Oil US$118 per barrel
Petrol prices are going up so, rather than responding as the market says we should by buying less petrol and finding an alternative, we have the petrol burning lobby asking for government intervention. Gaah!
Interestingly the same debate is occurring in the US where a totally different government with a somewhat more brutal approach to securing energy is also being held responsible for higher gas prices.
But, as Environmental Economics says:
Supplies are decreasing–both temporarily through unexpected refinery shut-downs and permanently through stock depletion. Demand is increasing–both in the U.S. and worldwide. Both of these will cause gas prices to rise and that’s good. If gas prices don’t rise, we will consume gas even faster and run out sooner. Higher gas prices encourage conservation and encourage investment in alternatives. High gas prices might be uncomfortable while we search for viable long-term solutions, but they’re more comfortable than the alternative: no gas and no solutions.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Hey frog, I know you’re all into this “Peak Oil” malarkey, but how’s about an oil price update every $10 dollars? otherwise, the way things are headed, we’ll have a post for $119, $120, $123, $127, $133, $147.50, $151, $157, $162 …………
April 24th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Actually, given the way that commodity prices are heading these days, you could probably start a blog just on the record prices being hit by Gold, Copper, Oil, Grain, et cetera. About the only commodity I can think of that hasn’t hit a record price is Argentum (a.k.a. Silver), and that is still a long way off.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I’m happy for market forces to give signals on consumption. Not happy when my petrol tax goes to propping up public transport to the tune of 60%.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
So Mawgxxxxiv, instead you’d rather have all those who take public transport in cars contributing to the congestion on the roads you drive on? Or simply not being able to get to get work without a 2 to 3 hour walk across, say Auckland, Wellington/Hutt, Christchurch, Hamilton? Since it seems you have a car you are no doubt aware how long it takes to get around these cities even when driving?
Public transport is another payment that NZ as an entire society agrees to bear, much as we pay for the police, justice system etc.
Besides, I can feel just as selfish as you..I’m not happy with the percentage of my taxes going to run schools when I don’t have children; or with building motorways that I can’t use cos I don’t have a car.
Also, road transport is “propped up” (to borrow your own words) by every taxpayer, or have you not seen the figures?
Furthermore, if market forces happen to price you (or if you personally are very comfortably off, maybe your co-workers or employees) out of your car in the future, you may very glad that public transport is being “propped up”.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Um, mawgxxxxiv, doesn’t your petrol tax go to propping up the roads you drive on too?
April 24th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Toad, How many times do you have to be told the truth before you stop beleiving in a myth. Put your dunces cap on and go and stand in the corner with GWDenier and BB and have a good think about what you are doing wrong.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Toad, You are right, I am happy for petrol tax to go into building better motorways that move vehicles more quickly therefore reducing fuel consumption, improving productivity, reducing the social and economic costs of injury and death, and reducing pollution. I am not even averse to the Auckland regional petrol tax if it is used for improving roading. Road tax is the price I am happy to pay for using the roading system.
Jingyang: I rarely drive, mostly walk and take public transport as often as I can. I use public transport because it is cheaper to pay $1.44 (with a Go Rider concession card) on the Link bus than paying $4-$10 per hour for parking in Auckland’s CBD. Every trip I take effectively gives me a tax rebate of $3.00 ( the approximate subsidy), probably the closest I’ll be getting to tax cut in the near future
Public transport is effectively another form of social welfare.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
jingyang, PT accounts for such a small fraction of public tansport that getting rid of buses and trains would have the same impact as adding just a couple of years of natural traffic growth.
IF PT is another payment that NZ as an entire society agrees to bear then why does the money from petrol taxes instead of general taxes. Much as we pay for the police - general policing from general taxes, road policing from road taxes.
Your taxes pay for schools but they don’t pay for motorways. If you don’t have a car you don’t get charged for building motorways and, to be fair, you can’t use them if you don’t help pay for them.
Ahh, the GST exclusive STCC - or have you not noticed that it is GST exclusive and, in fact exclusive of all taxes other than petrol tax. Counting the costs and discounting the benefits is dishonest research.
Your future scenario is a worry if you think it through properly. High petrol prices force working people out of their cars. Petrol sales decrease therefore petrol tax revenues decrease, therefore subsidies for PT decrease theirfore bus fares increase driving poor people off the buses and onto Shanks’s pony. Nothing there for anybody to be glad about.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Here is an interesting read on public transport:
“But over the past half century, public transport as a share of passenger trips in Melbourne has fallen from 57 per cent to about 8 per cent. In the process, public transport has moved from turning a modest profit to being subsidised to the tune of about 80 per cent of overall costs.”
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5052&page=1
April 24th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
some people hang around here in redneck territory say even kevyn deserve the medallion of quixote
April 24th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
That’s one of the most hilarious comments I’ve read on this blog in a long time. Well PQ - you deserve a medal for keeping it real.
As more serious talk on transport subsidies etcetera, why do all the roadies ignore the subsidies for car-parking? Approximately 98% of car journeys get free parking.
Given that land one of the more expensive components associated with using vehicles, one would have to say that removing the subsidies for parking may drive enough people onto PT to actually make it cost-effective without subsidies.
What say you Kevyn? Check out http://www.vtpi.org for more info.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I admit the last post is relatively incomprehensive, but I was still giggling at PQ’s comment so please consider it an abberation.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Stu, What say I? I say the most environmentally friendly form of public transport is van-pooling. Essentially a free minibus service to and from work provided by many employers as an alternative to a free parking space. With rising construction costs making basement parking ever more expensive to provide, and rising fuel costs making free transport an ever more attractive component of a salary package, it could be the answer everyone has been looking for. I don’t now whether our tax system even includes free parking as a taxable fringe benefit. There seems to be some tax loopholes regarding the garaging of company cars at employees properties.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Kevyn,
You may be interested in this web site which deals with many of the “myths” concerning public transport: http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/
The site relates to public transport in Melbourne, which is a lot bigger than New Zealand cities. Nevertheless, many of the issues referred to also affect public transport in smaller cities.
One other thing which people usually fail to take into account is that to do costings for public transport based on current patronage is potentially incorrect. If oil continues to increase in price before alternative fuels replace it (if they ever do), then people will be faced with the choice of staying at home, walking, cycling or using public transport. Therefore, it is possible public transport patronage will increase greatly in the future … but only if the required infrastructure is put in place now.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:36 am
i’ve often wondered why the bus companies don’t provide a lot of smaller busses & vans - they could go routes which are not economic for larger busses, pick up & drop off little old ladies closer to their home/destination points, travel mostly full most of the time, & perhaps come somewhere between taxis & busses by allowing people to ring up & book a pickup within general time parameters outside of rush hour (on a vehicle carrying other passengers on a similar route too of course)
April 25th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Van pooling is a very efficient form of transport because you have no labour costs. Imposing fringe benefit tax on free parking is a small step in the right direction.
More important, however, is the removal of minimum parking requirements that demand new developments provide conservative amounts of parking.
These parking requirements create a huge sunk investment in private vehicles and effectively seek to perpetuate NZ’s current (highly inefficient) travel patterns.
Despite what our right wing bloggers assert, private vehicles are not unsubsidised or economically efficient. Try adding on the cost of parking and watch the demand for driving (particularly for commuters) disappear almost overnight.
Evidence suggests that priced parking is actually more efficient at discouraging trips than road pricing, as well as having lower costs of collection.
I could go on all night but everyone’s probably bored already …
April 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
sdonovan: have you tried parking in Central Auckland ? I’m sure you would agree that parking is already “priced”.
April 26th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Comment fro Kiwiblog:
“I must take issue with your comment about developers being the cause of the problems. Developers have merely made the best of a situation where planners have utterly distorted the outcomes that a true free market would have given us. Come ON. Do you HONESTLY believe that “lassez-faireâ€? WOULDN’T have resulted in workers living one heck of a lot closer to work, on average, than the great planned outcome of a big CBD, green belts, and urban living? Do you honestly believe that if the planners NOW adopted a strategy of decentralisation of the CBD in the name of fighting global warming, that developers would fight this to a standstill? ABSURD, and you know it.”
……. Interesting question?
April 26th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
mawgxxxxiv, Not if you drive a company car, or have a company parking space, or are a “consultant” or “contractor” rather than an “employee” and can claim it as a legitimate business expense even if you’re not there on business, after all “what the IRD doesn’t know won’t hurt them”.
April 27th, 2008 at 12:50 am
samiuela, I find this site is a useful source of critical unbiased research into urban transport issues.
http://www.uctc.net/
For instance, if you want a thorough understanding of the induced travel effect, this is one of the most authoritative papers on the subject:
http://www.uctc.net/papers/final%20reports/year12/03%20-%20Cervero%20f inal%20report%20year%2012.htm
I have visited the PTUA website before and studied their myths and facts section. I would say, in very rounded fractions, one-third of the myths they debunk are so frivolous that I’m surprised anybody believes them. Another one-third are rebutted with well considered arguments. The remaining one-third are rebutted with counter-myths. This is quite a good ratio for a lobby group arguing against the claims of another lobby group. However the two counter-myths related to road safety exhibit stupendous and dangerous ignorance.
As with most lobbyists they choose to paraphrase the conclusions of the 1994 SACTRA study rather than cite more recent studies that benefit from improved analytical tools. Which is odd because the more recent studies merely conclude that the induced traffic effect is one-third less than SACTRA concluded and provide sufficient insight into the trigger mechanisms to question whether the long-term induced traffic and economic growth associated capacity improvements is anything more than a re-allocation within a city or region. That would tend to reduce the BCR for congestion relief projects for both roads and PT and, perhaps more importantly, makes congestion a regional cost rather than a national cost as the PM and the Ak Mayoral Forum have repeatedly and successfully argued.
It is surprising that PTUA is unaware of any of the interview surveys of PT passengers conducted in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Christchurch. In all of these surveys between one-third and two-thirds of passengers stated they would not have made their journey by car if PT was not available. The claim that every passenger on PT is one less car on the roads should actually state one car for every two PT passengers.
PTUA don’t provide enough information of how they calculate the energy use per passenger km for trains. The figure they quote is one-third the figure quoted by Virgin. The do provide sufficient info on their method of calculating the energy per passenger km on buses. They state that buses carry 40 passengers in peak periods, for every km travelled by the bus. Unless these are 80 seater buses this can’t be true because you have to include the km travelled while picking up those 40 passengers as well as the return journey from CBD to suburb. It is also surprising that a vehicle that is six times heavier than a car only uses three times more fuel in stop-start driving conditions. This leads to their example of a bus/train journey using one-tenth the energy of the same journey by car whereas most analysts conclude that it is between one-half and one-third. Sufficiently impressive and compelling without resorting to exageration.
Here is an alternative study of energy use by travel mode. This one is from a right wing think tank. I’ve checked the figures and found that the ones for various PT are accurate but the ones for autos used combined urban/rural occupancy rates and fuel consumption. Substituting the correct urban data inceases btu per passenger km by about one-third. Nevertheless even this large increase does not invalidate the study’s overall conclusions.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-615.pdf
April 27th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Kevyn
You really have to watch the Cato institute work carefully. They are (in my experience) some of the more plausible liars on the planet and the ways they manipulate understanding are manifold. They make assertions about the increasing fuel economy of the passenger car fleet, ignoring that the mix was changing to “light trucks” also known as SUVs for the past decade. They factor in a massive bio-ethanol injection of “CO2 efficiency” without a word about the efficiency of producing ethanol itself.
Basically those were the two quick take-aways from my skim of the paper. I will probably try to read it through and work out what the actual net effect of their distortions gives us… but as a source of information I trust the Cato about the same as I trust Cheney and neither any further than I could throw the Washington Monument.
Your other criticisms are pretty good. Just watch out for Cato.
respectfully
BJ
April 27th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Kevyn: car parking provided by a company will still be paid for by the company and may well attract FBT. Even as contractor or self-employed person only one third of the car parking can be recovered as a tax reduction, the rest comes out of profit.
April 27th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Kevyn,
I do not see anything particularly wrong with the energy calculation for trains. They base the calculation on an 800 kW 6 carriage train which averages 60 km/h, and give calues for 100, 500 and 1200 passengers on the train. I can tell you from experience that during peak hour the number of passengers often approaches the last value. In any case, even a 100 passenger train is a lot more efficient than a car, and that is an almost empty train. Even if the energy consumption figure of the train is incorrect by a factor of 2 or 3, the train is still more efficient.
With regards bus loadings of 40 passengers during peak hours, I can also believe that. I rarely can get a seat on the bus to the train station. While passengers get on gradually, the bus quickly fills up, and then almost everyone gets off at the end of the route (at the train station).
April 27th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
One more thing. The survey results which show many passengers would not drive a car if PT was not available are not surprising. If PT was not available, I too would not drive a car to work … the simple reason being that I can’t afford to drive a car to work. I would have to find a new job closer to where I live, since I cannot afford to live close enought to my workplace to walk or cycle.
April 28th, 2008 at 4:20 am
samiuela, The first problem is that they have calculated energy use per passenger but refer to it as energy use per passenger kilometre. During the morning peak a train carries 1200 passengers 10km into the city and 100 passengers 10km out of the city = 12000 p/km in and 1000 p/km out = 13000 p/km. If it is an express train all you need to know is the amount of energy used to travel those 20km and you can work out the energy per p/km. If it is not an express train then you have the problem that passengers are travelling an average 10km but the train will be travelling more than 10km. This has to be taken into account for all modes of transport that can carry passengers, including cars.
Does your bus rapidly fill up when it heads away from the station in the morning. This is important because it halves the fuel efficiency advantage. The distance the bus needs to travel to fill up is the really big problem with sprawling suburbs because it reduces the fuel efficiency advantage compared with cars.
The average bus in Christchurch actually does carry enough passengers to be more fuel efficient than cars, but only by 15% - 25% (depending on car size) which is a small fraction of what PTUA are claiming. It also means the environmental benefits are much much smaller than the one PT passenger = one car off the roads argument. A bus needs to carry an average of five passengers per km to displace one SOV car km simply because buses are heavier than cars. Double that to take into account that only half the bus assengers are displaced car users.
All of this is less important if, like Melbourne, there is a well established hierarchy within the transport network and a substantial amount of housing was built to take advantage of PT, before cars became affordable. But when light rail is introduced and displaces buses from the highest loading parts of their routes it can lead to worse overall energy efficiency for PT. Especially if the shorter bus routes is used as a way to retire older buses from the fleet instead of increasing service frequency. Most especially if the big buses justified on long arterial routes are retained on the shorter residential routes instead of replacing them with smaller buses better suited to the new order. Light rail proposals almost never include funding for new feeder buses.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Kevyn,
I can see your point about the out bound trains being less full. Nevertheless, the energy used by a train per passenger was five times less than for cars when the train was almost empty (100 passengers), so the train still is much more efficient.
Also, I think your calculations have negelected the fact that passengers hop on and off the train at intermediate stations. At many stations lots of passengers hop off, but a corresponding number hop on. Therefore it doesn’t really matter what the average passenger’s trip length is, what matters is the average number of people in the train at any one time. For example, If 1200 people on the train only travelled 1 km in a 20 km train route, you don’t reduce the efficiency of the train by a factor of 20 if it also happens that 1200 people hop on at the next station.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:19 am
bj, In this case CATOs basic distortion is the energy intensity provided for autos and light trucks. These are lineball with DoE’s. DoE is simply reporting the national figures and has no reason to disaggregate urban and rural travel. CATO is comparing urban travel so it should only use EPA’s cold start urban cycle MPG, and the DoT’s household travel survey’s urban occupancy rate. That would increase BTUs per passenger km by 50% to 100%, for both cars and SUVs. Also allow for the urban traffic mix of approx 70% passenger cars and 30% SUVs.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:57 am
samiuela, Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 26 is a reliable source of information energy used per passenger km.
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/Index.shtml
However it measures energy intensity in btu per passenger mile so I have converted the PTUA to these units. This is simply so the values estimated by PTUA can be compared with the figures reported by transit agencies to the Federal Transit Administration and used by ORNL.
The book gives 3445 btu per passenger mile for cars. This is for all road travel whereas the 4500 - 6300 range calculated by PTUA is for urban car use. Urban driving should be 50% - 100% more energy intensive than the combined urban/rural figure, thus 4700 - 6800. Both sources are in agreement.
PTUA estimates bus energy intensity between 500 - 1900. The book says the US average is 4323. Seattle’s trolley buses manage 3912. There are three probable reasons for the huge difference in these numbers.
1) Melbourne buses are more fuel efficient than American buses,
2) Melbourne buses carry more passengers than American buses
3) PTUA has assumed that all passengers travel the entire route when they may, on average, travel only half or two-thirds of the route. PTUA repeat this error in their train and tram calculations as well.
A close look at all the data reported to the FTA suggests each of the three reasons account for one-third of difference.
PTUA estimates tram energy intensity between 260 - 1000. The book doesn’t provide an average figure for trams or light rail. However San Diego’s LRT is 2102, Portland’s LRT 2482 and San Francisco’s cable cars use 4629. Melbourne’s newest trams are the same ones used in Portland so it isn’t a vehicle difference. The San Diego and Portland LRTs have high load factors so passenger numbers are unlikely to explain all of the difference. The fact that Melbourne was built around it’s trams whereas San Diego and Portland are trying to rebuild around their LRTs could explain much of the difference.
PTUA estimates train energy intensity between 70 and170. The book says the US average is 2743. The best rail systems are New York’s subway at 2149, San Francisco’s BART at 2299 and Chicago’s El at 2693. It is inconceivable that Melbourne’s rail system can be 20 times more energy efficient than New York’s crowded subways or San Francisco’s modern BART.
The problem with the PTUA number is that it is calculated from the rated output of the motors rather than the energy input of the system. It simply doesn’t account for losses in the power distribution system or in the motors themselves. (BJ can probably explain that better than me). The FTA calculates it’s energy intensity figures from electricity consumption that the transit agencies are actually paying for.
Your observation that for every passenger who gets off a train another passenger gets on has been found to be largely true. Not just on trains but also on buses and roads. Yep, for every car that leaves a road another joins in it’s place. At least on ring roads. I’ve seen the same thing happen on Sydney’s city loop, and Christchurch’s orbiter bus. That’s because they are travelling around cities, not into and out of them. Trains or buses travelling between the city centre and satellite centres such as Dandenong will exhibit the same load characteristics as any arterial highway. Traffic counts taken at various points along an arterial highway always show the numbers of vehicles increasing closer to the city and decreasing further away during the peak periods when there are tidal traffic flows. Off peak they can show little change along the route due to the commute to work not being a significant traffic generator. This is less obvious on buses in Christchurch but it was certainly noticeable on Sydney’s western line when I lived there. Smart ticketting that uses RFID can perform origin-destination studies very cheaply. Until, that happens transit agencies have to rely on random surveys of travellers. Multi-trip tickets make ticket sales are a very unreliable method of conducting origin-destination studies. Without those studies to accurately determine the actual passenger km every analysis is going to have a significant margin of error.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:59 am
samiuela, my response got swallowed by the moderator.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Commentary: Houston, we have a problem
Robert Steuteville
I hold no personal grudge against Houston. I’m agnostic about its lack of zoning — I’m no fan of development regulations that have fostered sprawl throughout the US in the last six decades.
I applaud compact development in downtown Houston and efforts to build New Urbanism in the city (Duany Plater-Zyberk designed three projects in 2007 and other new urbanists are working in Houston as well). That said, Houston is no place for the rest of the nation to emulate in terms of land use policies.
This brings me to the American Dream Coalition (ADC), a group of sprawl advocates led by Randal O’Toole, which is holding its annual Preserving the American Dream conference in Houston in May. According to ADC, “Houston is the nation’s freest and most affordable major city.� It “protects livability through personal freedom and local control. Houston also emphasizes mobility with an amazing highway network that has 66 percent more freeway lanes than the average US urban area.�
Apparently the American dream consists of single-family houses accessible only by automobiles and lots of high-speed freeway travel. Also, it includes wide roads, parking lots, and gated communities — for which Houston is famous. It’s nearly impossible not to drive there — only 2 percent of Houstonians walk or bicycle to work and 4 percent take transit in a climate with almost no winter.
Apparently the American Dream Coalition has been sleeping through reports on global warming, dependence on fossil fuels, and rising energy costs. Just about everybody else realizes that these are among the greatest environmental and economic challenges that we face in the 21st Century.
GLOBAL WARMIING RANKING
Of 66 large US metropolitan areas recently studied by Edward Glaeser of Harvard University and Matthew Kahn of UCLA (The Greenness of Cities, March, 2008), Houston is the fifth worst in terms of per capita carbon dioxide emissions. Because no US cities perform well by international standards in this regard, Houston probably ranks as one of the worst places on Earth in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
The conference is co-sponsored by the Cato Institute, the chief libertarian think tank in America, whose corporate sponsors include Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute. Libertarians are supposed to admire small government. But it’s the federal government that mostly built and maintains Houston’s enormously costly freeway system with 66 percent more lanes than the national average.
Without American taxpayer largesse, it is really affordable? Houston has low housing prices, but its transportation costs are high and rising. Working-class families — those with incomes ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 annually — spend 31 percent of household earnings on transportation in Houston, according to a 2006 report from the Center for Housing Policy. That’s far above the national average, and above what such households spend for housing in Houston (24 percent of their income).
Given the lack of transportation choices, moderate-income families in Houston have little alternative to pouring nearly a third of their pay into automotive expenses. Unlike housing, which can build household equity, transportation dollars go down the gas tank. With rising oil prices during the last eight years, this problem is getting steadily worse.
Sprawling cities are also not very safe. Houston’s traffic fatalities are more than double that of a compact city like Boston, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Houston’s pedestrian safety index is one of the worst in the nation. When the American Dream folks say that Houston has good mobility — they mean automobile mobility only. They certainly don’t mean walking, biking, or transit.
I don’t mean to pick on Houston. There’s sprawl everywhere in America. I have hopes that Houston, like the rest of the US, can change. My problem is with a group bent on perpetuating automobile and oil dependency, and foisting a potentially catastrophic global warming on future generations. That sounds to me like an American nightmare. This article is available in the April/May 2008 issue of New Urban News, along with many more articles not available online. Subscribe or order the individual issue.
http://www.newurbannews.com/AprMay08Commentary.html
April 30th, 2008 at 6:51 am
even in auto-mobility…
Submitted by Michael Lewyn on 29 April 2008 - 9:33am.
Houston isn’t doing all that well.
http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/congestion_data/tables/houston.pdf
(showing Houston in top 10 in congestion by most measurements, and getting worse)
Attn Roger Gnome
May 1st, 2008 at 3:22 am
The American Dream Coalition really shouldn’t be taken too seriously. There claims about the importance of the automobile in realising Americas potential during the 20th century seems to be the result of very sloppy statistical analysis. There is a coincidence between auto travel and road improvement stats and economic growth stats. But those economic growth stats also coincide with electrification stats. I am inclined to the view that electrification unleashed the economic might that payed for better roads. In rural areas electification and all-weather roads may have been equally important but in cities and industrial centres eletrification is the crucial improvement. While the interstate system has produced many benefits, especially in the tourism oriented states, it has not been a significant facto in frieght movements which are still dominated by trains and barges. Unlike Europe where trucks are dominant. The opposite is true for moving people intercity.
Randall O’Toole was recently in NZ to ride the Otago rail trail. He is a train buff and a keen recreational cyclist. But he is also a Libertarian so of course he doesn’t think trains should be subsidised or that people should be town planned into high density housing. Unlike his fellow traveller Wendel Cox, O’Toole actually produces research from which it is possible to remove the biases. For instance his paper on transit carbon emissions concludes that three-quarters of Americas transit system perform worse than private cars. Correcting the car emmissions by using the EPAs cold-start urban cycle instead of the combined urban/rural cycles reverse that conclusion. Nevertheless the conclusion that one-quarter of transit systems produce more carbon per person km travelled does tells us we need to find out why this is so in order to avoid building the same problems into our own public transport systems, or land use planning systems depending on what the actual problems turn out to be.
What point that is clearly evident from the DOE stats that O’Toole uses for his research is that car fuel efficiency has improved significantly over the last 40 years whereas American transit vehicle’s hasn’t. Two obvious contributors to this state of affairs are the average age of the vehicles and the fact that car makers have adopted aircraft techniques to improve fuel efficiency such as monocoque construction and alloys and composite materials, all aimed at improving strength, safety and interior space whilst reducing weight. Bus and train manufacturers have not had the same incentives to do this because of the perception that bauses and trains are so much more fuel efficient people movers. That was definitely the case 40 years ago. Today the gap has narrowed to the point where only the best transit systems can claim to use a tiny fraction (less than half) of the fuel that cars use to get the same job done. Incorporate those same aircraft techniques and regenerative braking into all new buses and trains and you will get PT that will achieve more carbon reductions than can be obtained by changing the car fleet to hybrids or small diesels. Potentially within the same time frame too.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:23 am
o.k. you can be dictator for a year
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:28 am
Great! That means I don’t have to worry about focus groups and rioting in the streets.
First order of the day - double the petrol tax.
Second order of the day - spend all the extra petrol tax revenue building safer roads and replacing all our diesel buses with hybrids.
Third order of the day - replace GST with a flat import duty, no exemptions!
Fourth order of the day - raise all tax thresholds by $5,000.
Fifth order of the day - Register the party name “Zone of the Above” and become elected leader of the country at the next election by getting more party votes than all the other parties combined.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
The New Zealand scenario is a bit different from that of Europe, America or Australia in that most of our electricity is generated from renewables - or hopefully soon will be. This gives electrified heavy rail, light rail (trams) and electric trolley buses a huge advantage in fuel use - they don’t use any! If buses can be adapted to all-electric or PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) drive, then they too can take advantage of our renewable electricity generation. Even if we still need some thermal generation, we can avoid high oil prices, since at least some of the thermal power stations can use coal (or wood!), or as a last resort natural gas. (The gas would be better fuelling cars and light trucks though.)
Trevor.
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
kevyn “none of the above” would be a good name for a party…. shame about the typo. “zone of the above” makes it sound like you’re going for the new-age religious vote… probably not so likely to outscore all other parties!
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
“zone of the aboveâ€? is a deliberate typo designed to sidestep whoever approves official party names and to ensure the name appears at the very bottom of the voting paper. Because that’s where people expect “none of the above” to appear on a list many people will jump to the conclusion that it is a typo or even convince themselves “at a glance” that it actually does say “none of the above”. This could be helped along by a mailbox drop the day before the election with a simple glossy pamphlet showing a dummy voting paper with the Zone of the Above box marked and the pen obscuring the Z, with a simple slogan along the lines “This time you’re allowed to do what you always wanted to do”. The party’s charter would have to state that it’s purpose is to “stand above politics and advocate abstinence as the cure for democracy”, or whatever wording clever dick lawyers decide will slither around the finer points of the Electoral Act and EFA.
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:05 pm
too dodgy Kevyn. not sure whether your explanation - obscuring pen and all- is a strategy or a knee jerk explanation for your typo. either way, doesn’t really work. Democracy through apathy, for want of a better option, is not really where we want to be heading is it?!
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 pm
We? IMHO effective democracy ceased in this country when Parliament abolished the Provinicial Councils and centralised power into their own hands and those of head office bureaucrats. But then I think that technocracy is a superior system of governance to democracy so I’m somewhat biased in that opinion.
Democracy through apathy is better than democracy through focus groups, which is what we have right now.
No, my actual intention was to raise, in a round about way, the issue of how many non-voters are currently voting with their feet for none of the above. The response of politicians to this phenomena is very telling. Rather than considering that this might be a form of civil disobedience they acuse the non-voters of apathy and make the absurd statement that if you don’t vote you can’t complain. IMHO it is those who do vote who can’t complain, at least about the behaviour of the politicians they voted for. If those who abstain from voting are doing so in order to exercise a natural right not respected in law then the question is how to give that right legal recognition.
The right to choose none of the above would be easy to include on the ballot paper but giving it legal status in the voting chamber would be the tricky bit. The simplest method would be to regard “none of the above” as a canditate or party. Any electorate where “none of the above” gets more votes than any candidate would become an abstaining electorate. For the party vote “none of the above” would have the status of a party for the purposes of determining list seats. Consequently this would have no effect when a vote is decided by the number of ayes and noes. It would only have an effect where a quorum or minimum number of votes is needed to change a law. It’s main effect would be to remind politicians every day in the house that they are not universally approved of by the elecorate and, most importantly, that no party actually has a mandate form the majority of voters. By excluding non-voters many parties are able to convine themselves that they have a mandate from the majority of New Zealanders when all they really have is a mandate from a majority of those cast a vote. Perhaps that is why politicians do nothing more than mouth platitudes about the low voter turnout for a few weeks after each election then forget it for three years.
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Kevyn,
Thank you for the link to the US book on transportation energy consumption.
One interesting fact from Table 2.13, where you got your bus energy usage figures is:
In 1970 US buses used 31 796 BTU per mile. This increased to 37 498 BTU per mile in 2004. I imagine the difference could probably be explained by things such as 2004 buses having air conditioning, whereas 1970 buses didn’t. In any case, in 1970 the BTU per passenger mile for buses was 2472, whereas in 2004 it was 4323. Aside from the increase in energy used by the bus, the main difference must be the passenger loading of the buses; in 1970 more people used the bus than in 2004?
Perhaps the 1970 figures are more appropriate to use when planning public transportation; with increasing fuel prices it is reasonable to assume public transport patronage will increase. If we can’t achieve better energy efficiency than what we were getting in 1970, something is wrong.
Finally, as someone else pointed out, energy usage is important, but so is the type of fuel. An electric trolley bus using the same amount of renewably generated energy as a diesel bus (or car or whatever) is obviously a more sustainable proposition.
An interesting related question is which produces more CO2: producing 1 J of energy in a petrol car engine, or 1 J of electricity by burning brown coal at a remote power station. I had this argument with someone who claimed that recharging their (hypothetical) electric car at home produced less CO2 emissions than simply driving an equivalent sized petrol car. The power station may be more efficient than a car engine (I am guessing they run at a higher temperature, and will be optimally “tuned” (or whatever you do with power stations)), but its fuel is dirtier, there are losses of electricity in transmission lines, and recharging batteries is not 100% efficient either.
In a sense all these calculations will be irrelevant in a few decades. We won’t have any fossil fuels left for buses or cars, no matter how efficient they are; it will be back to Shanks’ pony for all of us.
May 4th, 2008 at 2:02 am
samiuela, One other reason for the worsening of bus fuel efficiency is that the 70’s oil shock created a political imperative to provide bus services to sprawl suburbs using using existing buses instead of buying smaller buses for the new services. In fact adding small buses to the existing fleet can dramaticly improve fleet fuel economy and levels of service at a lot less capital cost than adding more conventional buses. Splitting suburban bus routes into arterial and feeder routes lets the existing big buses provide a more frequent service on arterial routes. The smaller buses can either cover more streets in the same route service time or provide a more frequent service on the residential portion of the old suburban bus route. This is similar to the road hierarchy approach to managing road capacity and level of service.
Modern cars use about 1/4 of energy in petrol, modern coal fired power stations use about 1/3rd of the energy in the coal. Add transmission losses to the train, tram or bus and you end up only using 1/4 of the energy contained in the coal. But there are two currently available ways of improving that situation.
1) Add more renewables to the electricity supply
2) Add regenerative braking to all electric trains, trams and buses. That cuts power consumption by more than 1/3rd.
My objections to PT advocates misrepresenting what PT is capable of delivering mustn’t be seen as objections to investing in PT. I really only object to investing in what is essentially 1950s technology and systems thinking. That is not what is needed to prepare for a post peak oil world.
PT investments shouldn’t result in less spending on road safey engineering even if that may only be needed for another ten or twenty years. Instead of choosing between different priorities to spend fuel taxes on lets just increase fuel taxes to provide enough money to pay for all our transport needs. The faster the price goes up the faster people will change their ways. It might make life harder for your children today but the payoff is that it’ll make life easier for your children in the future.
May 4th, 2008 at 8:06 am
yes i thought the z might be deliberate for the purpose of getting to the bottom of the page. unfortunately since the phrase “zone of the above” sticks together so well in its own right it doesn’t really work as a proxy for “none…”
you could go for znone of the above…
i do admire the idea of a party whose raison d’etre revolves around being at the bottom of the list of parties advertizing itself as “standing above politics”
as for apathy, i think people are far too inclined to romanticize it. mostly people who don’t vote are just ignorant bums.
blaming politicians for creating an environment in which people do not wish to be involved is fallacious too. people get what they want, if enough people actually cared about having frank, courageous MPs that is what we would by-&-large have.
for the people to become better educated is the only solution, if any.
not for them to be given a hip excuse for their complacency
May 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
“mostly people who don’t vote are just ignorant bums.” That can’t be right, we’ve got Labour supported by NZ First