One of the most interesting things to note when it comes to transport trends over the past few years is the complete lack in growth of state highway traffic volumes since around 2005, with a little bumping around we actually find ourselves with the same level of traffic on our state highways in 2010 as we had in 2005:
It’s perhaps a bit early to comprehensively know whether this is a short-term “bucking” of the long-term trend of inexorable growth – or something more permanent. Of course we have had a pretty major economic ‘situation’ over the past few years which is likely to have contributed to the flat-lining of traffic growth, but I tend to think that there’s something more long term at work here.
If you look at similar numbers in the USA, you can also see a pretty big anomaly to the long-term traffic growth rates over the past few years:
There’s an obvious connection between the graph above and the one below, which shows a decline in the USA’s consumption of petroleum over the past few years:
Along with the economic difficulties of the past few years I can’t help but think a core reason for these changes relates to the rising cost of fuel, which itself is fundamentally being caused by the increasing difficulty of finding more oil to pump. This is pretty obvious when you look at global oil supply levels over the past eight years:
Perhaps the over-arching point to take from all these graphs is to ask the question about whether we really think it’s likely that we’ll return to the days of the 1990s and early 2000s when traffic grew consistently each year by a few percentage points – putting increasing pressure on the transport system and making the argument for building more and more roads. Or, alternatively, is the current situation part of a longer term trend, something we’re also seeing in overseas countries like the USA, caused by the inability to increase oil supply (and therefore increasing prices)? If the answer is the latter, then perhaps we need to truly fundamentally rethink our approach to transport, because if the number of cars on the road system isn’t increasing, then it’s pretty hard to argue that we need to increase the capacity of the road network.
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Our economy hasn’t contracted that much. If we’re back at 2005 levels of traffic, that points to a long-term adjustment. Consider how much the population had increased during those six years (refugees from the National regime notwithstanding), and you’re looking at a huge reduction in traffic movements per capita
Another nail in the coffin of the need for any RoNS.
We can save our money, not go into hock, still build lovely urban places, fund DOC properly and live like kings in a beautiful place.
Better that than being poor, going to our low-paid jobs to pay the interest, never paying off the principle, and being stuck in a motorway snarl.
Over my brekkie on TV1 Breakfast they just said in a Colmar-Brunton?? poll that 7 out of 10 New Zealanders don’t want large expenditure on road projects and those figures apply in Auckland too.
I think a lot of people get that there are diminishing returns on building more roads. 7 out of 10 in fact.
That gives me hope.
I think it is significant that Joyce’s statement on the new RoNS is much less confident than previously, here’s what he said: ‘in the next three years we will be evaluating work on additional key high-use highways around the country’.
Not like Joyce to bother with evaluating a road before announcing it.
This is an election call to the heartland and the core Natpat base, who he assumes is as road mad as he is.
Because there are two things he does know, even if he won’t even admit them to himself: 1. these plans cannot stack up even with his usual twisting of the metrics. and 2. NZ will not be in surplus in 2014/15 no matter who wins the election.
Think the world economy is going to keep growing?: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/04/global-world-product-will-not-grow-at-4.html
My bet is that none of these four will happen. The Billions won’t be there, and the people increasingly do not share Joyce’s assumptions; his window is closing, no matter what happens on the 26th. How long will it take him to catch up?- perhaps he never will.
I think it’s worth running Stuart Staniford’s conclusion to the post I’ve to above to cut to the chase:
“The next question is whether this kind of global attitude shift could happen smoothly, without major disruption to global economic growth. I think that’s extremely implausible. Certainly, it didn’t in the 1970s when the big increases in efficiency were presaged by two major oil price shocks with ensuing recessions. And in general, my mental model is that people are creatures of habit who only change their way of thinking and operating when their existing approach starts to cause them serious pain.
So I think the IMF’s growth projections are seriously improbable. What is going to happen instead is that people will keep trying to grow without getting much more oil efficient, that won’t work, oil prices will go through the roof, another global recession, or at least a major slowdown, will ensue, and then people will begin in earnest the work of starting to transition away from oil dependence.
I can’t tell you the timing precisely. It could easily be this year, it could be next. It’s even possible that some other global crisis will intervene first (like the credit crash of 2008 did). But I will say categorically that there’s no way we are going to get through 2016, as the IMF projects, with business-as-usual economic growth.”
To be fair, the first graph doesn’t show the “same level of traffic” over 5 years in the US. It shows the same level of traffic growth. According to the chart, US traffic has still been growing at a consistant rate of about 1.7% per year since 2005 rather than at a higher rate every year as had previously been the pattern. Stating outright that traffic levels are falling when they are not does not help your case for more PT, which I strongly agree with.
Dan the first chart is NZ. And true, but NZTA base their plans on a model of endlessly accelerating growth, a lazy extrapolation from the 90s and early 2000s. The point here is that there has been a discontinuity, a break, a change in this. We are in a new world of at least flat growth, and possibly a future, like in the US, of no growth or decline.
Compare and contrast with RTN use….
You’re interpreting the graph wrong Dan. Ahtough admittedly it is confusing.
They aren’t annual percentage increases where 2010 traffic volumes were 1.69% greater than 2009. They are a ratio of that year’s traffic to 1989’s. Hence 2010 was 1.69 times 1989 levels, which as you can see is a decrease since the peak in 2007 when it was 1.71 times the 1989 level.
Plus the first graph is for NZ, not the US.
That concurs with my own observations – Anecdotely I used to brave the SH1 and commute into Wellington in the mornings back in 2008 and 2009 and the traffic was heavier then than it was in 2010 and 2011. Specifically I’m talking about the number of backups through from the Tawa to Grenada Norh turn offs. The traffic is heaps better now, but that is because I gave up commuting to Wellington a couple months back.
Matt, you’re a brave man to confess that you were solely responsible for Wellington’s congestion, and that it’s heaps better since you gave up commuting. lol
Thanks for the correction, Matt. But I must say that if your observations include generally noticing a 0.02% traffic decrease between 2010 and 2009 relative to the 1989 standard, your powers of observation are remarkably refined. 🙂
Its listed on the table below 🙂
Problem is long term the petrol price is less revelant to congestion. Wont happen quickly but eventually there will be enough electric cars on the road and congestion will be back with a vengence.
I still doubt that Pub, by the time the price crunch hits, there will be only a few rich folks with e-cars, and NZ will be at the back of the queue when all the world wants they few being made. Also we can’t afford to change our fleet to much more expensive ones… except for those people who can afford the more expensive gas anyway….
No E-car to rescue for mad highway programme.
I’ve pretty much parked up my car other than weekends. In fact if I plan ahead I can get most things done via public transport. Mind you, I live reasonably close to a station (Ngaio) on a line with an OK frequency of service. Go the train.