Public transport, how do you spell that?
Increasing public transport capacity is one of the desperate needs we have if we are to reduce our greenhouse emissions and make Auckland, in particular, a more liveable city. Jeanette engaged Michael Cullen in the debate last week. Here is an edited version of the transcript with my comments in square brackets. It’s a bit long but it neatly shows the green and anti-green divide in the current parliament.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS to the Minister of Finance: How does his proposal to embark on the “biggest road-building programme this country has seen� implement the Prime Minister’s goal of being carbon neutral?
MICHAEL CULLEN: … Completing the Auckland roading network, in particular, will reduce congestion. It will also improve economic efficiency, which should assist in paying for the expensive programmes that will be required to move towards the goal of carbon neutrality…
[Note the logic here - we must build the roads that destroy the environment in order to afford to save it. Too bad for the PM’s speech.]
Jeanette Fitzsimons: So is he saying that this project simply meets the objectives of economic efficiency and does not contribute to carbon neutrality; and if he is not saying that, then could he answer the question of how it contributes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: …Firstly, there will be a reduction of congestion, of course. The most inefficient way of running a transport system is for motor vehicles to be sitting still, going nowhere, and pouring out emissions. They normally pour out more emissions sitting still than they do when they are actually moving, so it is even worse when it is just a static situation. Secondly, I am afraid—and the member is more than well aware of this, having announced, somewhat prematurely, perhaps, a billion dollars’ worth of tax credits for carbon neutrality—that programmes to achieve that long-term goal will be very expensive. That has to be paid for, and improved economic efficiency, which is what transport improvements do generate, will be an important part of enabling that to happen.
[So building more roads means cars are moving faster so producing less emissions, and, obscurely he is saying that programmes to reduce emissions may not be paid for anyway]
Jeanette Fitzsimons: Does the Minister dispute the international research that shows that when new roads are built, any gains made by freeing up congestion are more than lost by the increased number of cars that travel on those new roads—in other words, net greenhouse gas emissions increase, even though emissions per car may decrease?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: That may well be true in some circumstances, but of course there are a range of other measures, as well. A good part of the road-building programme is also related to improving the safety of roads. The saving of lives is a major gain in economic efficiency as well as to social outcomes, and that will also contribute to the future.
[Jeanette is right, so let’s quickly change the subject to safety. And saftey is one of the reasons that the Greens want to move freight off roads and onto rail by investing in rail ahead of roads]
Shane Jones: How much has Government spending on public transport increased during the member’s time as Minister of Finance?
[A patsy but wait]
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Proportionately it is far more than the increase in spending on roading. In 1999-2000, Government funding for public transport was $45 million. Public transport funding for 2006-07 is estimated to be $437 million, nearly a tenfold increase. This level of increase is unprecedented at any time in our history.
[ie we’re better than the Tories so you’d better be appreciative]
Jeanette Fitzsimons: How much longer will the Government continue to say, in response to those who question its love affair with motorways, that it has spent a lot more on public transport than was being spent when it came to this Parliament…and when will he accept that increasing almost nothing to very little, even if it is a sixfold increase, will not meet the Prime Minister’s goal inside a century?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Those who wish to tread lightly upon the Earth might regard the statement that $437 million is a trivial amount as a somewhat broad approach to the problems of Government financing. We will continue to say that we are increasing the level of public transport spending faster than that of roading spending as long as it is true—and as long as I am the Minister of Finance, it is likely to be true.
[Yes but while you continue to throw many billions of dollars at roads, you will continue to lead us down the car dependency path. It’s only when public transport becomes the best choice that people will choose it. And that requires the prioritisation of public transport investment ahead of motorway investment. So too bad for the PM’s speech.]
Peter Brown: Will the Minister be categorical and give this House an assurance that this Government will not renege on its road-building programme, no matter what pressure the Greens exert?
[Now this is a blast from the past. A voice from an age of endless cheap oil, less congestion, and when climate change was merely a dream invented by the greenies]
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Certainly, that is the intention. We look forward to working with other parties in the House to ensure that we complete the Auckland roading network.
[An Cullen happily signs up with the dinosaurs. Climate change, what climate change? Winston First and the anti-green wing of the Labour Party have a lot in common. Too bad for the PM’s speech.]
Jeanette Fitzsimons: How can the Minister say that this new roading programme is mainly about safety… when four of the five projects that he has so far announced will be funded in this way are entirely new large roads or motorways, not safety upgrades of existing roads; can he also tell us how many passengers have died on trains in the last year?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I am not aware of any passengers having died on trains, though some may have done so through the long wait on not very long journeys. As far as I am aware the deaths were all of natural causes, not of unnatural causes.
[And avoids answering the question because that would be to admit that he was giving us a furphy about safety. The projects he is investing our money in are overwhelingly not about safety but about more roads, more cars, more emissions].
February 28th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
It’s pathetic but it’s also due to the unrelenting uselessness of local governments. If they spent half as much on actually BUILDING THINGS as they do on lawyers, pointless studies, “fact-finding” junkets, expensive consultants, endless policy development etc etc; then we would already have good roads and a modern rail system at no extra cost. JFDI!!!!
As for rail, it seems that NZ has lost it’s ability to have any sort of grand vision for transport, progress here will only be made on small iterations on the current system, i.e. motorways. A poster on kiwiblog recently that the people with the skills to make things like an Underground for Auckland actually happen are leaving in frustration; I agree.
It was shocking to read that Wellington is about to get 1946 vintage trains pulled out of museums as a solution to overcrowding! And even they won’t arrive till 2008! Thankfully brand new trains will arrive sometime next decade, although why they can’t be partially built in NZ I don’t know. Designline does some funky and competitive fitouts.
The Greens will surely get many votes if they make public transport esp rail their main issue, instead of plastic bags plz.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
whats a furphy?
it’s aussie slang, for a false report or rumour or an absurd story
http://www.anu.edu.au/andc/ozwords/November_97/6._furphy.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furphy
I guess that’s what happens when you have an aussie coleader of a NZ party, you get to learn new words.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
what does JFDI mean? Just Freakin’ Do It
March 1st, 2007 at 3:29 am
About half of the total spending Transit seeks to do in the next ten years ($14 billion) is maintenance, completing projects already started, admin, minor safety projects (which I hardly think you’d abandon) and walking and cycling. Virtually all local freight, buses and most passenger trips require roads and always will - you can’t put your head in the sand and say “road spending bad, public transport spending good”, some of each is good and bad.
Land Transport New Zealand evaluates them all, and doesn’t come up with the simplistic responses either the Greens or the AA argue for. To its credit Labour is spending large on all land transport, there are plenty of nasty stretches of road being fixed around the country now, and important motorway improvements being completed (who can argue that making spaghetti junction work more efficiently is wrong?). On the other side, a small fortune is being poured into Auckland rail (and Wellington rail is starting to see it as well) and bus services have improved in most centres. The main limitation on doing more is the willingness of local authorities to come up with their local share, which they must otherwise there is a huge risk if central government fully funds want local government wants (the demands become endless).
I agree that some big road projects are questionable, Transmission Gully and the Waterview extension of SH20 both come to mind - but projects like the Waikato expressway are primarily about safety. People kill each other having head on collisions on this highway, and you can nanny people only so much about “should go by public transport”, but a good proportion of people on that roads have low incomes, live/work in towns like Huntly and Ngaruawahia, and there is no hope that there could ever be enough to make any frequent bus service start to be viable. There are plenty of other major projects outside Auckland (and in Auckland) that are about safety and improving network efficiency, rather than adding capacity.
In addition, the standard for funding public transport projects is a far lower threshold than road projects, most road projects need to have a clear efficiency ratio of above 1, whereas most public transport projects struggle to even reach that. The reason being that while public transport spending has gone up nearly tenfold, patronage has gone up by around 40%. Doubling bus frequency in Hamilton has NOT seen patronage grow by anywhere near that rate.
You can continue to go on about trains, when 12% of jobs in Auckland are in the CBD (so the trains are irrelevant for anymore than perhaps 7-8% of commuters), you can harp on about more public transport when the international evidence is that any mode shift to public transport sees roads fill up from the extra space left available. No major new world city has successfully used public transport alone to fix congestion. Having said that the Northern busway in Auckland will make a tremendous difference, it would do more if Auckland Harbour Bridge was still tolled!
Your only answer is road pricing, you should be supporting the implementation of congestion pricing in Auckland and Wellington, that will ease congestion, reduce traffic levels, free up road space for buses and freight and provide a better way of charging for road use than fuel tax and motor vehicle licensing. Today you have Singapore, London and shortly (having had a successful trial) Stockholm with congestion charging. New York, Copenhagen and the Netherlands are all seriously looking into it, as are around a dozen other UK centres.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:07 am
>>Transmission Gully questionable?
Long overdue. They can’t build that road fast enough as far as I’m concerned.
All for increased public transport, but it won’t handle the volume, or take people where they need to go, anytime soon. We still need roads.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:12 am
libertyscott…
Yes, congestion charging works. I was living in London when they implemented it, and the difference was remarkable.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:30 am
Liberty - Wellington has a strip of road that could go underwater at high tide in a good storm and it damages the coastal communities it also services, and a goat track optimistically named SH2 leading out of town towards the Wairarapa. It needs Transmission Gully. It also needs to build some form of rail or busway along that same route. Some of the grades might be too much for trains. I haven’t seen the engineering reports.
respectfully
BJ
March 1st, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Some years ago in the UK they built a huge new motorway called the M25 to “deal once and for all with the problem of congestion around London”. Within a decade it was gridlocked on a regular basis - people decided to go to visit friends, take jobs that were now “easier to get to” etc etc.
At present no-one in New Zealand can rely on public transport because in most cases it doesn’t exist, or is so unreliable that it may as well not exist. Looking at any other large city in the world would tell us that building more roads leads to more cars on them. Contrary-wise, building more public transport routes, rail connections, light rail, trams and buses, all reduce overall car journeys taken. I just got back from 3 days in Auckland. It took me an hour to drive from Greenlane to the central city on the first day. The next day I discovered a ferry went from where I was staying to the city centre, so I went by ferry the next 2 days. It was stress-free, pleasant, and I could even read the paper on the way in. It cost me a mere $1.40 more than the cost of a car-parking space for the day in the city. If public transport exists, is affordable and times of arrival/departure are predicatable, people will use it. Funding for new roads is a joke when it does not equal dollar for dollar, funding to get people off the roads that have already been built.
March 1st, 2007 at 4:41 pm
LibertyScott said…
Your only answer is road pricing, you should be supporting the implementation of congestion pricing in Auckland and Wellington, that will ease congestion, reduce traffic levels, free up road space for buses and freight and provide a better way of charging for road use
It is a good solution for the rich. Rationing road use on ability to pay is supported by rich people everywhere. Yes it clears the roads.
I support the idea of rationing road access *directly*. Grant people access according to need and if they want to take the Merc. fo a spin during peak hours, tough luck!
Roads should remain a commn good, not a privillage for the rich.
W
March 1st, 2007 at 4:55 pm
No worries about road user (congestion) charges. Like many in business who need road transport for access to and from work plus the delivery of raw materials and finished goods, I will simply add the extra costs onto my charges. My oppostion no doubt will do the same. Not going to stop me carrying on in business.
Problem with all financial levies, taxes, charges is that they will simply be added onto the cost of doing business (and living). I will charge more as will my supplier. The end user will go for higher wages, salaries. So inflation goes up.
Notice the road user charges on diesel has reduced the number of trucks on the road? No because the cost is included in the freight charges use to bring good and services to you.
Having said that to avoid the traffic I leave home at 6 and the factory at 3 or at 7 depending on how much work is lined up.
March 1st, 2007 at 6:53 pm
steve williams says:
“At present no-one in New Zealand can rely on public transport because in most cases it doesn’t exist, or is so unreliable that it may as well not exist.”
We can rely on public transport in Christchurch and environs, and its planned-in-stages further improvement and expansion, courtesy Environment Canterbury (our Regional Council).
see: http://www.metroinfo.org.nz
March 1st, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Gerrit Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 4:55 pm
>No worries about road user (congestion) charges. Like many in business who need road transport for access to and from work plus the delivery of raw materials and finished goods, I will simply add the extra costs onto my charges. My oppostion no doubt will do the same. Not going to stop me carrying on in business.
Indeed. The idea is that those whose businesses are really dependent on driving through that area will be able to pass the cost onto the customer, because their competitors will be incurring the same cost. Those who don’t need to drive through the area will have a financial incentive not to. The likely effect of this is that the number of service vehicles will remain relatively constant, and the number of private cars will drop. Which means less congestion, and the service vehicles don’t have to spend as much time waiting in traffic.
>Problem with all financial levies, taxes, charges is that they will simply be added onto the cost of doing business (and living). I will charge more as will my supplier. The end user will go for higher wages, salaries. So inflation goes up.
If the congestion charge goes into the council’s general pool, it doesn’t cause inflation. You see, Councils keep putting rates up to pay for the stuff they need to do, and the stuff the government makes them do. If they get money from congestion charging, they don’t need to put rates up so much, so there’s less inflation from rates rises. Hence the net effect on inflation is zilch.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:20 pm
eredwen Says:
“We can rely on public transport in Christchurch and environs, and its planned-in-stages further improvement and expansion, courtesy Environment Canterbury (our Regional Council).”
Here in Wellington the buses go almost everywhere, and they’re scheduled to go quite frequently. Only trouble is they never turn up at the bus stop when they’re meant to, because of congestion casued by too many cars on the road.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Wellington certainly has more problems with widening roads than in most of ChCh!
We now have really heavily used bike lanes (as befits a predominantly flat city) and they take up a portion of the carriageway, which in turn makes it harder for buses to be given preferential right of way.
The Council is in the process of creating “dedicated bus lanes”, on three major routes so far.
Unfortunately our local route is not one of these, and commuters sometimes take an earlier bus to guarantee “on time” arrival at work. (Usually that isn’t too arduous because the buses are frequent during “rush hour(s).”)
All in all, things are “happening” here and the the Councils (both Regional and City) are “determined”!
However, there are still daunting numbers of one-occupant cars, and of several vehicles per family …
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:12 am
“Wellington has a strip of road that could go underwater at high tide in a good storm and it damages the coastal communities it also services, and a goat track optimistically named SH2 leading out of town towards the Wairarapa. It needs Transmission Gully”
Who is going to pay for it? It has a benefit/cost ratio well below one, it is unaffordable without taxpayer subsidies, it will greatly encourage car commuting from Kapiti into Wellington. Why should NZ taxpayers pay for Kapiti/Otaki property owners to have a windfall and commute by car into Wellington? It is a dog of a project and cannot be afforded under current road taxes.
“Rationing road use on ability to pay is supported by rich people everywhere. Yes it clears the roads.” Actually BJ the evidence is that where toll lanes are introduced, the rich dont use them anymore than anyone else. People pay for low congested roads when they value time highly, which typically means freight, couriers, people with appointments - many rich people happily sit in their cars in congestion comfortable. Saying “Grant people access according to need” how do YOU know what need is? What sort of bureaucracy will establish that? I guess lots of people “need” to drive to work in the morning peak? Congestion pricing only needs to be a few extra dollars at peak times to work, hardly rich when half the country subscribes to Sky TV and given what people spend on gambling, shopping, alcohol etc.
Besides, rationing road use by price would be a CHANGE from what we do now, which is charge everyone the same. It would be cheaper to drive offpeak when roads are quiet if you replace existing road taxes with road pricing, and that is when many people on low incomes drive (elderly, beneficiaries, students). You could replace local rates funding of roads with road pricing revenue, benefiting people without cars (I used to live in Wellington owned a house and had no car for years).
If you don’t like the price mechanism BJ, then we’ll do away with it for food, because only the “rich” get to eat vegetables and fruit when there is a poor crop.
The benefits of congestion charging are obvious in saving time, improving competitiveness of public transport (and walking/cycling) and reducing emissions, and frankly the most stupid use of transport is road vehicles queuing, going slowly and wasting far more fuel than they would be if it was free flow conditions. Everywhere in the world supply based solutions have not fixed the problem in big cities (building roads/public transport), demand based solutions can and have (London, Singapore, Stockholm, Oslo, Italian cities have access control as well).
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:40 am
I don’t often agree with you, Scott, but I agree that a price mechanism on road use is good in theory.
The devil is in the details. If it’s a clear and transparent system for a defined zone or stretch of road (e.g. motorway tolls or central London charge) then OK. If you’re going to sell us compulsory satellite-tracking with complicated rates per hour and place, then get out of here.
March 2nd, 2007 at 9:31 am
libertyscott:
You said (accusingly
“Saying “Grant people access according to needâ€? how do YOU know what need is? What sort of bureaucracy will establish that? ”
Yep. A hideous bureacracy, I agree. But the alternatives? Allow rich people access at the expense of the poor, or do nothing.
The question which is more hideous?
And there is evidence from Austrailia that tolls keep poor people off the roads.
Someone here alredy said that they would not be affected by tolls because they would just pass on the chargges. My point proved I think.
happy travels
W
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:19 am
Uh Liberty, I didn’t say much of anything except about TG and whilst you regard surface access to the Capital as a windfall for Otaki and Kapiti, it is actually essential for the rest of the country as well. Of course we could schedule coastal ferries from Auckland, but overall the ability to drive or take the train from Wellington to points North isn’t “optional” and it is at risk with the current roading structure.
However, since you mention the effects of tolls to me and have determined to take Bliss on over the matter I will throw in with her on the effect. Effectively choosing (which is something the wealthy can do) vs “being denied” (which is what happens to the poor), access to a public facility like a road, is a problem.
We have price mechanisms for people to buy food and support mechanisms for poor people who cannot.
The question revolves around keeping the playing field level. If it takes the rich guy 15 minutes to get from one appointment to the next and the poor guy an extra hour or more on top of that (which could easily be the case in a place like Auckland) then the poor guy is paying a tax that is measured in time, and will be handicapped in his performance. Limiting access on the simple basis of a flat rate price is difficult for me to support on this basis.
I am not at all fond of the other alternatives on offer either. Perhaps the rates charged could be variable based on income ?
In either case the public transit system and the system of developing and planning public transit systems must (as you pointed out) be hammered into some more appropriate shape.
respectfully
BJ
March 5th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
How about this for a radical concept? Encourage the use of public transport and the resulting reduction in congestion makes for easier use of our cars/trucks when they are actually required. Witness how much easier rush hour can be in school holidays, particularly between 0830 and 0930.