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

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.

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.

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.

Trevor.

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.