Auckland talk tonight from our friends at Generation Zero: What’s The Holdup tour:
Monday August 5th, Auckland University, Owen Glen Building, Fisher and Paykel Auditorium
Auckland facebook event here
As transport is a dominant source of carbon emissions from the Auckland region much of the programme tonight will be about future transport options for Auckland, including, of course, the CFN.
Among the speakers is Dame Anne Salmond, the ideal of that oh too rare species in NZ: The public intellectual, Rick Boven director of The New Zealand Institute, and Cam Jones, from the telly.
See you there.
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A *very* important point. A congestion-free network can easily become a carbon-free network.
‘Business as usual’ is no longer possible, if we want to retain a liveable planet, and create a truly liveable city. We’d be stupid not to.
Hoe does it do that, are we brining back trolley buses and building more carbon free power plants?
We’re already very close to it with rail. As we get serious about climate change (we’re not yet) and the price of oil and gas increases we’ll go to 100% renewable. We’re at just under 80% currently. For buses we start with hybrids (diesel and gas electrics) and move to battery powered vehicles as and when the technology becomes available. The practicality of these options and our seriousness about climate change will influence when and how we convert grade-separated bus corridors to rail (light or heavy)
You do know that most of the CFN is at grade bus lanes right?
If you wanted to convert it all to grade separated heavy or light rail you could be looking at the $100 billion price range.
You still have the issue of providing this clean power without just stealing it from other people pushing them onto dirty power.
In regards to battery buses. These are more suited for short distance stop start trips. Most of the CFN is long range and what should be free flowing and so you would need to be buying large fleets of buses with 2/3 to 3/4 of the charging rather than being in service.
I’d be keen to see witless powered buses to avoid the distance constraints and the unsightly appearance of overhead lines. It would likely cost quite a bit however.
$100 billion is very large number.
It’s also a whole 12 times greater than the entire cost of the Congestion Free Network.
Which includes a fair bit of rail conversion for selected key corridors (this is what I referred to). As a regular reader and commenter on this blog, you’ll know that the costings have been done, and published clearly. I’m not sure why you find joy in making things up, because it’s not helpful to anyone.
As for battery buses, the technology is currently highly viable under certain conditions, and less viable under others. As technology improves over the next decades, the range of conditions will increase further. That’s exactly what I said above – so I’m not sure why you feel I’ve represented otherwise.
Not true, more than half of the length CFN is electrified heavy rail or dedicated busway. of the rest little is at grade bus lanes. If I’m reading the proposal most of the bus stuff is dedicated bus lanes on grade separated motorways, or street busways like ameti.
I don’t think you’re up with the play on the current state of battery electric buses SF. Stop start is actually worst because it places the highest demands on battery capacity. Something like the northen busway is ideal. Fast running for quick turnaround, reasonable top speed with widely spaced stations, and the ability to dwell at either end for a quick inductive top up charge while loading passengers or laying over. Albany to Britomart and back is 38 km via thirteen stops, most of it free of traffic delays (and hopefully soon none of it). Well within the range of a battery electric bus. A single high voltage charging station at Albany could give an 80% charge in three or four minutes.
As for expensive to buy, yes they are. But as I’ve already noted below they are already cheaper over their lifetime due to the much cheaper cost of energy, and reduced maintenance costs.
Expect to see them in the next couple of years in Auckland as bus companies realise try can make more money that way.
George. I suggest you have another look at the CFN, if you do you will note that about the only parts that are rail are the existing network with 2 exceptions. The rest is at grade buses which can’t be changed to rail without massive sums of cash.
You will also note that most of the pricing is extremely low with such as the CRL at $2 billion and a northshore line at $3 billion.
You also missed my point completely that battery vehicles are simply not ideal for long haul services like on the CFN and so getting a carbon free network will be very hard and expensive. Certainly we can make it greener and even neutral but not carbonfree.
Of course you could then go into the fact that CO2 is one of the most harmless greenhouse gases and in some cases people do more harm than good focusing on only CO2 for which humans themselves are one of the greatest emitters.
carbon-neutral maybe, but carbon- free never.
Doesn’t have to be trolley buses. A recent report comissioned by EECA showed that battery electric buses are economically viable for suburban operation in New Zealand now. So by simply replacing end of life buses we could have a 50% electric fleet in 6-7 years and 100% electric in 12-14. If we wanted to invest in replacing the fleet sooner then naturally it wouldn’t take that long.
And yes, powered my renewable energy of which we have plenty and are building plenty more.
Renewable energy is renewable. Not carbon free. But a hell of a lot better than a gas fired plant.
Plus we still need a sustainable form of battery. The current EV batteries we use are not renewable, have limited life spans and are pretty toxic.
I do have to agree with the pricing of the North Shore line. $3bil for a tunnel & rail to Albany & Takapuna seems a bit low. It’s probably more like $5bil.
That would be similar to the SH16 and SH18 busway which would be more in the range of $2 billion rather than $450 billion. Or the eastern airport busway which would be more $1 billion than $235 billion. Even doing the latter at grade like AMETI would likely cost well over $500 million.
For myself I would still rather have the airport rail line as a tunnel under the harbour so more $1 billion for that.
Eastern airport busway $1b??? The rail option was less than $400m
Whoops, some obvious typos there were billion should have been million.
Feel free to correct and then delete this post.
NZTA priced it (heavy rail by itself) as $1.2B to Akoranga. Using Light Metro (aka – skytrain) would probably drop that price by a significant amount.
The Central London charge in 2003 meant buses travelled 4km /hr faster. Lowering congestion can lower the amount of pollution by increasing the speeds of vehicles ( main effect is of limiting the travel at very slow speeds <10 and <30 km hour rather than affecting travel at speeds greater than 50 km /hr)
I just read the other day that light congestion that forces you to slow on average down to 75km/h reduces CO2 however if it makes you go slower than that it increases you CO2 emissions.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Generation Zero do absolutely fandiddlytastic work.
I think their efforts to raise public awareness of climate change in a fun, non-confrontational, and relatively apolitical way is a real winning strategy.
Onwards!
There wa great turnout tonight. Standing room only. Great content, humour, but also passion. Gives me hope for NZ’s future