From “The Limits to Travel“:
The Department of Transport published last January, with no publicity, its latest National Road Traffic Forecasts. This is an output of the National Transport Model. Although traffic levels have levelled off in recent years, the projection is for a 44% increase by 2035, even though population growth is assumed to be only 18%.
Car traffic in London is projected to grow by 36% by 2035, even though the number of car trips (driver and passenger) has held constant at about 10m a day since 1993, according to data from Transport for London. This finding suggests that road capacity is limiting car use, taking account of the impact of parking restrictions, bus lanes, traffic signals and the congestion charging zone. So it is hard to see how the DfT projected traffic growth could be fitted in.
My view is that DfT, having built a national transport model at considerable effort, are reluctant to question the behavioural assumptions underlying the inputs and the face validity of the outputs. Doubtless it suites the Department to project substantial traffic growth when bidding for funding from the Treasury.
The last sentence is critical. I’m yet to work out whether this whole denial of stalled traffic volumes in both the UK and New Zealand is simply institutional inertia or whether it’s something far more sinister.
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Yeah, I’m wondering if there are similar statistics for Australia.
The drop in traffic forecasts was dismissed in NZ Parliament as just an anomaly, but what we can see here is that this trend is global… what is the cause??
First to get a bit philosophical: Change is to be expected; constancy is the anomaly. OK, so we shouldn’t be surprised.
What you are asking for is what Aristotle called the ‘efficient cause’ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes]. The agency that brings about change.
So basically people are either (1) traveling more by other means or (2) not traveling so much, why?:
1. Rational action; ie people are experiencing lower benefit from higher costs of car ownership and use. Therefore are taking other options. Substitution eg flying, transit, walking/cycling.
2. Lower need; either have less desire to move or new ability to substitute with non-moving actions [eg internet shopping and even online delivery]
In both cases the data suggests it is important to not discount the role of two factors: New technology and generational shift: the kids are not turned on by being behind the wheel but by being online. As well the aging of the generation who seem most intensely involved with the car.
And importantly the vital and very interesting observation is that this decline in driving does not cause nor reflect any decline in economic activity. SO THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM. In fact, of course, it is very promising in terms of reducing resource waste [oil dependency] and reduction of negative externalities [pollution, crashes, urban form, congestion etc]. See Stu Donovan here for this disconnect: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2012/04/02/14-year-old-newsflash-kiwi-economy-waves-good-bye-to-state-highways/
That governments or public officials should be trying to pretend that this change may not be happening let alone spending every penny they can to try to suppress it and promote the previous centuries certainties is depressing but not, I guess, surprising. They are trying to keep their positions in the world and have no interest in changing things that suit them, or even admitting to that external changes that should alter their views. This is especially true of our current government but also easy to find in more permanent institutions like the DfT referred to above. Eventually reality will catch up, but it can be a long and frustrating wait for the rest of us.
Trying to find, as Peter asks above, whether this is group self delusion or a conscious denial of rational conclusion I guess we can only do by constantly confronting the authorities with the facts and analysis.
I wonder what the principal, prevailing cause is. Could it be that government budgets are just so stretched building new infrastructure that they have fallen behind and therefore traffic growth has hit a ceiling? Could it be higher petrol prices, measured as a share of income, as that also has been trending upwards as of late.
Forecasts and models tend to be at their most useless when something significant is actually changing.
And ultimately, no matter how ‘sophisticated’ they appear, models are generally just projections of ‘more of the same’. Also, models typically tell the people funding them what they want to hear – they’re not really forecasting tools, they’re tools for justifying decisions the decision-makers want to make anyway.
If as seems likely behaviour wrt transport choices is starting to change, probably due to long term increases in the cost of fuel and the fact that noone wants to spend ever more time sitting in traffic, that fundamental shift likely hasn’t yet been incorporated into the models. And it won’t be until the people funding the models WANT to believe that change has happened. It’ll probably take a few more years of dramatic mismatches between forecasts and reality before the paradigm shift is recognised.
“Science progresses one funeral at a time” (something like that – Max Planck) transport models and policy are probably similar.
I was thinking about this problem which is, essentially, in a nut shell that the NZTA is funded by the fuel tax and so if the fuel tax drops their funding drops. This doesn’t just mean that NZTA are (possibly) more inclined to fund projects that will increase the amount people drive and thus the fuel tax revenue.
It also means that in a future scenario like the one most people who read this blog would want – that driving rates drop dramatically, walking and cycling rates rise, and public transport patronage rises, NZTA (and thus the government) would experience a significant drop in revenue.
In this scenario of dropping revenue from the fuel tax the government would also probably have to spend more to subsidize public transport because there are only a few countries in the world that run public transport systems at a profit and they are often places which have never, directly or indirectly, subsidized car use. Maybe someday our public transport system would become profitable but I think it would take many, many years.
Now, I think (and I’m sure lots of public transport advocates would agree with me) that this wouldn’t actually be a problem because there are a lot of indirect costs of having a mainly private vehicle based transport systems (climate change, air pollution, obesity, congestion, over-reliance on imported fuel, inflated house prices etc etc)which wouldn’t affect our economy so badly if we had lower rates of private vehicle use.
But, you have to admit that from NZTA and the government’s perspective right now it’s a problem. Because a lot of those indirect costs of private vehicle transport aren’t measured right now (especially climate change) in any meaningful way that actually appears on the govt books. Or, if they are, those costs are experienced by other departments (e.g., Ministry of Health) rather than NZTA or Ministry of Transport. Whereas the fuel tax definitely is recorded as a source of revenue and so is the cost of building public transport infrastructure and subsidizing public transport services.
So if the fuel tax isn’t rising it gets harder and harder for the govt to balance their books in the transport sector. The only way I can see to resolve this issue would simply be to stop hypothecation of the fuel tax and instead treat it just as a normal tax that would go into the general pool. That way it would be easier for transport agencies to ask for funds to go towards projects that reduce other costs in the tax system not directly related to transport. Does that make sense?
Amy it’s still real easy to balance NZTA’s books: just stop spending so much. Especially stop spending on low to negative return underutilised and often duplicate state highways. There: Done. And funnily enough this is the government’s policy in other departments, so why not with transport? There is absolutely nothing rational about this government and transport at all.
You make a good point Amy. Yes, the fuel excise should go into the ‘general’ pot and everything then gets funded from that. Exactly the same as what happens to tobacco and alcohol tax. Then the govt can, hopefully, spend funds as it finds it necessary at the time without attracting so much ire from the transport lobbies. You could make an argument that a good public transport system would reduce the numbers of drink drivers so there is a justification for using alcohol tax on PT or tobacco tax could be used for improving lifestyles – cycleways etc.
Yes Amy and Bryce. Hypocathetion of fuel tax is weird: It’s as if all alcohol excise HAD to be spend on opening new pubs and bars…..!
Patrick. But realistically that solution (stop spending so much) won’t work infinitely. Not if you still want people and freight to move around and the population keeps growing. And,in fact, if you make a list of all the public transport infrastructure projects that people on this blog want to see in Auckland and then a list of the other major projects we might want around the country you will end up with a price tag which is less (but not significantly so) than the cost of the RoNS. So how would you deal with that issue?
Not stop spending at all but stop spending with the crazy impatience of the RoNS, and, the flat vehicle growth rate means a much lower need for new projects. Also the low return on investment points towards a fairly mature network already. So improve existing roads instead of building vast duplicates running along side them. Invest in the existing rail freight network to unlock exist untapped capacity…. In Auckland certainly invest in public transport to improve efficiency of that network as well as the existing, and mature, motorway network. So stop [after Waterview] adding to the State Highway network in AK.
But if the population keeps growing then we have to give people someway to get around? And the government doesn’t JUST spend money in Auckland. If you add together, for example, the cost of a) the CBD rail loop in Auckland, b) rail to the airport in Auckland, c) a North-Western busway, d) a South-Eastern busway, e) fixing up all our ailing rural railways to make them competitive with freight, f) a light rail system for Wellington, g) a light rail system (or improved buses and busways) for Christchurch you would come to a total that would be less than the RoNS but not dramatically less.
Nobody knows exactly how much some of those projects would cost but I think we can be confident that it would be many billions. And then, assuming that the population is growing, vehicle traffic is dropping, but you still want to move your citizens around because you haven’t managed to dramatically change the built form of our cities in just 10 years, you would have to do something to improve public transport in Tauranga and Hamilton, our most rapidly growing small cities.
And that is not even including projects that get often called for on this blog like h) extending the Northern Busway to Orewa, i) building a Avondale to Onehunga rail connection and j) a second rail only Harbour crossing for Auckland.
Yes there is a lot to build, so all the more important that we build the best things first, or only. Our argument here is that there are diminishing returns from adding to the all but complete and very mature motorway network in Auckland. In fact the best way to keep it effective is to invest in alternatives to it so what we have can keep flowing. We cannot keep adding to it easily anyway, but more importantly it is not desirable to. It just cements in autodependency and adds all those extra undesirable costs and outcomes onto the city. Auckland can keep growing without any more major motorways after Waterview, by investing in alternatives. And that’s where the demand is. Cash is scarce so we should carefully invest in transformative projects like the CRL, like integrated fares, like network redesign, and the airport line. And like Light Metro to the shore.
And if we look at your list, AK is after a 1- 1.5 billion contribution to the CRL, a rail only harbour crossing is billions cheaper [and much better] than a road crossing: here: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2012/01/27/light-metro-for-the-north-shore-a-superior-alternative-to-a-harbour-motorway-tunnel/, and so on.
As for outside of Auckland the RoNS in the Waikato and Wellington have appalling BCRs… These are duplicate roads for uncongested routes and should be delayed.
Look at Sydney and Melbourne; much bigger cities with motorways that have not been widened beyond two lanes in many cases… how can they function!? Because they don’t only have motorways, they have complimentary Rail, Bus, and Ferry systems that get investment too. Auckland is well at the size where it needs to get some balance into its movement systems. And again; look at the demand trends….
Amy- What Patrick said.
Plus as you say- Hamilton and Tauranga are growing too, Auckland is growing even faster.
You gotta feed the kids that need it most…