You don’t have to plan” - the ultimate expression of the Libertarian delusion.
LibertyScott: The “market” leaves us with, and wastes, a huge amount of land and infrastructure development that we can ill afford to waste. The government IS the correct place for the society to make plans for the future, just as your brain is the best place to make plans for your individual future… do you plan things so as not to waste your resources and time? Of course you do. So must society plan things, the scale is larger, the process is subject to imperfections of vision, but it is just as necessary and very much the same.
Transmission Gully will cost something to be sure. $1.1B with the all up, all singing and dancing costings it was lumbered with. Less if it is done in parts. Alone here I probably support the route, because it increases the number of independent routes out of and into the Wellington Metro Region for relief in the event of earthquakes and it provides a substitute route when warming takes away the coast. That’s a 2 century time horizon. It also makes it easier to build a guided busway or light rail track along that route, something that I put in my submission on the subject. The routes you lay down today will be the routes that exist 200 years from now. The ancient roman roads are still transit corridors in Europe.
So it is not a stupid idea… and while I might design Auckland Rail quite differently to the way it’s being handled, that is not a stupid idea either. The stupid idea is to WAIT until the price of gas goes up to plan for the event, because a private vehicle centric design doesn’t change into something planned for public transit overnight and at no cost. It wastes resources. Both ideas are better than the “I won’t plan for tomorrow cause I might be wrong” riff that you are playing.
I don’t know anything about “Think Big” projects here. I have heard them mentioned… and apparently it is a sore point with you (and others here) that some of those projects weren’t thought through on a “Green” (sustainable) basis. Overall they weren’t bad or stupid ideas, but the ideas that Maui gas would last forever, or that an oil price set high politically would stay high permanently were a bit short sighted. All in all I would give them about 3 out of 5 score.
The problem with the toll roads is that only the government has the right to tell an individual that they HAVE to sell. Government has to be involved in the route decision at that level and the enterprises building the roads have to meet standards that the government has to enforce. By the time you are done with the necessary government involvement you’ve already spent a raft of taxpayer money. At the end you have created two classes of drivers and no mass transit. At all.
Voting is all you can do. That’s true. It is what ALL of us do and the government representing us does the planning. I daresay we voted quite differently in the last election… people don’t yet accept the long time horizon and “use of the commons must be priced” attitudes of the Greens. They don’t accept the “government is evil” attitude of the Libertarians either, so we have a weird and weakened government.
You and I have always disagreed about who to trust with what.
GM wrecked the mass-transit system of LA 50 years ago, and its management has made piss-poor decisions ever since. The market is beginning now, finally, to punish them and it remains to be seen if the government will bail them out. The taxpayers however, will still be saddled with the piss-poor prospect of rebuilding the mass-transit system so casually demolished by corporate greed. I don’t have any say in what GM does, but the NZ government is answerable to the people of NZ… including to my surprise, me. That makes it the proper entity to exercise the planning function of our society. You have a problem with the concept of planning anything in society… rather letting the market decide… I suggest that this is the fundamental difference between us.
respectfully
BJ
Oh yeah… JGG didn’t say anything about whether the idea was good or bad by association with Germany. He merely pointed out the source and the Nietschian aspects of a motorway building philosophy, I do not think that this qualifies to terminate the thread.
December 17th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
“……businesses are a major force for evil, I believe - as long as they work within laws to respect the personal and property rights of individuals - they are a major force for good.”………….hehehehehehehehe.
There are plenty of countries around the world where your major forces of good have ownerhship of government lock, stock and barrel. You should mayby move to one and enjoy first hand that massive inequalities, poverty and corruption etc that go on.
Mussolini, who knew a few things about these forces of good, called it coporization. Generally most people called it fascism. It use to be called feudalism.
To think government people can’t hire or fire people based on goals being met in the same way private people can is another of the great mysteries to me. The only answer that makes sense of it is that it allows private corporations to get ownership of immensely profitable infrastructures and thus more power.
December 18th, 2005 at 3:33 am
Scotfree: (stolen bikes) I presume Lyon found a solution to that
. Of course I have a problem with other people being made to pay for bikes - why subsidise ANY transport?
The fun thing about discussions with fanatical ideologues like you is that you’re always so convinced that you’re right that you don’t even need information …
if you’d bothered to check, you’d know the answers to both these questions.
These are high tech bikes in Lyon. If I don’t plug it back into a terminal at a bike station within half an hour, I get charged about $1 an hour. If I don’t bring it back within 24 hours, I get charged $300 (you need a magnetic card to use the system, you can get a weekly one instantly with a bank card, or you can get an annual subscription but you need to leave a deposit cheque).
And (you’re really going to hate this) these bikes are not financed by the taxpayer or ratepayer… they are provided by a private company. That’s right : “Providing the service costs EUR 1,000 per bike each year; it is fully funded by JC Decaux, the billboard multinational, which launched and is operating the scheme in exchange for the right to sell advertising space bus and tram shelters.”
In any case, providing free bikes, or any other form of transport subsidy, is no more “evil” than publicly funded parks or libraries…
… oh sorry, I guess you’re against them too, Scottie!?
December 18th, 2005 at 3:48 am
Nobody knows what market forces are going to be in 20 nto 30 years time
As has been pointed out, the market certainly doesn’t know how to predict the future… that’s because the market is not smart
Humans, on the other hand, with careful planning, can make pretty reasonable guesses, because we’re smarter than the market. The people who are buying houses in Waiuku or Dairy Flat, because that’s where they can afford to build, and commuting to the isthmus to work, are making bad decisions with respect to the foreseeable costs of transport within the lifetime of their mortgages. The “market” isn’t helping them.
Over time, as transport becomes more expensive, businesses will concentrate in more easily accessible areas. A good, integrated rail and bus service can make all of the isthmus easily accessible.
It is, in fact, possible to predict the future state of market forces.
December 19th, 2005 at 9:08 am
Oh dear. Markets vs Govts and Glorious Central Plans?
That argument is sooo stale.
Consider who feeds you. Individual farmers, transport systems, retailers, transactions processors. Private, every last one.
Consider who made those Glorious Free Bicyles. Miners, bearing makers, welders and so on. Private, every man-jack of ‘em.
Consider who makes the computers we are all typing this on. And the OS that run them. Enough examples?
Voting for pollies every few years just doesn’t have the adaptability and nuance that voting with your dollars every few days does. And adaptability is finally what humans and indeed, the natural world, are all about.
So excuse me if I come over all icky at the thought of yet more central planning of entire systems. That’s not an organic approach, for sure. And spare us all the paeans of praise for Govt Wisdom, contrasted with the Evil Venality of Orrible Capitalists. It’s a false comparison. Both are needed: each are good for doing some things and not for others. The trick is discerning which is which.
Ask a Zimbabwean their opinion about Govt Wisdom. Oh, better feed them first: there’s some sort of famine about, I’m told. Especially if you don’t support the said Govt.
December 19th, 2005 at 11:59 am
Waymad - If you actually have some point to make, please feel free to actually make it.
We’ve already pointed out that markets suck at predicting the future, and discovered that central plans have actually worked in some areas… and almost always more efficiently than market forces which operate without any effective foresight but enjoy 20/20 hindsight and a view of the present as accurate as the data permits. We already discussed which was which. We have been engaged with libertyScott who seems not to understand that each DOES have a place.
Which is to say, all of your examples and your entire rant about pollies is irrelevant to the discussion. Including your dig about the Zimbabweans who do not have a government that is fairly free and democratically elective.
OTOH, we DO understand if you’ve recently signed on here and not managed to read the entirely excessive volume of verbiage on the thread
respectfully
BJ
December 19th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
Government or private.
People are people, they either meet goals or they don’t-That’s the issue.
In both cases profits go to the major stakeholders, one is usually for benefit of all and other the benefit of a few.
You don’t hear this “old” argument much because most IMMENSELY profitable infastructure are all ready sold out and corporate media isn’t about say, “well our owners were playing a game of golf the other day and kinda feel guilty about the five mill they made last week so have decided to give it up..”
Organizations are organizations, you will always get people in roles ahead of ones who have more merit….heard of networking? exists for a reason.
In my experience, the more totalitarian or corporate a structure is, the more room for corruption and inefficiency there is, less room for initiative and adaptability, more mistakes get through, more unhappy people are.
People are people.
December 19th, 2005 at 5:24 pm
I think a leetle Xmas reading is in order, BJ, as well as considerably more Xmas spirit.
Markets don’t ‘predict’ the future - of course not. But they do produce signals that serve as incentives or disincentives. So they alter immediate buying behaviour, the direction of research, the speed of commercialisation, and strategies of both Governments and businesses. And these responses help to shape the future. It’s an epiphenomenon, to give it a term worth looking up.
Market power comes from two attributes of these signals:
Universality - everyone with an interest in a given market can see the signals and act accordingly. That is certainly not true for Govt initiatives - think of the legislation regarding roundabouts, which needed extensive publicity even to alert folk to the legislation itself. Who knew? But contrast that to say the price of fuel. Even as we speak, there are a myriad of small and not-so-small initiatives under way to offset the effect of these highly visible price hikes.
Multiple, parallel responses - in reacting to these signals, that myriad of individual and corporate responses is a strength in itself. Many will fail, or have little effect. But the failures are by definition small, and affect few people. Any central planning failure will by definition be large, and affect many. And where some private reactions to incentives succeed, there is a further incentive created to sell these to the world. A virtuous cycle, in fact. A better mousetrap. A cleaner train. A less energy-intensive bicyle.
It’s also noteworthy that this stimulus-response dynamic is copied from Nature herself, and yes, dear Gaia has quite a few boom-bust cycles too - just ask any population biologist.
Thing is, it’s hard to control this myriad of private responses to universal price signals. And I’m wondering if that’s in fact your main bitch?
December 19th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Alistair - I’m thrilled the free bikes are privately funded - the basis of where I am coming from is that nobody should be forced to pay for anything. Simple as that. If someone chooses to sponsor, or provide for free anything, then that is fine - I simply want all adult human interaction to be voluntary. That is why I believe that transport, libraries and parks should be funded voluntarily, whether by user fees, sponsorship, donation. It is a long term vision - but one which I think IS compatible with what many who are on the left believe, particularly here. It is about avoiding the state initiating force. It is NOT about the state being corrupt, it is about the state protecting people’s personal and property rights. It IS about people taking control of their lives and their property, and deciding individually and collectively what to do with it by their OWN conscience choice, not by 51% voting to go against the rights of 49%.
That’s it
December 20th, 2005 at 12:29 am
No Waymad, it isn’t my main bitch. I do not CARE about “control”. That’s the first mistake every Libertarian I ever met makes about climate science. Scientists could give a s*** less who “controls” things, and would be absolutely ecstatic if the market could “efficiently” control the CO2 levels.
I care about the situation my children’s children will find themselves in. Markets do not accurately predict anything noteworthy and especially do not predict anything out further than a few quarters with any accuracy. The signals you expect to see will show up in 30 years time, because there’s a 30 year lag between the CO2 and the climate change. At that point IT WILL BE TOO DAMNED LATE. That is why you have to talk about predictive ability, and the market has none. A good theory does a lot better, and science predicts any number of things with fair accuracy at way longer time intervals. As a result we use science NOT the market, to understand whether the environment is going to crap, whether adding mercury to the food chain is a good idea, and the consequences of peeing freon into the ozone layer. The “Market” has no tools to look beyond the price signals and the environment doesn’t give price signals until starts killing something or someone.
Hell, that is what Kyoto is all about… putting a price “signal” on a critical climate change “forcing” chemical release.
You are correct, that mother nature is a bitch. The problem is that the long term cycles are invisible to humans. We don’t live long enough, we don’t have enough history and we don’t have scientific records going back through the last 5 ice-age cycles. Instead we do research and develop our understanding from indirect evidence, and we have done so.
Human evolved intelligence is the principle tool we have for predicting our individual futures and choosing our best path through life. How does a society choose its best path through life?
If you tell me that the market alone will guide it, you are missing the point of the human example. The market is the law of the jungle and it is quite efficient at producing faster cats and bigger elephants and stronger gorillas… and ensuring that there is balance. Humans beat them and eat them because we alter the environment. We build traps, cages, bridges, damns and fences. It gives us control of the animals and alters the balance. Civilization and society MUST as a result, pay attention to the ways in which we alter that balance. With respect to the markets we ALSO must pay attention, but the fences and dams on the market are laws and regulations governing companies and trade.
We have to do better than the law of the jungle or the species is doomed to miserable and brutal decline, savagery and war. The market doesn’t know what to do with a cost that won’t show up in your lifetime. There’s no feedback… yet.
Whether the feedback of gasoline prices will operate efficiently to enhance the acceptance of mass transit and the layout of cities in the future, it is very clear that those prices WILL go up in real terms and that the cities built under the current regime will be inefficient for a long time and will only be demolished and rebuilt to account for those prices at great cost. Do you count these costs? The market is capable of wasting a huge amount of money if the assumptions of the market are incorrect. The assumption of unlimited supply IS incorrect… how much do you intend to waste on your ideology?
LibertyScott… in your zeal for voluntarism you condemn the least affluent to ignorance. No volunteer program has ever set up a library in the boondocks with the same resources as the libraries in the city possess, nor a school in those same conditions. The need for constitutional protections of rights of the individual against the state, is an important protection that is missing (apparently) in this country.
It is not a good thing for a human or a society to make sub-optimal choices, and temporally local optima are often deceptive. The market has no means of pursuing a global optimization over time, it merely gets the current optimum solution (very effectively) and ignores the future.
You do not run your own life the way you are encouraging your society to run. If you did, others would take advantage of your short-sightedness, for that is the word humans use for this condition. Why burden society with blinders you would not wear yourselves?
respectfully
BJ
December 20th, 2005 at 12:57 am
“free” market=corporate fascism.
December 20th, 2005 at 2:19 am
The market wastes a large amount of the money by the choice of those who risk their money - THEIR money - THEIR choice, not someone else’s money taken without their choice. THAT is the difference. Existing cities if they are “demolished at great cost” (which is highly unlikely - slightly armageddon like prediction), most of that will be done by the private sector at the risk of those owning the properties concerned, in which case why does it matter?
BJ - I am optimistic about people, I think that a lot of what you are arguing makes sense and you can convince people that it makes sense, and then people will choose to act because it does. Once people no longer assume “somebody else will fix it” about their communities or other communities, they will think about acting themselves - what is wrong with ASKING for money for libraries, instead of just pilfering it through taxes? I am no more condemning the least affluent to ignorance than you are. You have no idea how much or little I might contribute to libraries or anything else. If taxes didn’t fund libraries are you saying you couldn’t be bothered donating for them, or you couldn’t convince people to pay for them? Why must you or I be FORCED to care?
I am glad you agree for constitutional protection of rights of individuals against the state - THAT is very fundamental.
My vision of laissez faire capitalism is that it is NOT the law of the jungle. The jungle does not respect individual rights or property rights - nobody has the right to initiate force against one’s body or property - but the costs you mention (environmental costs) do deserve proper attention. The means to do that can be debated, and certainly carbon trading, as an example has some appeal as a means of rationing a scarce resource. That would be a market mechanism, as would selling rights to pollute up to a certain level in cities (i.e. tradeable nitrous oxide emissions)- but I would argue these are ways of using the market.
On what is the peak oil point - there will NOT be a significant shift from the private car to public transport in major cities - because private mobility is here to stay, whether powered by oil or other fuels.
December 20th, 2005 at 7:40 am
LibertyScott - The question you pose is answered by the observation that it doesn’t work, and never has.
“Once people no longer assume “somebody else will fix itâ€? about their communities or other communities, they will think about acting themselves - what is wrong with ASKING for money for libraries, instead of just pilfering it through taxes?
If you do not see the similarity to the Communist ideal of individuals working for the good of all you aren’t as smart as I reckon you to be. Both Marxism and Libertarianism have at their heart a utopian view of humans who can live together unfettered by government, humans who, in perfect knowledge and honesty manage to always or at least usually, do the right thing because they know it is the right thing, even though their individual short term interests are not advanced by that act.
In other words, you are asking individuals to ignore “market forces” individually and trusting that all will do so. Some of us might, but it takes a powerful and accurate understanding of the future consequences of ones actions to override the market incentives and signals. It takes an extremely honest person to ignore the personal gain inherent in giving a little less and letting others pick up a little more of the burden. The disincentive to any giving at all when there is knowledge that others of equal or greater means are giving nothing at all.
When put that way it seems almost exactly as absurd as Marx’s “the state will wither away and die when it is no longer needed”, and indeed the end state you aspire to, while worthy, is just as unreachably idealistic.
Sorry, I didn’t put a time frame on the peak oik changes… I was actually having to, as an afterthought, tie the post into context
The private car will get less popular and be less used as the price of fuelling it rises, and it will rise. That it will still exist is certain, people had their own buggies and horses before the I.C. engine was invented, but their use was scarcely similar to the uses we put the things to today. Call my prediction a “slow armageddon”… as the outlying cities initially employ infrequent commuter buses to get people to and from work wasting their individual time. This is something people are quite sensitive to and eventually the outlying suburbs will be depopulated in favor of new construction along the mass transit routes that finally get built through freshly condemned and bulldozed right-of-ways created when the price signals finally justify the construction.
Real estate values in the outliers will tank, values along the routes will go up… and in time there will be a bunch unused empty buildings in places that are unreachable except by car. Retirees might live there, unable to afford to move. Poverty and eventual destruction of many buildings would follow in time. I don’t foresee Zimbabwe or Israeli-like bulldozing of the suburbs as they are uneconomic, the change will be slower, but it will entail waste of energy and resource nonetheless. Planning ahead avoids some of that waste. The process is imperfect, but if it mitigates the trouble that suddenly ballistic rises in fuel costs cause, it will deliver a better result than simply waiting for the market signal.
respectfully
BJ
December 20th, 2005 at 9:02 am
There is IMHO a more important limitation of market forces than simply their inability to predict the longer term future. That is that in the ever-increasing abstraction of derivatives markets, supply and demand are obscured and manipulated purely for profit. Markets are increasingly moving from being relatively transparent tools of commerce, to being entire (unproductive) economies in their own right. Not only does gaming and derivation limit the markets theoretical ability to balance and self-correct, but the entire focus moves from engaging in a ‘real’ economic transaction (ie one which relates to fulfilling material human needs) to an increasingly unreal one. In the face of this trend, the idea that pure market forces represent human-kind’s most advanced, accurate and efficient means of addressing societal needs is, quite frankly, a bizarre idealogy.
December 20th, 2005 at 11:57 am
Anyone who thinks unregulated greed or to use an euphemism “free market” to be a new and clever way to improve society is either amazingly naive or corrupt but which eva one, they are extremely ignorant.
If you want to live in a good society you have to give up your “right” for unlimited personal gain and excess. An individuals right to keep on accumulating property and power has to be secondary to a societies right to freedom from totalitarian rule and quality of life for all.
That is the only way to reverse the degenerative trend and social problems of society and improve things-collectively.
December 20th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
Good God!!!! Paul Wolfofitz, chief neo-con(militarise space so we own any foregin assets we want) and man behind 9/11 cover up has got a new job……………..he is president of the world bank!!!!!
December 20th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
Even
The PNAC expectation is that they are going to control the world. They may not “rule” but they expect to control. They are working towards this end even as Bush admits that he purposely shredded the constitutional prohibition against the spy agencies spying on Americans. To what purpose? I think Bush himself is unaware, but his handlers have steered him to this end. Wiretaps are legal for 72 hours without a court order, and can be justified against any reasonable target of surveillance. The NSA was however, spying on a Quaker church group among other non-reasonable targets. It was probably being used for political as well as terror related intel. It was misused against laws and rules SPECIFICALLY designed to protect the country from that misuse.
On this topic and this alone, Bush is now impeachable… ALONE. His approval ratings are dismal, he can’t run for President again in any case. The Neocon movement has no further use for him. On this charge, Cheney is not involved in any degree. Bush can be impeached in a show of moral rectitude by the Republican Congress and Cheney installed as President. The Congress would have a shot in that case, of remaining in Republican hands over the 2006 election. The 2008 election will be gamed when it happens, depending on Cheney’s health.
I didn’t come here by accident. I’d like to be wrong but it would be a mistake to believe that this is all benign, and Wolfowitz is where he is because none of it is accidental. Rumsfeld’s FU of the war in Iraq was perhaps, but all the rest is going to plan.
respectfully
BJ
December 20th, 2005 at 5:14 pm
Hi BJ
the PNAC’s are crazy and unhinged but they have a WHOLE lot of power, due mostly to “free market” propaganda which has pathed the way for them i believe.
A lot of their power structure is based on repression and is unsustainable, hence the new world order they are going for. They see the world as a contest for diminishing resources between the have nots and the haves, this is an external and internal view; thus they are spending trillions of dollars developing a weapons system in space that can strike against anything; and internally, stealing elections and intentionally derailing their economy to break the middle class and return to a gilded age-anotherwords full on class warfare against the weak.
I’d imagine their future moves will be pretty sinister, note John Howard wanting to increase the size of Australia’s armed forces to 25-30,000 in next 5-10 years as well as the police state laws. It’s corporate fascism, the same thing that left europe in ruins in the 40s.
The only way to stop it is to make society stronger by living according to green principles in partnerhsip with each other and our environmental systems that sustained us, like we evolved doing.
i don’t think Bush is quite the dupe you think he is also.
December 20th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
Even
Too true. Perfect ly stupid is as impossible as perfection in anything else. - bj