Every week we read more than we can write about on the blog. To avoid letting good commentary and research fall by the wayside, we’re going to publish weekly excerpts from what we’ve been reading.
Jennifer Kent, “Higher-density living can make us healthier, but not on its own“, The Conversation:
There are potential health benefits associated with higher-density living, but these benefits depend on several other variables. A review commissioned by the Heart Foundation identified three key factors.
First is the quality of infrastructure in the surrounding neighbourhood and region. Higher-density housing needs to be situated among public transport networks, jobs, schools, shops, services, open space and active transport infrastructure.
Second is the quality of construction and management of the homes themselves. It has been far too easy in Australia to provide higher-density housing that is poorly sited, badly built, and ineptly managed. It is also far too easy to forget that density means diversity – it includes detached and semi-detached housing, townhouses, low- and mid-rise apartment buildings, as well as high-rise.
Third is the social and cultural make-up of the community that is living in higher-density places. We mentioned that healthy built environments need people to make them work, and people are sometimes frustratingly brilliant in their diversity. Indeed, success depends on the capacity of new and existing communities to adapt to different ways of living, working, travelling and socialising. This makes it difficult to make realistic generalisations about the impact of density on human health.
Barnaby Bennett, James Dann, Emma Johnson, and Ryan Reynolds, Once in a lifetime: unofficial versions, Public Address. This is an excerpt from a recent book on the Canterbury earthquakes and slow rebuild:
It began with a sharp jolt at 4:37 a.m. on 4 September 2010. Radio New Zealand shifted to their emergency broadcast (which unfortunately was the Beach Boys’ song Good Vibrations) and a collective thought emerged from New Zealanders that would be repeated endlessly over the next few years: ‘Christchurch isn’t supposed to have big earthquakes.’
When dawn rose and the dust settled after this first quake in September, it felt like a bullet had been dodged. The damage was significant; buildings were evacuated; there was talk of widespread demolition. Yet somehow, almost magically, no one was killed.
The quake altered the political landscape, and the previously unpopular mayor Bob Parker surged to a second term in the November local body elections. Local MP and Minister Gerry Brownlee was given the new role of Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery (CER), and Parliament passed the first version of the CER legislation to enable a coordinated response to the destruction. Little did these leaders or the people of Christchurch know what was still to come.
Press Association (UK), “More people cycling in London than ever before“, The Guardian:
Record numbers of cyclists are pedalling their way around the capital, according to Transport for London (TfL), which said cycling levels were 10% higher in the three months to December than in the same quarter in 2013, and were the highest since records began in 2000. By the end of 2014/15, TfL forecasts a 12% rise from the previous financial year.
Last year was also a record for the number of hires from London’s cycle hire scheme, with more than 10m journeys made – up 5% on 2012 (the previous highest year) and 25% on 2013.
The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: “Last week I announced my final intentions for the new east-west and north-south superhighways. These amazing numbers show how cyclists are becoming ubiquitous in London and prove, if further proof were needed, why we need to crack on with catering for them. Barclays Cycle Hire continues to grow in popularity and there can be no doubt that our trusty bicycles have changed the way people get around our great city.”
Anne Gibson, “Wellington factory set to pump out prefab homes“, NZ Herald:
New Zealand’s first factory turning out finished houses has opened in Wellington, aiming to produce up to 500 places annually.
Sean Murrie, Matrix Homes chief executive and director, said Finance Minister Bill English yesterday opened the 8000sq m Trentham factory in the former General Motors assembly plant.
“People are building components of houses, then assembling them on the site. But the whole thing here is we’re turning fully finished houses with code compliance certificates,” Murrie said. […]
Module costs
• $89,000: 51sq m, one bedroom.
• $99,000: 70sq m, two bedrooms.
• $195,000: 140sq m, 4 bedroom, 2 bathrooms.
• Transport costs: $10,000 in Wellington, $20,000 in Auckland.
• Piles are included in Wellington transport costs but not in Auckland. Pile costs for Auckland are an extra $3000.
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange, “Why would people in 500+ years be using waterways for transport?” Some top answers:
Today we ship by water. 500 years ago we shipped by water. 500 years before that we shipped by water. 500 years before that we shipped by water. Its a good bet 500 years from now we still will. – GrandmasterB answered Feb 2 at 21:03
We’d send things by ship for the same reason we do today. It’s cheap. It’s not likely that individuals, corporations, or governments of the future would not be motivated by the cost savings associated with transport by ship.
Unless there is some magical energy source in the future that makes energy free, or nearly free, in terms of monetary and environmental costs we will likely always use waterways where possible.
Without this energy source, it may be that, after peak oil, fuel will be so expensive that transporting cargo by aircraft will be prohibitively expensive. So people of the future will look at photos of cargo planes and think that we are the crazy ones. – Samuel answered Feb 2 at 21:01
Bob Dey, “UP8: Crucial question: Who will control land release?“, Bob Dey Property Report:
The key question about how greenfields land will be rezoned under Auckland’s unitary plan is: Who controls it, council or developers?
The second question is how infrastructure for rezoned land can be put in place before or as it’s needed, not after.
And the third is: How will it be funded?
The first of those questions is one for the independent panel hearing submissions on the unitary plan. The second has been mentioned by council people from time to time, but without a proposition being brought forward. And the third, on funding, has to be considered if the order of infrastructure provision, or the supplier, changes.
Urban Kchoze, “Highways and boulevards: A capacity-cost analysis“:
Cyclists and pedestrians are outright banned from highways, even if they did want to travel there (and they wouldn’t). Highways create a big wasteland around them to achieve object clearance zones (or recovery zones), and their high speed favors distant, sprawled out developments that means that even if you decide to build footpaths or bike paths alongside them, no one would use them.
As to transit, though buses can certainly travel on highways, they cannot SERVE them. Vehicles are not supposed to stop on highways unless they have a malfunction. And even if they could, highways are off-limits to pedestrians. AND even if they weren’t, highways rarely have walkable developments at interchanges, so the use of such buses would be limited, if not completely inexistent. So only express buses traveling long distances can really use highways.
Still, you can use highways for express buses, shouldn’t that count? Well, no. Because you can do the same with boulevards too.
So what does this mean? This means that the capacity of highways for transit is 0, for bikes is 0, for walking is 0. But boulevard, as they are space efficient and closer to developments, can easily support all these modes of travel.
So in the end, a proper comparison leads to this graph, comparing a 4-lane boulevard with a standard high-frequency bus line and bike path, a 4-lane boulevard with a high-frequency articulated bus line and bike path, a 4-lane boulevard with a tram using 2 of these lanes (thrown in just for fun) and a 4-lane highway:
Comparison of capacity between different boulevards and an highway
Processing...
That Wellington house factory is interesting, the 4 Bedroom one, could be installed on a site, in Auckland with transport and piling costs included for a “finished” cost of about $1550 per m2.
A 4 bedroom house would cost over double that in m2 costs if built in Auckland.
So the question is, is the Auckland built house really twice as expensive to construct “all up”, or is there a lot of ticket clipping going on in the Auckland building market? (and no, not just council ticket clipping).
And before you finger the usual culprit of “Development contributions”, consider this: “Development contributions, spent on items including parks, stormwater systems, cemeteries and roads, last year averaged $14,000 nationwide.”
Christchurch has the highest at up to $45K as per this Stuff.co.nz article: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/your-property/9933798/Development-levies-add-up-to-45k-to-new-homes and many think Auckland has the highest DCs – think again?
And even if Auckland total DC’s were 45K, for a 140m2 house, that adds at best $320 m2 to the build “cost”.
And so what will the planned house building factory (by Mike Greer Homes and Spanbuild) south of Auckland be able the achieve when it comes on stream – without that $20,000 delivery fee from Wellington?
As for the UP questions by Bod Dey, the last question is the biggest one, as the forecast development contributions levied by all councils in NZ have been estimated for the 10 years from 2012 to 2022 as covering at best 50% of the true cost of providing the infrastructure to new developments.
So its definitely fair to say that Green and Brown fields developments are not even, despite what Developers say, “paying their own way”. And who you ask come up with the 50% figure? Well the Auditor General did.
Brian Fallow quotes it thus “On development contributions, levied on developers to recoup some of the capital costs of providing the infrastructure their developments require, the LGNZ report quotes the Auditor General’s forecast that over the 10 years to 2022 the $3.4 billion collected will cover half the spending incurred.” (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11397320)
And that last item on Boulevards v roads and highways is interesting, the left most “stack” on the graph shows the capacity of Dominion Road now is about 3800 people per hour per direction (e.g. in the AM or PM peak direction) – using cars or PT, and the 3rd stack shows that LRT in the mix would effectively double that throughput with most now using PT, and it would also achieve 50% better than if Dom. Road was a 2 lane each way motorway (the 4th stack).
So yes, LRT really can fill the void in more ways than one.
Re the developer contributions issue. The biggest government expense/fee for a developer/homebuilder is GST. On a $500,000 house that would be about $75,000 as GST is charged on both house and land for new residences. So GST is much more developer contributions.
If central government shared some of those GST receipts with local government then we wouldn’t have the infrastructure deficit issues we currently have. Eric Crampton the economist discusses this issue here http://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/73913/eric-crampton-says-local-government-nzs-funding-report-deserves-better-john-keys-dismi
I doubt GST is the highest cost a developer faces (one of the highest, but the only one).
I suspect if you added up all the margins they’re charged by their suppliers, their legal, their real estate agents that they use, it would be over the GST figure.
And also note that as Auditor General notes, DCs won’t cover more than 50% of forecast infrastructure build costs, so if a DC is $45K for a 500K house and land package (as it is in Christchurch).
Then even handing over GST at $75K is still “too little” to cover all the costs. as Government wouldn’t consider doing that in any case.
But for sure, the local body funding mechanisms for new infra. needs a rethink as the mechanisms they have now don’t work – all sides (including the Govt) agree on that point.
The other point is that new home buyer pays for the DC costs – not the developer. So any crying by developer about the high DC costs on their part is just attempts at diversion as the DC costs of the land and house are built into the house price.
And if DC’s went down would developer drop the price they charged for their houses by the same amount? Or would they simply hike their profits.
I think a lot of people tar a lot of developers with the same brush as petrol companies – quick to up prices when prices rise, slow to put them down when costs drop, and vague as to the actual true costs compared to the prices they charge.
Greg sorry for the late reply. By highest cost I should have said highest regulatory cost.
I am not sure if the Auditor calculated the DC on an individual council basis or used the average $14,000 figure. Councils should also remember that new residencies bring new rates which can pay the debt up to a certain level for new infrastructure provided.
The final point is the tricky one. This is where you either need competitive entry into the developer game so existing players cannot extort the final customers because competitors will come and undercut them. The problem with that is it requires an elastic land supply system -our planning system with 30 year local government infrastructure plans, RONs planned out 10 years in advance and no free transport infrastructure spending doesn’t provide this. Alternatively the State could intervene in the market and buy land at rural prices for greenfield land or value existing crown land at historic cost and use this state acquired land to provide affordable housing (or say to intensify State housing). Thus lowering the land rent curve and influencing the market that way. Some like the existing government find this ideologically challenging. This model works well with a whole infrastructure package -transport, health, education and is what is done in Singapore.
Of highways and boulevards, my experience in NSW disputes both of the key arguments:
– in that on highways, bikes are able to cycle, whether they would and how they would be treated are different questions, but it is possible, both on the M4 heading west in Sydney and on the dual carriageway heading o Woolongong.
– buses within Sydney use the motorways/freeways and have stops along them. The route I’ve used that does this is the 607X, primarily when the three words that strike fear into the heart of every commuter (Rail Replacement Bus) occur and other scheduled services are a better bet. The crossover section to allow buses to pickup and set down on the standard side were a little scary the first few times, but unless you’re running less than a 30 second headway, the drivers can sort it out themselves.
I think that this particular article explains fairly well the myopia that normally pervades transport planning in a number of jurisdictions, but doesn’t have to.
Ideas are the currency of this blog and we should take the best of all those that we find, no matter where they come from.
In NZ cycles are specifically outlawed from motorways so whatever they do in NSW has little relevance here, few people will cycle on a major arterial in traffic, but might if it had its own off-road or protected lanes.
NZTA has a program to eventually build some cycleways alongside (but independent of), the adjacent motorway, basically using the copious spare land at the side of the motorway reserve for a cycleway, like the North Western Cycleway.
There used to be some “bus pickup points” along the northern edge of the NW motorway near Patiki Road as I recall, but I haven’t been out that way recently but I assume they are now history as they widen the NW motorway yet again.
The key point about that is that the distances these big arterial roads or motorways are designed to allow you to cover, pretty much preclude most people cycling.
I think thats why they in part dropped walking and cycling of the original harbour bridge (ostensibly as a cost cutting measure), but rationalised it away on the basis, that those who would use the bridge would be living too far north of/from it to bother with cycling or walking to it, to then cross it – and would instead use a car and a bus if they had no car. But of course, that removed any choice they had over what modes they used. And it worked while everyone else didn’t live there and/or drive their cars too.
But plenty of folks ride the North Western Cycleway each day to/from work, that distance from town is more than the average US commute distance mentioned in that article (13km), so its no unfeasible to do. Henderson to Britomart is about 18km by cycleway.
And as the article points out, when measuring door to door times, these “slow” modes like PT or walking or buses might actually be quicker once you factor the time taken to actually get on the motorway and to get off the motorway and get parked etc.
[I reckon most people who cycle regularly could cycle from Henderson to the CBD quicker and more consistently than peak hour driving on the NW motorways could achieve.]
I know from work colleagues who live on the shore – once near the motorway on ramps in Upper Harbour drive, that it takes them more time to get on the motorway from their home and then get down the motorway to the bridge, than the rest of the trip once they hit the bridge. And sometimes thats over 1 hour “door to door” and thats to central Newmarket, not South Auckland.
The only thing that stops cyclists on the shore now is lack of Skypath, and thats soon to change.
And taking a 4 lane arterial (say Dom Road, Manukau road or Mt Eden Road), turning it (back) into a 2 lane LRT line plus 1 lane each way car lane, **will** increase throughput of the road space by a factor of two.
Thats what these roads used to have – trams down the middle and a lane of cars on each side of them. And going back is more efficient because a LRT “tram” can carry many more people than the old trams did, and with easy alighting where you are or where you need to go provides a much better use of scarce road space. And barring full bus lanes each way this may be the only way to get capacity up without flooding the CBD with buses or cars.
Greg, turning those 4 lane arterial roads back to “2 lane LRT line plus 1 lane each way car lane, **will** increase throughput of the road space by a factor of two” – of course as hundreds of people are packed like sardines in a 33m tram!. I’ve got a pic from Streetview of what it might look like (its Cotham Road, Kew, Melbourne). NOTE: during non-peak times, cars are allowed to use the tram tracks as well as park (shown in pic). During peak times, traffic use the ‘clearway’ and trams have right of way on the tram tracks (although drivers could use them to turn right).
https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@-37.808794,145.047408,3a,90y,118.18h,83.17t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s-MYxzg5xnvV-mhDxZhp2yw!2e0
So whats your point? Thats what Auckland used to look and function like. So how is that as you imply, in any way undesireable?
And I think the LRT’s will be a bit longer than 33m, and no people won’t be packed in like sardines – not unless NZ Bus run the LRTs and they buy “Alexander Dennis Ltd” brand LRTs – which no doubt will be too small for the demand, just like they have done for the buses.
In any case all those Single Occupant Vehicles (SOVs) in the outer lane shouldn’t hold up the majority of road users – who will all be using the LRT to travel along those Isthmus key arterials.
And yes, those LRTs are more efficient per lane per direction per hour than the adjacent lanes are – when those lanes are full of SOVs.
Even if those adjacent lanes were mostly/fully full of buses, the LRT would still be a better solution as far as moving the most people with the least energy and best efficiency.
Yes, cars will have to learn not to make right hand turns in peak, but thats not a new thing as lots of side road intersections on arterials have those restrictions now at peak and motorist cope there now.
This is really not a lot different than if AT made the centre lanes full time bus lanes which is the other alternative, and while that is superficially attractive, it doesn’t solve the problem of buses clogging up the CBD.
What I am saying is that it would be nice to have some LRT/trams in Auckland that doesn’t go around in loops in Wynyard quarter. I simply used an example to show what some arterial roads could look like with LRT/trams.
I think my use of ‘packed like sardines’ wasn’t the best use of language. However, being packed in a tram with no air con at 37 degrees is close to unbearable…it makes the $50 per day parking in Melbourne’s CBD look attractive….at least I can be in an air conditioned sole occupant tin box. (I can dream of driving as I don’t have a car!)
With the ADL like trams, that is exactly the issue with trams in Melb at peak times except some don’t have air con. The newer trams are much better, although they seem to be fairly slow.
NZ Bus really need to take a look at which routes get the ADL’s…they are more suited for suburban routes with fewer passengers, rather than the inner city routes and circles. NZ Bus seems to put the bigger buses on routes that don’t need them and puts the ADL’s on the routes that need larger buses. Btw, when is Auckland getting more double decker buses?
better to be ‘packed’ on a modern tram than ‘packed’ on our currently so-full-they’re-driving-past-stops-not-picking-people-up buses don’t you think?
Haven’t done too much peak time travel in Auckland, however, it is true that getting packed like sardines is much better than not getting in at all! I haven’t had too many issues with that in Welly though…it gets quite crowded sometimes, but you definitely can get on (unless it’s a shitty peak hour bus replacement or that trains are running reduced services during rush hour)