The reason I say that coastal shipping may be the better option initially is the sheer tonnage that currently travels by road. There is currently a surplus of medium sized container ships suitable for intercity runs. I doubt that there is enough rolling stock to handle that much extra freight. How many trains can be run on the existing tracks before they reach gridlock and require double tracking? Not a problem on the line south of Christchurch where a right of way already exists and rivers a are a long way apart. but that is not the case anywhere on the Christchurch-Picton line or the Midland line.

The situation in the North Island could be completely different. Predicted future freight volumes may have led to double track rights of way being provided for the entire main trunk. That would make it relatively quick and easy to double track between the numerous viaducts and tunnels and use scheduling software to safely and efficiently route the trains past each other.

I wonder if it is feasible to power an electric train off batteries or flywheel energy storage systems for short periods, to cover unelectrified sections of track?

Trevor.

The biggest imponderable regarding peak oil is to what extent society copes by transport mode switching or transport reduction.

It is tempting to say that we should take a wait and see approach rather than risk throwing huge amounts of money at a the wrong solution. But history provides two good salutory lessons. In the 1860s and early 1900s our governments took a wait and see approach to the question of whether to invest in roads and/or rail. Within five years of those decisions finally being made the world went into severe depressions bringing construction to a standstill for more than a decade. On those occasions a depression couldn’t be predicted but this time the odds of peak oil triggering a global depression are very high. On that basis we should probably take a calculated bet on what the transport impact will be.

However to make sure the bet is truly calculated and mere wishful thinking we should evaluate all the options and be realistic about costs, timeframes and capacity of each option.

The starting point needs to be a calculation of the actual energy consumption per tonne/km for each mode. The Us Dept of Energy’s figures give us a ballpark starting point. Water and rail transport are almost equal, combination trucks are 4 times less efficient, rigid trucks are 12 times less efficient. That latter can’t be replaced by any other mode but would show the greatest benefit from using hybrid or electric drive systems.

The popularity of trucks for long distance freight is due mostly just in time delivery. Taking away the fuel for those trucks also takes away the entire JIT system because it essentially uses trucks as mobile warehousing. When retailers have to pay urban land prices for warehouse space they will have to charge higher prices and one could expect a significant drop in retail trade as a result. That would lead to a reduction in freight volumes.

If peak oil impacts faster than rail can be upgraded then coastal shipping is a really good option to buy time. You can move huge volumes of freight with one or two ships using existing port facilities. Some of the fuel saved by switching long distance freight can then be used to keep local trucking on the road.

I see one exciting possibility which makes me reluctant to advocate spending more on railways than the cost of electrification. Peak oil is going to kill air travel, coach tourism and probably JIT delivery systems. Maglev is the only form of electified transport that can provide the speed of domestic air travel and overnight freight deliveries and could provide the spine in a hub-and-spine transport network. The hubs could be provided by short-haul tour coaches and delivery trucks or cableways or light rail. Essentially that is the approach taken by the planners of the provincial railways in the 1860s, we just sex it up with a century and a half of electric propulsion advances. While this approach will be expensive in capital costs, it could well be less expensive than the social cost of letting the country regress into the parlous state endured by residents of the Province of Auckland in the 1860s. Much better to strive for the relative affluence of the railway building Provinces of Otago, Canterbury and Wellington in the 1860s.

You can run a train on electricity generated from a variety of renewable resources. Most shipping requires fuel oil. I don’t think there is much steam-powered shipping around, so biomass for shipping may be a bit difficult to get going. That makes the railways the more sustainable option IMHO.

Trevor.

So your basic idea has merit and I would say the power to do it should be vested with LTNZ rather than being at the mercy of politicians.

The only other point that needs to be considered is the urban/rural balance. For convenience I’ll stick with the old simple definition of urban as being a city, borough or town and rural as being a county or town district.

A bit of background info is needed to set the scene since this is a major consideration when looking at peak oil impacting fully within the next 20 years.

In the 1960s rural traffic has provided half the road fund’s money. In the 60’s rural roads received half the road fund spending. During the Muldoon/Lange eras that increased to two-thirds. Only because improvement funding was slashed whereas maintenance funding kept up with inflation, on the basis that deferred maintenance cost a lot more than in-time maintenance. By the end of the 90s we were getting back to the balanced situation of the 60s. The imbalance led to Auckland, Waikato and Canterbury regions each losing approx 1.5 billion dollars by 1999. Since then the balance has tilted in favour of three urban areas - Auckland, Wellington and Tauranga. Auckland is on target to get all of it’s 1.5 billion back by the end of the decade, Canterbury is on target to lose another billion. The result is that while rural roads continue to provide half the land transport funds they now only receive one-third of the land transport spending.

Traffic has very little influence on maintenance intervals for local roads. Normally that would be a problem if funding is reduced. If peak oil does fully impact within 20 years it is a short enough time frame that reconstruction of bridges and pavements can be delayed without too much political problem because with reduced traffic there should be reduced demand for well maintained roads.

With reduced funding for rural road maintenance and increased funding for public transport in cities and major towns we could see rural roads providing 90% of land transport funding but only receiving 10% of the spending. At the same time rural communities would experience a drastic reduction in mobility while urban communities would maintain close to their current mobility thanks to the investment in public transport. It isn’t inconceivable that district councils could secede from the Crown and join the Tuhoe nation in reaction to that injustice. If that happened early enough in the process it would leave urban areas in the same boat as rural areas. Even without that extreme reaction I think there is too much of an equity issue arising from your proposal.

However, until peak oil becomes a reality to the majority of voters I think there is a compromise that will work. Use the LTSA’s analysis of the success of the 1990s road safety strategy
http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/publications/docs/2010-strategy.pdf
and the failure of the current strategy
http://www.transport.govt.nz/assets/Downloads/2010-Breen-report.pdf
to get public support to shift the highway funding priority back to saving lives instead of saving time. Let LTNZ determine how much we will spend on safer roads and better public transport. Let LTNZ set the petrol tax and RUCs. Make sure there are two excellent reasons for increasing fuel taxes and you will get public support for big increases (the LTSA’s recommendation was an extra 12cents a litre for safety engineering).

I would be very reluctant to advocate investment in the main trunk railways as a solution for freight. I think coastal shipping and river barging (at least in the Waikato) would be a cheaper and more sustainable option.

Although the result was inevitable by 10pm, which would have (just) left enough time to get to last train, the game didn’t actually finish in time for people to catch the last train, so I and my friends had to leave early or cop a $40 cab fare.

If it had been a tight game running right down to the wire, I would have been really pissed off.

Yeah and ticket machines at the station for later when the ticket office is closed.

I got the train from Britomart to the Warriors play off game last season - the pre game publicity encouraging people to take the train was good enough and there were plenty of departures. But there was nowhere to buy tickets at Britomart and the train was so packed that the staff couldn’t get around to take the money so it was free (it should have been free anyway!)

Honestly is there another major city station in the world that doesn’t have ticket machines or a ticket office that stays open until the last train. Foreign tourists must laugh at us.

In the long-term? Well, once we’ve put the cash in to finance the project and got a really good infrastructure up and running, we can either raise the fees, or keep it subsidised and eat the taxes/rates that this causes. As you rightly point out, once you’ve got the majority of people on public transport, you can actually raise faires for congestion to try and discourage people who have the option from travelling in at 9-5.