If one thing has become clear to me this year, it is that there is a lot of money out there for transport – the real question is “how should we spend it?” This is what makes situations like the current electrification debacle so frustrating. Within the same week of hearing that Auckland’s rail electrification project is likely to be butchered to save around $100 million, we hear that Steven Joyce is wanting to spend $2 billion on a Puhoi-Wellsford motorway (a road that carries only 10,000-15,000 vehicles a day along it – about the same as the top end of Sandringham Road) even though it’s never had a cost-benefit analysis done. And, if just to rub salt into our wounds, today we hear that around a billion dollars is going to be needed to widen the Northwestern Motorway – because of the extra traffic that the Waterview Connection will bring.
The Herald article says:
Widening Auckland’s Northwestern Motorway as an upgrade to the western ring route between Manukau and Albany is expected to cost as much again as the controversial $1 billion-plus Waterview link.
The Transport Agency has disclosed that the total cost of widening the motorway between St Lukes and Westgate, and building a combined surface-tunnel link through Waterview, is likely to reach $2.2 billion in “escalated dollars”.
What this extra spending clearly shows is how buildings more motorways, or widening existing ones, never solves congestion – it just shifts the bottleneck. If the Waterview Connection is built as a four-lane route (my understanding is that widening to 6 lanes will be possible in the longer term, but for now it will only be four lanes) then NZTA’s traffic modelling has shown that it is necessary to widen the Northwest Motorway between Waterview and Te Atatu from six lanes to eight lanes – as a fairly significant cost of $240 million. But even then, the traffic models show that the Waterview Connection is likely to be close to capacity the day it opens – so widening it to six lanes might be necessary. Once we do that, then SH16 between Waterview and Te Atatu might need to be 10 lanes, to avoid a bottleneck at Waterview, then we’d definitely need to widen SH16 between Te Atatu and Westgate from its current four lanes to six or possibly even eight lanes. Once we’d done that we might need to widen the not even yet finished Hobsonville deviation from four lanes to six… and so on. And that’s not even considering what would happen to the south of the Waterview Connection, with it possibly being necessary to widen the Mt Roskill extension (recently completed) and further parts of SH20, which are already being widened at the moment at a cost of around $300 million.
Does anyone else see the problem here? Simply building more motorways and widening your existing ones is a never-ending process of shifting bottlenecks. Furthermore, as our current motorways have generally been widened already in the past it is going to be very expensive to widen them further – with earthworks and land acquisition likely to be required in many places. Well aware of this issue, the authors of the Royal Commission’s inquiry into Auckland’s local government (remember, the well thought out ideas the Rodney Hide threw in the bin?) made the following excellent observation:
Various commentators have likened building more roads as a cure for traffic congestion to loosening one’s belt as a cure for obesity.
I couldn’t have put it better myself. The problem here isn’t a lack of funding available for transport projects – the problem is blinkered ideology that funding for roads is good, and funding for public transport is bad. While I might sometimes lean towards the opposite extreme, that is only because the current ideology of our transport minister is so extremely roads-centric one needs to pull really hard in the opposite direction to even have a hope of ending up with a more balanced transport policy.
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The funny thing is spending the extra $100 million on the rail electrification to have a full capacity, modern frequent fleet on the right infrastructure (which will have to happen for the CBD tunnel and if isn’t done now you know it’ll be included in the CBD tunnel cost, unlike Waterview’s lane widening) would help reduce the amount of people needing to use SH20 and SH16 as they could well be on the Western line…
What seems crazy is all the billions being poured into Waterview and the SH16 upgrade, while at the same time it is recognised that effectively the road will be at capacity as soon as it’s built. I mean…. that seems crazy.
I’m gonna e-mail the NZTA tonight about getting a busway included in this madness…
Good stuff, I mean if they’re spending all that money anyway we might as well get something useful out of it.
As the most venerable D Lange would say…”Stupid, I can smell the hydrocarbons on your breath from over here!” – Stupid being S Joyce.
This not to mention the money Joyce is proposing to spend on a completely new 4 lane motorway through a good chunk of new housing on the Kapiti Coast, a route which the local councils hadn’t even contemplated at all and don’t actualy want since they have only all just recently agreed on an effective by-pass road to reduce local Kapiti traffic on State Highway One anyway… It beats me as to where on earth these billions of dollars for roads are supposed to be coming from when the government says it can’t even afford $35 million for ACE night classes. Maybe they have a secret plan to simply put all beneficiaries to work with picks and shovels building these new roads?
The money is coming from the closing down of all police stations, selling patrol cares, police houses and the complete privatization of all prisons, hospitals, schools and social welfare.
See it doesn’t work in the USA but the clowns in Wellington can make it work here! 🙂
I can still smell the Hydrocarbons on Joyce’s breath!
State highways are funded from petrol taxes, RUCs etc. so don’t really compete with the education budget and so on for funding. It’s the ideology that petrol tax money must be spent on roads that frustrates me – surely it’s obvious that road users benefit from good public transport reducing the number of people driving around in cars?
Ah, not quite. See Rate payers, are indirectly subsidising the State highways. People have to drive their cars for so many kilometres along non SH roads to get to these motorways. These non SH roads are paid for by less than 50% of petrol taxes/RUC’s. In other words the state should be using all the petrol tax revenue to pay for all roading as every motorist is paying these taxes whether or not they use the SH network. Instead the state only pays out 50% and uses the rest to build these big flash and expensive highways.
So no their not competing with the education budget but are competing with libraries, sewerage systems, parks, keeping beaches clean and safe, and the whole plethora of other local council business.
Who is this Admin person who seems to know so much about transport..?
Jezza – the admin is the admin 😉
Patrick – yes you are quite correct. And that’s not even to mention the hidden subsidies through measures like minimum parking requirements. However, if roads weren’t at least partly subsidised by ratepayers we’d have a much harder time arguing why public transport should be subsidised.
I’d like to add something cheery, but this afternoon I went to the most depressing transportation presentation ever. NZTA was presenting the NLTP to the Councils. Not an easy sell really as the big winner is obviously NZTA with squillions for RoNS. But they did have delicious mini scones with cream, however, I digress. The amount of money that is planned for spending on these (presently) 7 projects is absolutely unbelievable. NZTA (with it’s funding hat on) basically said “after the work that’s committed now (i.e. electrification, the new stations and double tracking, you can forget any new major PT or local road infrastructure for the next 10 – 15 years”. Page 12 of the NLTP (http://nzta.govt.nz/publications/nltp/docs/nltp-2009.pdf) has the most horrifying graph showing the spend on State highways (over the next 10 years), starting now with the committed stuff like Vic Park Tunnel, Waterview etc and moving steadily into RoNS. Basically from 2014 they’ll planning to spend over $1 Billion a year just on those 7 projects! These would be the projects that sit outside of the normal assessment criterion so don’t actually have to get a B/C. That’s more being spent in just one year on those 7 State highway projects than is planned to be spent on PT infrastructure OVER THE WHOLE COUNTRY FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS!
More depressing was NZTAs insistence that this was just the start of the RoNS.
More depressing still was the guy that got up to tell us how lucky we were to be getting $269m (over the country) for PT infrastructure over the next 3 years. Even though 80% was already committed, mostly funding projects that would have been funded through Auckland’s petrol tax that National axed. He then put up a graph showing the cost per rail trip (i.e. how much they’re spending vs number of trips). Which in Auckland, for the last 5 years has been between $6 and $10. While those lovely folk in Wellington were only around $3. He said this was unsustainable and it’s our fault we’re spending so much, we needed to be at the same rate as Wellington. Basically, we were jolly lucky to be getting all this rail money and we should be more thankful. I’ll get a copy of the graphs, they’re truly laughable in a “lie’s, damn lie’s and statistics” kind of way. And this was the guy that was supposed to be supporting PT! Bless Kevin from Waitakere CC who piped up “I hope the quality of information being provided to the Minister is better than this!” Rant over. Sad day.
Crikey R. Lin that certainly does sound depressing.
Surely a cost-benefit analysis of the RoNS will be done…. surely?
Thanks R. Lin… I’m moving to Aussie…
Jezza, don’t to forget to come back in 2 years, Juice and Ko will be gone by then :).
To borrow an American Army term, Juice and the Nats have created a real CLUSTER FRACK!
I’ll do you a deal, I’ll come back when the Airport line is opened..! LOL, maybe that’ll mean my elderly grandkids will come back..!
It’s been said by everyone else but this is so depressing. God help us here, we are stuck in a time warp spending billions and billions to basically find ourselves in pretty much the same situation we are now in 10 – 15 years. No scratch that it will be a far worse situation because oil will be so much more expensive.
There is no point in trying to influence the likes of Joyce with reasoned debate and data. He made up his mind long before he was even made minister of trucking that rail was a waste of money. These guys have been signalling for a long time that they were just itching to get in there and indulge in an orgy of raod building for their mates at the RTF.
Public pressure is our only faint hope to change things. Sadly the vast majority of people don’t pay a lot of attention to this stuff by the time they wake up and realise what a mess we are going to get it may be too late.
Let’s hope these guys don’t get anymore than two terms. They are doing some serious damage here.
Cam – Dont get me wrong, i’m no roading fanboy – infact the opposite. But to me we should not be basing our arguements apon oil, as there are technological advances that are going to take away our dependence on it, for road travel. However its the many other reasons we argue for public transport that we need to push. To me the major reason would have to be moving people in the most efficient way possible, and that’s why this ellectrification project is so crucial, along with the CBD Tunnel. I feel basing the arguement on rasing oil prices and polution, just enable the ministers to keep funding roading projects as this is not a major concern, because it will be solved in the near future. So we need to somehow get Joyce to understand that we require a combination of roading and public transport projects, and they need to be compared to getther with the same pot of money to collect the funds from.
While your right to an extent Joshua it is not certain and not certain the advances will happen by the time we need… I see a 20 – 30 year window when oil skyrockets and battery or other technology… Remember there was a 60 year or so window from the discovery of the nature of the electro-magnetic force to the logical next steps of the inventions of the lightbulb, radio and electric motor/generator… Electric cars are at most 20 years into development…
We should have the foresight to have some alternatives for that time period and I’m simply not comfortable betting our ecomony on a blind belief in future technological advances as and when required..!
Given the adaptability (and therefore safety) of a more balanced transport system and the economic, environmental and health benefits anything less than a big increase in PT share and electric vehicle share is negligent…
I didn’t mean to put oil forward as the sole argument for PT. So apologies if it appeared that way. It is one important factor to consider however.
My main point is that it does not matter what your argument is they are not listening. You can put all the rational and well considered arguments you want in fornt of them and it wont make one bit of difference. The only possible way they would move to a more balanced transport policy would be if public pressure grew to a level that it jeprodised their chance of getting re elected.
You wont get Joyce to understand the need for both road and rail.From Joyce’s viewpoint rail is uneconomic, he’s made up his mind and i really don’t think there is much possibility of him having a road to Damascus moment and seeing the light. He sees rail as a blackhole for money and if it were really up to him electrification would not be happening.
The Nats agreed to finish off electrification because it was part of an overall election strategy to promote the fact that the party had moved away from the hard right policies of the Don Brash days and were now more centerist. They also knew there were votes in Auckland to be gained from this. It’s become obvious though that they see this as one of the “dead rats” they have to swallow as Lockwood Smith described it. A project that had to be committed to to secure votes but one that they don’t really see a lot of value in.
The overall strategy as far as PT is concerned appears to be to pay lip service to it so as not to appear to be too unbalanced, but to then go ahead and pour just about all available funds into roading.
That is my assessment of the situation too… It’s a case of we’ll finish whatever PT projects have been started and after that it’s our turn to blanket NZ in roads till the next government…
I agree that the economic argument is definitely one to put to Joyce. Copenhagen spends 4% of its wealth on transport, Auckland spends 16% of its wealth on transport – that’s a lot of extra money being used here, but for what purpose?
I was just thinking this morning whether technology change will suit public transport too. A few years ago a bus trip was a pretty unpleasant experience – wasted time with nothing really to do other than stare at the scenery going past. These days you can listen to your ipod, send txt messages on your cellphone and so on. In the near future fancy devices like iPhones will probably become cheaper, and people will check email and their favourite websites while on the bus or train – try doing that while driving! Time on public transport can be productive time, and perhaps people will start to realise that.
“how buildings more motorways, or widening existing ones, never solves congestion – it just shifts the bottleneck” nonsense, there are plenty of motorways and widenings that haven’t shifted bottlenecks. Wellington’s Urban Motorway permanently cleared Lambton Quay and dramatically eased The Terrace for 20 years, and the Tawa motorway has never done so. The Great South Road has never seen the congestion it once had since the Southern M’way was built, and it has been many many years since the NW M’way was extended NW (and even then the extension is only going to be 2 lane). Christchurch’s Northern Motorway has no bottlenecks at either end, neither does the Dunedin Southern Motorway.
It’s a generalised myth, with the truth of some specific examples which demonstrate that the whole corridor needs more capacity. If a route with capacity problems gets one bottleneck fixed then it exacerbates the other problems. Remember SH20 is about relieving SH16 from Waterview to the CBD, and SH1 from Manukau to the CBD, as well as an alternative diversion to the Harbour Bridge. It will remove traffic from those sections of motorway and local streets, but if priced incorrectly then demand will continue to grow.
However, it is also true that parallel public transport has never solved congestion either. NEITHER approach is sustainable in the long term. Precious few is the major public transport project that has relieved congestion on a parallel road.
and no, the funding for roads isn’t about ideology, it is about methodology and appraisal. The public transport projects often don’t generate travel time savings, and generate little mode shift, so charging motorists to pay for them is not economically efficient.
The whole Western Ring Road was agreed in concept by the last government, when David Stubbs and Jan Wright led a team of officials selected by the PM’s office to decide what Auckland needed to relieve congestion. Having an alternative north-south route that enabled west-south traffic to avoid the Central motorway junction was part of that, along with a major improvement in public transport, and elimination of current shortcomings on the road network (e.g. CMJ was designed and built haphazardly with poor capacity matching). The idea that it is all about the Nats is ludicrous. I remember very well how important building new motorways (and public transport) was to the last government, as I worked on it.
John: You’re talking nonsense, precious little new housing would be affected by the Kapiti expressway, which is in fact one of best performing road projects in the country. The local council has for years stuffed around on the western link road, and had bastardised it to the extent that it wasn’t worth continuing with. Most of the route will be on a 50 year old designation, and the money for it taken from what would have been spent on the western link road.
Patrick: More nonsense. The money comes from the NLTF, taxes from motorists. None of that goes on what you said. Ratepayers pay roughly proportionately for the fixed costs of local roads, costs that exist whether or not people use them. More than a few vehicles using state highways never started on a local road, as there are plenty of people living and doing business on state highways. Fuel tax and RUC revenue generated from the use of state highways is more than that spent on them anyway. However, if you want all road users paying for all roads, fine, that 8c/l fuel tax hike and equivalent RUC increase will make precious little difference, except it leaves some rates to hand back to ratepayers.
Joshua: How is it efficient for people who want to move to have others pay for their trip? Why should Auckland rail commuters be handed a $6 to $10 subsidy per ride, when Auckland bus commuters aren’t, and neither are other public transport users elsewhere in the country (let alone motorists, cyclists of pedestrians). Why are they special? The business case for passenger rail in Auckland is marginal at best, rail has demonstrated for much of the country that it is incapable of efficiently competing with road transport for people or freight. The network needs to be scaled back significantly to what is competitive. Railways have never generated a financial surplus that can be spent on other things for decades, including when it had a statutory monopoly on long haul freight, roads on the other hand have. That in itself speaks volumes.
I might suggest that the biggest change in the next few years will be that telecommunications will reduce the demand for commuting overall, and allow more peak spreading of demand, so building capacity for short peaks will be unnecessary. Similarly, more people might wake up to the real transport problem:
pricing. Almost everyone commenting is completely mindless to the chronic underpricing of roads at peak times, and underpricing of public transport at peak times as well. Why the rest of the economy should put up with this gross misallocation of resources to peak time commuting is beyond me, as it is highly wasteful and bad for the environment. Without this distortion, maybe a fair number of office workers could work at home one day a week -then arguing for a CBD rail tunnel or any more motorways would be ridiculous. None of it could ever be justified.
Libertyscott – If road building is all about methodology and appraisal not ideology why has Puhoi to Wellsford been designated a road of national significance without a cost benefit analysis being done? There does not seem to much methodology or appraisal in that project.
In terms of the examples you used of Wellington and Christchurch perhaps you could let us know how their population growth compares with Auckland? Has the amount of cars on their roads increased at the same rate Auckland’s has? It would be useful to get that information so we can know we are comparing apples with apples here. Perhaps you could give us a couple of examples from similar size cities overseas (Perth maybe or Adelaide?). That would seem more appropriate to me.
Just to clarify are you saying that because a portion of cost of local roads comes out of rates that’s ok because everyone uses the roads and it’s therefore not a subsidy?
You say that road freight generates a surplus, you seem to be ingnoring the fact that they manage to do this by getting a subsidy from private motorists. A couple of recent reports indicated Trucks don’t fully cover the wear and tear they cause on our roads. In addition to that although they only 4% of the road fleet they contribute to 23% of all crashes on our roads (according to the Greens at least)
http://www.ipenz.org.nz/ipenz/media_comm/documents/Submissionforreviewofroadusercharges-finalsubmitted.pdf
The problem with auckland is we have always reacted rather than planned. Road building is a reaction to the problem, not planning for the future. Building a rail system is always going to be the most efficient way of moving people in the long run, and may in time start funding your road building. Libertyscott is obviously a short term thinker rather than looking at the larger picture. Unfortunately so is joyicey, so we will always be 10years behind rather than 10 years ahead.
You’ll also notice Liberty didn’t mention peak oil and climate change once… But pricing is the big issue around transport… Yeah right…
I’m quessing it’s because he’s a libertarian and those must obviously be lies because they cannot be solved by the libertarian ideology…
Building a new motorway clearly does fix congestion on the road it replaces. However, while that road may not become congested again over time the motorway will become congested instead. I guess that’s a slight improvement – but still generally not “what was promised” by the time savings benefits that ignore induced demand.
I do really appreciate Liberty’s comments, because they make you think and really examine what your opinions are. However, when he gets into the “the solution is pricing, why should I have to pay for something I don’t use…” and so forth, the ideology comes through.
Generally what people say is far more interesting without the ideological spiel.
Cam: I don’t agree with “Roads of National Significance”, but then the last government hardly used any form of objective appraisal in how it treated rail or indeed aviation, but that’s another story. I would get rid of that title, and treat all projects on the same basis, as what happened until 2001.
Ah well you’re basically admitting that building new roads CAN fix congestion, it just depends on circumstances and underlying growth patterns. I note that despite having lavish rail networks, both Sydney and Melbourne had to give up long standing policies of not building motorways to allow the private sector to build decent radial and orbital arterials in the last 20 years. Melbourne Citylink is a perfect example of a motorway that has resolved congestion, the magic part of the formula are the tolls, which vary somewhat due to demand. THAT is the key.
No, I am not saying it is “ok” that local roads get a subsidy, but that the amount is not significant in terms of determining modal split. 8c/l increase in fuel tax will not make much difference to modeshare.
How does road freight get a subsidy from private motorists? What are your “recent reports”? RUC more than fully recovers state highway wear and tear from trucks, and recovers their share from local roads minus rates. Rates being the underlying issue. You might want to read the RUC review report. http://www.transport.govt.nz/news/newsevents/Documents/RUC-Final-Report.pdf The STCC report indicated that trucks were to blame for 5.5% of all total accident costs, slightly more than pedestrians (Table B10.4 of STCC report). I wouldn’t trust the Greens to produce a balanced view on this issue given the brainless hyperboles Sue Kedgeley is keen on.
Joshua: It isn’t true that there hasn’t been planning, most of the motorways recently (Waterview being the big exception) have been built on 30-40 year old designations, and Avondale-Southdown designation is even older. Much of Auckland’s motorway building was in advance of demand. However, the problem is spending in advance of demand can be an enormous waste of capital if the demand does not eventuate. The amounts of money we are talking about are significant, regardless of mode, so some certainty about the value of such spending is needed before it is committed. After all, the country is littered with examples of transport spending that was “forward thinking” but largely unnecessary (too many provincial airports for example).
Jezza: Fine, if you don’t think pricing is the issue then explain why it is only roads that have chronic inefficient queuing and delays at times of peak demand? Other sectors price demand off of peaks or onto alternatives. Singapore, London and Stockholm have demonstrated that pricing can ease congestion, it is basic economics. The same problem is public transport use – the insanity of having most rail rolling stock sitting around idle all day long to be overcrowded for maybe 2 or 3 trips in the morning and then the evening peak, is an enormous waste to subsidise people with on average better paid jobs than most. If you think it is good for climate change to have traffic crawling or to build infrastructure that lies idle most of the time, then you’ve got blinkers on. Oh and if you believe in peak oil, then I assume you’ll be putting money into public transport companies and oil futures so you can say “told you so”, now is surely the best time to buy. I am constantly amused by the people who want to force others to pay for events they are convinced are going to happen, but wont risk their own money to invest in the scarce commodities or “essential services” they are convinced we all need. If oil prices rise then the market can respond, like it did with coal and wood in the past.
Sadly, the solution IS pricing. You can evade it as much as you like, but people overuse resources because they are underpriced, and you have to ask a serious question as to whether it is fair for people who don’t use transport to pay for those who do.
Of course the issue with peak oil is the whole “oil spike, recession, oil spike, recession” yo-yo that is likely to happen for the next few years. If you’re investing in oil now you never quite know whether the time when your investment will mature is going to be at the top or the bottom of the yo-yo.
At Liberty, pricing is an issue but not THE issue…
And you can laugh all you want but I’ve asked the financial advisor who administers my trust to buy shares in cruise ship companies, I haven’t looked recently but I think he’s brought a few thousand dollars worth which is about 10% of my portfolio, these shares I plan on keeping till I retire and I’ve been looking for a publicly traded company that specialises in rail electrification…
So prey tell what private road building companies are you invested in..?
Liberty – I’m not admitting roads alone can solve congestion just questioning the validity of the comparison. Although i’ll admit if your population barely grows and the number of cars on the road stays pretty much static and you build more roads then it’s possible. Do you think that is the case with Auckland though?
Could you show us what you are basing your argument that these two roads in Wellington and Christchurch have solved congestion on? Do you have some facts to back that up?
The surface transport costs and charges study by the MOT is one of the reports i am referring to link below:
http://www.bikenz.org.nz/Resource.aspx?ID=225
It says this among other things:
When the total charges (excluding rates) paid by users are allocated across the vehicle
fleet according to type we find that:
• cars directly pay 64% of their costs,
• trucks directly pay 56% of their costs
• buses directly pay 68% of their costs.
Interestingly it also says this about the rail system:
4.2 Who pays for the rail network?
The STCC shows that all users pay 77% ($406 million per annum) of the total costs – a
higher percentage than that directly paid by road users
Oh so this is the famous STCC report I keep hearing about…. Thanks Cam!
Admin – No worries. This is a summary of the main points the full report can be found on the ministry website. As Jezza points out Liberty is quite right that pricing is an issue but not the only issue after all if you are going to use pricing to discourage congestion you have to provide and attractive alternative not just assume that we will all work from home once broadband speeds improve. You also need to take into account the externalities like pollution and the cost of oil i think.
I have to say i agree with the statement below from that particular report:
“Dealing with congestion is not just a matter of price. It is increasingly clear that
congestion can only be tackled by new pricing systems combined with new road
construction; better management of existing roads; provision of high quality alternative
public transport systems; and encouragement of low impact modes such as walking and
cycling. There are no quick fixes!”
I guess what needs to be weighed up are the positive and negative effects of introducing a pricing system to transport more than we do at the moment. There would be positive effects – like a reduced need to build transport infrastructure – but there would also be negative effects, that could potentially be felt by the poor most harshly (as happens with all users pays systems, those who can pay use, those who can’t don’t).
I think you need a carrot and a stick. Better alternatives, better land-use planning so that people don’t have to travel so far to undertake their daily tasks and being clever about how you price things – with discounts for off-peak travel and extra charges for peak hour travel so that we can smooth the peaks a bit.
admin: Indeed, that is the “peak oil” issue, so you have to ask yourself why taxpayers should be forced to “invest” based on a similar gamble when it could be premature, and there are better things to spend money on in the interim.
Jezza: So how do you fix road congestion? What cities have had the greatest success in doing so? Singapore and Stockholm. Good for you on your investments, my money’s in communications, health care services and the media. Transport is far too risky 🙂
Cam: The Wellington and Christchurch ones are observation. I remember (barely) Lambton Quay pre motorway and in recent years, it is a world of difference, as Lambton Quay carries no through traffic. Christchurch is rather simple as there isn’t really any congestion either end or on the northern motorway (or through Kaiapoi). Auckland DOES have much growth, the question is how to manage the road resource better. Congestion is demand exceeding supply, so I’d use congestion pricing as a first step to addressing that in Auckland.
Yes, the total costs in STCC aren’t helpful, as it monetises costs that NOBODY pays for, so you have to look at infrastructure, return on capital and externalities separately. Then you need to look at marginal costs to determine if you get better or worse results encouraging a particular mode at a particular time for a particular task.
On top of that bear in mind that the rail system has since been renationalised and had far more money poured into it than was the case in 2001, but then RUC and FED have also gone up, as has spending on roads (although capex is outside these calculations because it is a capital investment rather than a cost imposed by users).
In other words, STCC requires quite a bit of delving down to get to what’s really interesting. I know rail and road lobbyists all thought the report vindicated them, the truth is that it vindicated no one.
STCC’s big figure is that urban congestion is by far the biggest uncharged externality. The STCC case studies also demonstrated that the environmental impact of road vs rail for freight varied by route, so that road freight is sometimes more environmentally friendly than rail (and vice versa). Another point from STCC is that all the government set charges are in fact a relatively small part of overall transport costs, in other words, they don’t really make much difference with mode choice compared with the advantages and disadvantages inherent to modes in particular situations. What is going to be interesting is the STCC update, given the massive increases in spending on land transport, and the increases in RUC and FED in recent years (and the substantial cleaning up of fuel, with sulphur and benzene levels cut dramatically).
Bear in mind we already price roads, we price them through a proxy called fuel tax which means everyone pays the same regardless (and RUC which is a closer proxy to actual usage and is a good proxy for average road damage). If these charges were simply reallocated according to those imposing cost, it would be cheaper for many motorists, particularly those at off peak, those in smaller centres and those driving counter to the peak flows. The idea that this would automatically have equity impacts needs further scrutiny. People who work in Auckland’s CBD are generally better paid and already have umpteen public transport options. They would pay the most. People who work shifts, people who work in smaller centres don’t have such good alternatives, and would pay less.
The two big myths about urban road pricing are that “everyone affected needs an alternative”, and that it automatically means everyone pays more. You cannot efficiently give everyone an alternative. However, this becomes a political issue. Do people who use little transport owe those who use a lot to subsidise their movement? I’d argue no of course.
On what people would pay, for example, I would advocate in Auckland replacing rates funding for roads with a CBD congestion charge, and a small property access charge for property owners (to reflect part of the fixed cost of providing the access function of local roads). This would mean rates for everyone would drop, which would have positive equity implications. Those who pay more are people driving to the one part of Auckland most easily accessed by public transport. The property access charge could also reflect different levels of access, e.g. access to large car parks requires expenditure on the road for lining, signing, so may cost more. Over time I’d move everyone over to an ERUC system, so all road use is charged per km, and varies by road and time of day. The total charged would depend on expenditure requirements for the land transport sector, but it would be allocated to maximise efficient use of the road network.
How would I deal with congestion, well Cam’s quote from the report sounds pretty bloody good to me:
“It is increasingly clear that congestion can only be tackled by new pricing systems combined with new road construction; better management of existing roads; provision of high quality alternative public transport systems; and encouragement of low impact modes such as walking and cycling. There are no quick fixes!”
It seems to me that that is what the CBT is pushing for…
I must say liberty you are the best of a bad bunch of libertarians I’ve chatted to on the internet… I often wish we could give you guys Great Barrier Island and organise a constitutional convention for you… I would watch with interest… I do suspect you’d be back in 10 years either because no one was paying their voluntary taxes or you had a population of 50 million people and a stronger military then America and needed some space… I’m not sure, I know I wouldn’t wanna be part of your dog eat dog world…
“I know I wouldn’t wanna be part of your dog eat dog world”
Well said Jezza i totally agree.
Liberty – the reason the government should look to insulate us from the worst effects of peak oil is because the yo-yo-ing is so destructive. There’s a huge difference between what one can achieve individually through investing in oil stocks and what a government should do to future-proof against significant problems in the future. Furthermore, I don’t think that peak oil is a “gamble” in terms of whether it will happens. Scientifically, peak oil has to happen.
The work that the IEA has done in recent months analysing the decline reates of oil fields across the globe shows some pretty scary results. We’re in for a bumpy next years that’s for sure!