Green Party transport spokesperson Julie-Anne Genter braved Kiwiblog to post a Guest Post recently:
Let me just start with what this post is NOT saying:
I am not saying that people should not, or will not, continue to use cars for many trips.
I am not saying that all existing roads should be turned into dirt tracks for carts and horses.
I am not saying we should ban anything, or eliminate all car parking.
I am not saying that you should give up your car, if it doesn’t suit you.When we get past the straw man arguments, there is something you and I (and all New Zealanders) can be very concerned about: The Government is planning to spend $14 billion over this next decade — which is more than this year’s deficit and 75% of all new transport infrastructure spending — on a few new state highways with very poor business cases.
Most of that is on 6 projects it calls the ‘Roads of National Significance’. (The 7th, Victoria Park Tunnel, the project with the highest benefit cost ratio, has already been completed.)
It is truly extraordinary that the Government considers the RoNS to be a key plank in their economic strategy, because there is actually no evidence to suggest the additional motorways will have a positive impact on the economy.
A compilation of the benefit-cost ratios carried out by the Parliamentary Library show that, in total, they are projected to return just $1.40 for every $1 invested (if you excluded Vic Park, it would be less). Several of the individual projects will cost more than their benefits, most notably Puhoi to Wellsford and Transmission Gully, which cost nearly a billion dollars more than the benefits they would create.
Moreover, the Government’s numbers are too optimistic. The traditional traffic engineering approach tends to overstate the benefits and understate the costs (PDF) of motorway projects. One of the basic assumptions in the modelling is that traffic volumes will always rise — irrespective of fuel prices and the economy. The RoNS business cases are no exception: Puhoi to Wellsford assumed 4% annual traffic growth from 2006-2026, though NZTA data now shows that didn’t eventuate from 2006-2011. Traffic and freight volumes on state highways aren’t growing because of the impacts of high oil prices and low economic growth—in fact, they’re back to 2004 levels.
We all know petrol prices are at record levels — up 50% in the past five years — and are likely to go much higher this decade. This is a very strong case for deferring the RoNS in favour of more cost-effective projects that also reduce the oil-dependence of the transport sector.
Road users, ratepayers, and the economy will benefit from projects that will move the most people and goods for the lowest cost in the coming decades. And we need to be realistic about the increasing cost of fuel to cars and trucks.
There are better alternatives: Making it easier and safer for kids to cycle and walk to school is one of the cheapest ways to reduce peak hour congestion. By adding capacity to train and bus routes that are already experiencing huge (10-15%) annual patronage growth in Auckland, we can ease congestion on the roads, reduce household petrol bills, and improve the cost effectiveness of public transport. Freight priority (think truck lanes) can be cheaply implemented on key routes at extremely low cost.
Even if you drive everywhere, you benefit when we make it easier for others to leave the car at home, because it’s a cheaper way to reduce congestion (plus it’ll be easier for you to find parking…).
Resources are limited, so we must make choices. Expanding the existing state highway programme is expensive for little gain – but it also means that every other transport category will be squeezed for the next decade: including road policing, local road maintenance, walking, cycling and public transport. So it will be harder for people to get where they need to go. That’s going to mean more congestion, or more lost money in high petrol bills.
If we choose to invest in modern, smart transport solutions, we can spend less on petrol, reduce our international debt, and have a transport system that is better for our economy and better for our people. But, first, we need the Government to honestly re-evaluate its transport priorities.
If you can ignore the bile from the usual suspects in the comments, the debate continues there (particularly towards the end of the comments thread) with Julie giving quite lengthy responses to some of the commenters with enough brain cells to look past her being a Green MP and actually read what she has to say.
If, at the next election, the Green Party have sufficient numbers to become a major player in the formation of the next government, it would be fantastic to see Julie become transport minister. Imagine that, a transport minister who actually knew their portfolio? What a revolutionary concept.
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“Imagine that, a transport minister who actually knew their portfolio? What a revolutionary concept.”
I totally agree. It’s such a shame that horribly unqualified people such as Mr. Brownlee can be put in charge of such important portfolios. I’ve watched Julie-Anne’s speeches to the House and they sound more like a university professor reading on their specialist subject than a politician. Such a change to the usual blather from Mr Illiterate Woodwork Teacher. Brownlee is so pathetically outgunned by Julie-Anne on this subject that perhaps the only way he can deal with her is with his rantings about square wheels and dirt tracks. I just hope the general public pick up on this (and the 14 billion road-building binge he’s planning). Go Greens!
That was a good read. I’m more and more impressed by her.
Wow, she sure did ‘brave’ Kiwiblog. There’s some pretty ugly comments there. I guess some people just say things on blog sites that they wouldn’t say in person. I hope so anyway or my positive view of my fellow kiwis has taken a hit! I have a car and I catch the train. I’m glad of the options. Many people currently have no choice in how they get to work. When I had to drive each day I was definitely grumpier because my stress levels would go up, caused by concern over other drivers, accidents. Mixing my travel around has definitly aided my health. Not the same for everyone but just saying…
There’s a reason I normally refer to it as “Kiwi Bleurgh”, and avoid giving Farrar’s rabid cronies my eyeballs, but I confess to having read this particular thread. It’s where I got the second half of this comment.
Sound thinking, and fully agree with the content apart from <>
I would want, and expect, a transport minister who actually knew their portfolio to promote rail freight rather than provide another leg up for the trucking lobby through priority lanes.
Whoops – gap in first line of previous post should say “Freight priority (think truck lanes) can be cheaply implemented on key routes at extremely low cost.”
“Freight priority (think truck lanes) can be cheaply implemented on key routes at extremely low cost.”
Interesting can of worms. I don’t think anybody can argue with the truth of the above quote, but how good an idea it is is definitely debatable.
I feel the justifying road projects on the effect they will have on freight services is often a weak argument. For some reason it seems to have become the popular justification for all roading projects. Often ignoring that the majority of capacity is used by private vehicles and the relative values of passenger vehicles time relative to freight time.
I guess that people promote such roading expenditure stating that it is for the benefit of trucks knowing that passenger vehicles will be able to piggy back on the upgrades. The availability of freight priority weakens this argument.
Personally I think the value of fast freight is overstated (although I have not researched it). Truck drivers can (and many do) drive during the night to avoid congestion related delays. Also I would guess that many professionals (i.e. a doctor going to visit a house patient or an engineer going to a site) would be more valuable per hour than a truck + driver delivering say constriction materials.
I’m sure Genter is in favour of rail freight but there’ll always be some road freight. I’ve not heard of freight priority lanes before but if a significant chunk of the economic benefits of motorways come from moving freight on them, why not make some freight priority lanes?
ah, slow posting on my part, i see
A more accurate wording of this is: ‘a significant chunk of the justification for motorways is claimed to be from the movement of freight on them’ This is vastly overstated by Joyce, MoT, NZTA, and Brownlee. Especially in cases where alternatives already exist. Improvements are mostly minor and do not even offset externalities from diversion from existing routes.
A new road bringing goods to market that previously couldn’t get there, now that would have real economic benefits of scale. Where is that project? All the next round of RoNS run alongside existing undercapacity existing routes, both road and rail. This is pure spin; sensible sounding bullshit.
Still relies on trucks, though.
I was looking for Freight Priority Lanes for a moment – but found it.
She is a brave person for posting at Kiwi Blog – but kudos for Farrar for giving her a guest post as you would not catch that at Whale Oil in a hurry.
While everything that Ms Genter makes sense the Freight Truck Priority thingy caught my attention the most. Probably because our very pragmatic Transport Spokesperson realises trucks are going to be with us for a very very long time. Now the catch is for Ms Genter to expand on what she means by Truck Priority Lanes and where would they be going?
The most obvious choice for such a scheme is between Port of Auckland and Southdown/Westfield/Penrose where the main logistics companies are currently as the current Freight Rail Shuttle operates between POAL and Wiri which is even further south. Hmmm had to pause there and have a think about this – might ask Ms Genter to expand on this because there is a lot of uncertainties here that I can think of including a $4.5 billion uncertainty.
Ah well – kudos to both Genter and Farrar and yes I see Julie as our next Minister of Transport in the next Centre-Left Government
“very pragmatic Transport Spokesperson realises trucks are going to be with us for a very very long time.”
A very long time = forever. Trucks ARE the pretty much only way to get large volumes of goods to stores and businesses in a local sense. There’s no way we can get rail access to the local dairy or supermarket. It’s the long-distance freight haul where we should be boosting alternatives like rail and coastal shipping. I can’t see anything but trucks working for almost all actual distribution and most pickup functions. There have been ideas of sub-surface pallet-sized automatic freight systems, but it’s rather telling that there seems to be nowhere in the world that this exists, with the exception of some old (and mostly these days closed-down subway systems in the UK and US) that grew out of mail and coal distribution railways.
So trucks it will be, and I have no problem with that. Just not (so many) on SH1 between Auckland and Hamilton etc…
Quite. The objection from a lot of the antis is that “you have to double-handle everything for rail, because it doesn’t reach to the end customer” needs to be shot down for the nonsense that it is, since I’ve never yet seen a line-haul B-train delivering baked beans to the local Four Square. It’s all at least double-handled to get it onto line-haul for intra/inter-island delivery and then onto something practical for local delivery. There may well be another local truck at the source end to bring in smaller quantities for aggregation to line-haul volumes. Hell, look at ChemCouriers who ship chemicals all over the country. They have to collect at the source end for aggregation, line-haul deliver to a depot, then de-aggregate for local delivery again. There’s no difference between rail and road for them, except that rail takes considerably longer so of course they won’t bother.
Unfortunately our local suburban supermarket (Crofton Downs Countdown, formerly Woolworths) does in fact take regular deliveries from B-train truck+trailer (units operated by Linfox). These vehicles are totally inappropriate in suburbia, but nevertheless run up and down our street. Since this supermarket sits only metres from the Johnsonville line it is hard to believe some method of rail-delivery isn’t possible. I am convinced that the chief block to this sort of thing happening is attitudinal rather than practical. Entrenched patterns are politically hard to break out of; Vested trucking and roading interests don’t want change and shoot down any suggestion of it happening; The wider public (who would welcome removal of large trucks from the roads) are not sufficiently informed to counter the “it can’t be done” propaganda from the entrenched interests.
Ever-rising fuel prices may be the factor which eventually jolts us out of this rut.