An interesting piece on Radio NZ what the CEO of the Ministry of Transport think will be the future of transport in NZ. I agree with some of what he says but in others it seems like he off the mark. You can listen to an interview here
New Zealand had 2,488,008 licensed cars and vans on its roads at the last count three months ago.
However Mr Matthews, who is also Secretary of Transport, said in three decades there will be little point in people owning such vehicles.
“I have to say as a self-confessed petrol head and the owner of five vehicles, the concept of not owning a vehicle is pretty hard for me to swallow.
“But for my grandchildren, I’m sure it won’t be so difficult for them to imagine,” he said.
Mr Matthews told the transport summit he foresees major changes in how people travel, envisioning a future “more tailored to individual needs” and with “more choice”.
“You’ll no longer need to look to see when a bus, train or taxi will be available because there probably won’t be any bus stops or bus timetables, in fact there’ll be no parking as well.
“You’ll probably no longer need to worry about cleaning out the garage to get the car in because you probably won’t own a car.
“It simply won’t make any sense anymore for you to own your own vehicle,” Mr Matthews told the internationally-attended summit.
I agree that in the future people probably won’t own cars however I’m a bit sceptical it will completely happen within 30 years given the pace of change in the car industry, for example the average age of a vehicle in NZ is around 13 years and getting older. The issue of bus stops are an interesting one though as he doesn’t appear to be suggesting that buses themselves will disappear. In my view we’ll still see PT but increasingly it will high quality, high capacity options such as busways and rail (light and heavy) and more dedicated stations rather than small stops. Within that system driverless cars are likely to be quite a useful last mile solution.
Of course if we don’t need carparks or a garage and driveway that also opens up a huge amount of space in urban environments that can be put to better use. In cities like Auckland where space is at such a premium that presents interesting opportunities.
One area I think he’s way off the mark is on the future of freight
He said there needed to be a drive toward significant improvements in the productivity and efficiency of freight supply chains, and he believed freight vehicles would be self-driving.
“These modern road trains will be more flexible, more responsive to market and consumer demands than any of our current train systems can ever be… The rail network outside of Auckland and Wellington, which is shared with commuter services, already effectively provides a separated freight corridor.”
Mr Matthews said these corridors could be transformed into high-speed freight networks.
“Rail may not be the technology of choice in the future for New Zealand… I imagine the space the corridors currently occupy being allocated for a different way of use.
“Imagine platoon trucks not guided by rails, but by a system that allows them to operate safely on narrow concrete pads through these dedicated freight corridors.”
Ripping up the railways and turning them into truckways has been a desire from the trucking industry for decades. Is it really practical for us to spend what would be 10’s of billions to rip up the existing working rail network and replace it with continuous concrete strips strong enough to carry super heavy trucks. Included in that is bound to be a need to duplicate the corridor seeing as most of the rail corridor is single track. We’re then going to have fleets of driverless trucks to run on these truckways in a platoon just like trains and carriages do now. To be honest I’m not quite sure what we gain from this suggestion and if it’s automation that’s desired it would surely be cheaper and easier to upgrade trains to be driverless and then invest in automated systems to quickly load and unload trains at destinations.
The UK consultant who is also quoted in the piece sums up one of the issues quite nicely too.
“Platooning of trucks has been tested, successfully tested quite a few times – it works – technology is not a real problem.
“The problem is acceptability and the problem is liability – acceptability because car drivers don’t want to be associated with large trains of trucks where the person doesn’t appear be in control.”
One thing I will say about the views of the MoT CEO, at least they are starting to look to the future. These comments follow on from a report late last year looking at future demand in which only one of four scenarios would see travel demand increase. They’ve also been doing more work thinking about the future – one piece of which I’ll try to talk about this week.
Processing...
So people wont own cars but cars there will be but they won’t need parking. Ok, I’m confused. Where do these cars go during the day? What of builders, service industries, etc? The view is far too simplistic and ignores a great many variables.
Cars will basically be driverless taxis. When the cars aren’t needed (e.g. at night or outside peak hours) they can park somewhere where land is not at a premium (outside the city). The only time they would need to park within the city is when dropping someone off or picking someone up.
Tradies will probably still need their own vans. But you could image a big company like Lazer Electrical having less driverless vans than tradies and van sharing (van takes you to the job, you take your tools out, van goes and takes someone else to their job).
No you’re wrong here – trades use their vans as their toolbox – they’ve got far too much stuff in their they might unexpectantly need to not have it close by.
Will self driving utes have steering wheels? How does the tradie back the trailer down a driveway that doesn’t exist (likely clay)?
I suggest that you watch the following video; l don’t know if I agree with all the points mentioned and I think the time scale may be a little off; but I think he does make many good arguments why the world will change in the way mentioned in this article:
I heard this a few days ago on checkpoint. His comments came across a a bizarre mix of ideology, vested interests and some realism. Then there’s the question of whether a “self-confessed petrol head with 5 cars” is equipped to transition us from 20th century motordom to a low carbon multi modal transport future. His future looking comments remained car-centric which seems like blinkered in-the-box thinking. Driverless cars may well make car use more efficient, but they won’t change the need for the right mix of high capacity transit and private vehicles.
Sorry, but why is that even a question? Why should how many cars someone have automatically disqualify them from having a valid opinion on transport or public transport matters. You can only drive one and once and if you’re doing it out of a passion, you’re not going to want to be sitting in traffic while you’re in your pride and joy every now and then. Even more reason to have a functioning PT network.
Change can be very rapid. In 1900 most purple in European societies who owned transport would have owned a horse and buggy of some kind. By 1930 that would have been much more rare. My own mother’s childhood home in Canada included a ramp to stables in the basement and a garage for the family buggy. They kept the garage.
I kind of agree with the CEO on trucks. The big difference between driverless trucks and trains is that a driverless truck can also be driven by a driver on normal roads as well as driving itself on driverless roads. So you can load up a truck at the origin, have someone drive it to the nearest driverless freight road, let the truck drive itself to the destination city, then have someone drive it to the destination. The train equivalent of this requires you to load and unload the train from the truck, and it requires waiting for the train to be full before departing.
Or, more likely, load up the truck at origin, travel driverless to the train, at which point the container which carries the truck load is lifted off the truck bed and onto the train.
At the destination, the container is moved from train to delivery truck.
Intercity freight –>
• Separate trucks all the way, or
• Use the economy of scale that trains deliver?
From a cost point of view, I’m betting it’ll be a no brainer (no, I’ve not got links handy – but I think rail winning the economies of scale argument is pretty widely accepted).
Which begs the question, why aren’t we doing this now?
The answer can be found in previous governments vandalism of kiwirail (and its predecessors), and the current governments transport budget (which modes are subsidised and which are starved) and the cuts to rail service and infrastructure we’ve been seeing over the past 7 years.
+1
Our current railways have 19th Century alignments (5 chains = ~100 metre radius curves), far too tight for “HPVs” to be HP (and as Matt points out, mainly only single track).
Let’s upgrade our railways to 21st Century alignments – we can ‘truckwash’ it to the road-centric politicians and bureaucrats (and “stakeholders”) by saying we’re future-proofing our railways for future truckways.
I’m only half joking. Whatever it takes to get 21st Century rail in this country.
And don’t forget how much more energy efficient it is to move goods on steel wheels on steel rails than Pneumatic tyres on Paving: One person can literally move a 30 tonne goods wagon – but has no show with a 30 tonne truck. I used to work in a wool store where the old steel wheeled trollies were the first ones everyone tried to grab over the rubber wheeled ones: They were so much easier to push a wool bale around over the concrete floor. Energy efficiency is going to be crucial post fossil fuel era and more energy efficient modes of moving freight will (or should) predominate, certainly for long haul. And as you say Naturesong, the use of containers and their speedy change from tuck to train, train to truck, overcomes to a significant extent the issues of double handling. In fact it may well offer significant benefit, using containers rather than directly loading curtain-siders trucks – a container can be dropped off at a business that they load at their leisure and then likewise at the other end of its journey it can be unloaded at the businesses leisure.
I actually think the platoon truck thing just shows the MoT’s distain for anything not on a road, their inability to see the big picture. This should also include water transport which is also virtually frictionless: a little donkey could pull a full canal barge, yet have no show of pulling the same weight on rubber tyres on a road. So more coastal shipping for long distances should be complementary with rail freight – both with containers. ( it makes no sense to me having trucks drag containers along the road from Christchurch to Picton to be put on a ferry to get to Wellington – why not container straight from Chch to Wellington. It should be noted here that the infrastructure for coastal shipping is just the ports at either end, the routes are not subject to adverse effects from flooding like road freight (and rail) are.
+1
Yes, the energy efficiency is a huge thing. Why have 100 truck engines (/generator, in the future) when 1 train engine (/generator, in the future) can do the same job.
The Triple-E container ships will be 18,000 TEU capacity. No port in their right mind would want to get that through their gates 1 or 2 containers at a time.
Even the smaller ships that are likely to be visiting NZ ports would put a huge amount of unnecessary truck traffic on the roads if rail wasn’t available. It would be a huge mistake to remove rail access from our ports that have it (and to not provide it to Marsden Point asap).
Your physics maybe correct, but the reality is that Kiwirail (and its predecessors) are very difficult to deal with. They have been difficult to deal with for 100 years. Just ask one of the freight companies, such as Mainfrieght, who have built their depots with rail sidings.
So, if KiwiRail is so difficult to deal with*, why do companies like Mainfreight and Mainstream continue to prefer rail-connected sites?
*not what I was hearing from a Mainfreight manager last week!
The Labour manifesto before the last election was to improve coastal shipping and invest it rail, and why I voted for them.
I think the MOT is whistling in the wind, were does the energy come from for his futuristic transport system, solar energy will not run such a system, oil will be at a premium, If it was possible to keep using it at the present rate it would last about 40 years but oil will still be in the ground in a thousand years, there comes a time when wells that might hold oil will only give it up reluctantly hence the Hubbert’s curve.
The infrastructures than would run these systems are based on a very big pyramid of energy. that’s not the future. but maybe my childhood is, we had self drive vehicles called horses and carts, the milkman got on and off and said nothing the horse new were to stop and would start again when the milkman stood on the back, it had it’s own built in computer and was self replicating all driven by sunlight.
Only one or two containers per truck vs 60 per train. Need more trucks. More trucks means more engines/motors. More motors means more maintenance. More trucks means more equipment needed. More trucks means more tyres, means more rubber, means more fuel burn/energy use and harder to dispose of when their life ends. Driverless truck with driver capability means not taking advantage of the design savings driverless can offer (also means still paying a driver). There also needs to be a heap of infrastructure set up to allow autonomous driving, let along buying the vehicles. All adds up for a lot of cost.
The trucks are a nice idea in terms of reducing loading/offloading times, but this issue is reduced when loading in containers directly at the ports or local distributor. When big loads are needed to go far, rail wins with the scale which can be moved with less friction. Helps that the infrastructure, even if not as good as it could be, exists. It’s a shame Kiwirail doesn’t seem to stand up for themselves when it comes to talk of cuts nor encourage business (they seem to have a reputation for being difficult)
I can see a world where public transport is no longer needed. For example for me to get a bus into town currently costs about $8 ($4 paid by me, $4 paid by government subsidy). A taxi currently costs about $30. If you get rid of the taxi driver, run the taxi on much cheaper electricity than petrol, and potentially pick up a few people on the way, I can see that costing less than $8. Why would anyone catch a bus?
I’m not sure that world will ever eventuate, and even if it does there will still need to be public transport in bigger cities due to congestion – but it might happen in Auckland one day…
Why would anyone catch he bus/train?
Congestion.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your theory but I would say that is also a form of public transport.
If you can get rid of the driver, and pick up people on the way, then you can even more easily have a driverless bus (a set route along set roads is far easier to operate driverless than some auto taxi van that needs to be able to drive anywhere and everywhere). In that scenario your bus ticket might cost $1 and pay the full cost of operating the bus.
Anything that works for driverless cars is going to work cheaper, better and earlier for public transport. There are simple laws of physics and geometry that mean a bus is always going to be cheaper and more energy efficient than a taxi.
You’re cheap auto taxi may indeed be a thing (one that affects private car ownership more than anything else), but at the same time super cheap auto buses will also be a thing.
Oh, and Jimbo depending on where you are the government isn’t paying half of your bus. Actually just about any bus to town during daylight hours is 100% paid for by fares, indeed things like the NEX and link buses make money. It’s just that wandering outer coverage routes and buses at odd hours bring down the average. Point is many routes are actually very efficient, and would only become extremely efficient with driverless energy efficient technologies.
+1
Absolutely. Driverless technology is likely to be much easier to implement on set routes, with sufficient width for dedicated paths and stopping places.
(The vehicles could be coated in PV materials to charge the batteries/fuel cells (or whatever replaces these), and/or powered and/or charged by induction from power sources embedded in the stopping places and/or along the routes. Again, much easier and cheaper to do this on set routes/paths/stopping places.)
But we don’t even have driverless trains. Drivers do more than just steer the vehicle. Is NZ about to undergo a huge moral awakening so everyone becomes honest and law abiding and always pays their fares and never threaten other passengers?
There are drive-less trains in other countries so I can’t see why it can’t happen here
So why don’t they have driverless trains? As you correctly say, they exist in other countries so why did Auckland buy trains that need drivers?
With the way ETCS is it probably wouldn’t take much to convert the EMUs to driverless. The real work needed would be in grade separation and securing of the rail corridor.
My understanding is that Auckland’s trains only require the addition of one circuit board to be driverless, and indeed that they will run automatically through the CRL.
The reason AKL’s passenger trains are not driverless are to do with the network:
-the lack of separation from people and traffic [ie level crossings]
-that the track is shared with freight
However they still could be driverless, just with more difficulty.
One thing that could easily be done with a new line across the harbour and up the completely separated busway connecting to Aotea station by transfer is making it driverless from the start.
It would cost $billions to go driverless. Some say simply a transponder is placed on the platforms etc for the train to stop at. But its more than that. Basically the whole rail corridor has to be secured- fully fenced in, and as said previously the network. All level crossings would have to be eliminated. Than additionally, its quite likely they would still have to have someone sit in the cab to push emergency stop if need be….. Auckland would have to be a city of a population at around 10million to support that sort of system finacilly. As for driverless freight trains, go ask bhp bilition, or more so RIO tinto about driverless freight trains. There’s more than just driving the things the locomotive engineers do. That’s why they are engineers.
Yes precisely why it will only be driverless in the CRL, the only properly segregated and sealed bit.
You don’t need a city of ten million though, Vancouver has an entirely driverless network (an nobody has to be there to push a button either).
Toulouse in France is a much smaller city than Auckland and it has an awesome driverless Metro system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toulouse_Metro
I’ve been on this and it’s great sitting at the very front window looking at the track approaching in the twists and turns of the tunnels – it’s like being on a cross between a roller coaster and a hydroslide (but being completely comfortable and safe).
The (“light”) metro system this blog proposes for the North Shore could be like this, at least the spine along the fully grade-separated busway, for starters …
Exactly what is that little guy driving the bus going to do to stop those three thugs robbing you at the back of the bus?
I think you need to stop watching movies set on 1970s New York subways.
The reason we don’t have driverless trains for our nice new electric units is probably mainly because of the unions – and the cost of implementing the signalling / automation system for driverless trains. In places where trains have been introduced without a need for drivers, they have retained the same staff levels because of unions – basically not wanting any loss of jobs – and so the new title “train captain” i.e. conductor / care and assistance / can also drive a train if it breaks down.
unions in nz are powerless. often used as an excuse by companies not to modernize
it would surely be cheaper and easier to upgrade trains to be driverless and then invest in automated systems to quickly load and unload trains at destinations.
This is one of the reasons I’m concerned about POALs expansion plans. Moving things with computers allows for huge increases in efficiency, in the way that the transition from palletised international transport to containerised international transport did.
I can envision a future in which freight is essentially autonomous. Robot systems (such as Kiva) have already begun to take over warehousing, and it’s simply a matter of time before they take over the processes from ship to storage.
It’s worth having conversations about these things now, before the automated options that are chosen (from many) are presented as singular and inevitable.
Lol at trying to predict the future tbh.
“We’re then going to have fleets of driverless trucks to run on these truckways in a platoon just like trains and carriages do now”
And because they are rubber tyred they’ll use 4-6 times more fuel. I agree, it probably won’t happen.
“if it’s automation that’s desired it would surely be cheaper and easier to upgrade trains to be driverless”
A 60 wagon train in New Zealand is currently the equivalent of 59 driverless trucks, and 1 truck with a driver. So really, automation has already been largely achieved.
Not just that Geoff, but imagine all that extra rubber!!
There is already an international problem with the disposal of rubber.
Sounds like this man is a ceo who has lost the plot, or is a poor planner.
The thing that really amazed me the most with his statements, was no more bus stops…..
Yeah no more bus timetable is one thing (turn up and go) but would also need to be 24/7 not just 7am-7pm since that is still a timetable IMO, and their example of using the overly crowded city link is a bit of a laugh, its faster to walk queen street at times… Also no bus stops is ridiculous, the bus would be stopping at 10x the amount of places if it had flexible stops, leading to a much longer journey plus some stops would be quite unsafe.
Sick of transport politicians in this country and their driverless car fantasies. They will surely be a great new technology but they are overstating its advantages to the point of insanity. Also not sure if car renting is that big of a thing either, I just have my car in my garage for whenever I require it, e.g. trip to bach up north, big monthly grocery shop or a day out at a strangely PT unserved west-coast Auckland beach.
We really need to work on getting more areas in Auckland actually served by PT and make existing PT more usable. While the new network is looking like an improvement I still see a lot of unserved or underserved areas which is quite a disappointment.
Can I call Neil out on being part of the trucking lobby please?
Many years ago the pundits were saying that the future of public transport was intelligent transport systems (pods you could call up, that would whisk you to your destination) and dial a ride buses. The problem with ITS was providing separate infrastructure for the pods to ride on. The problem with dial a ride at the time was the (landline only) phone system. These problems have been solved. Google cars are the ITS of the future. They will be a great addition to the choice of public transport services offered. Will they replace private cars? Maybe but I doubt it.
What happens when it rains and your driverless transport system comes to a stop?
Future of Rail 2050 report as below provides an interesting insight
http://www.arup.com/Homepage_Future_of_Rail.aspx
The current legal maximum height for trucks in NZ is 4.25m, maximum width is 2.5m. The maximum height of a new Auckland EMU to the top of the pantograph when folded down in 4m. The pantograph’s width is about 1.5m. Crucially at the cant rail – the point at which the side of the train folds around to form the roof, the height is about 3.4m with a width of 2.6m. Trains are carefully designed to fit through the elliptical profiles of tunnels and it should be noted that Auckland’s new EMU fleet is extremely generously dimensioned compared to most of New Zealand’s trains – ie take them south of Auckland and they won’t fit through many of the tunnels. Fitting standard height and width trucks through most of KiwiRail’s network would be physically impossible without billions of dollars of expenditure, ie pretty much starting again and re-boring tunnels from scratch in many cases.
The more one investigates Mr Matthew’s comments, the more it is clear his ideas about freight don’t pass the sniff test. They appear to be either a brain explosion, or a carefully scripted piece of propaganda in which he is the mouthpiece for vested interests. The whole conference appears to have a somewhat unsavoury modal bias – where is the international work on fuel efficiency innovation in marine? – there is some great work out there. In the rail sector, we all know Vancouver and other cities who operate very successful “break-even” driverless networks carrying hundreds of millions of passengers a year. Where were the representatives from Vancouver, Bombardier or Hyundai Rotem at this Intelligent Transport Systems conference? Rio Tinto is in the midst of implementing a driverless freight train network in Western Australia. Where were the speakers from this organisation? I think the answer is that the conference organisers didn’t want their roading narrative sullied by talk of innovation happening in other modes.
Meawhile, in the real world, as distorted by our dysfunctional National corporate drones, Kiwirail is even planning to replace it’s electric freight locos with diesel.. about as backwards a step as you can imagine..
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/07/01/kiwirail-must-upgrade-its-electric-fleet/
What they (and the MoT) should be doing is modernising its electric locos and electrifying the tracks between Te Rapa and Papakura.. and south to Wellington (dual system 25kVac / 1.5 kVdc locos easy peasy).. and for that matter other tracks.
i.e. convert our rail freight to electric (and hence decarbonise) without needing to wait for or invest billions in any fanciful new tech.
Is Welly still DC? The only de-electrification should be temporary to re-electrify Welly to AC. Really a huge waste of an opportunity and infrastructure to go backwards to more diesels.
You would only need to convert the NIMT/Kapiti Line to AC, the others could stay as they are. That would require a little bit of junction work but you could fairly easily have a pair of DC tracks on one side and a pair of AC on the other leading into Wellington Station.
Always beware of the word ‘easily’ – for instance, with the NIMT AC and the rest of the network DC and a three-track entry to Wellington, how do you make one pair AC and another pair DC? With all unit storage on the ‘AC’ side, where are DC units stabled? With the freight and loco facilities on the ‘DC’ side, how do AC NIMT trains get there? Possible – perhaps; easy – definitely not.
I said fairly easily. Didn’t say it was necessarily cheap and immediate, but there aren’t any major reasons why you couldn’t with a bit of time and money.
Yes for a start you would need a fourth main track into Wellington, however the space exists and already has various sidings that could be upgraded. Secondly you would probably have to realign the Hutt down track to follow the up track at the junction with the NIMT so they were both on one side.
This would put all the DC on the western two tracks, including the JVille line, and have them next to the existing DC stabling and facilities.
It would also mean all the AC was on the eastern two tracks, next to the port sidings and ferry branch, which is exactly where you want them. Presumably a stabling facility for the AC units would be built on that side too.
All up I make that about 800m of new trackage that can fit comfortably within the corridor, plus the costs of converting/extending the power system and a new stabling yard.
“Fit comfortably” is another “fairly easily” sort of phrase. The NIMT/WL corridor is actually quite a tight fit between the unit stabling and depot, Johnsonville Line and the hillside on the one side and the loco depot, turntable, yard and access roads on the other – probably to be further restricted by the haul road to the ferry terminal made necessary for the road-bridging required by the Arahura’s withdrawal. And we haven’t mentioned the operational complexities introduced by effectively dividing the railway station into two, undoing much of the good work done nearly 80 years ago; or by splitting the EMU fleet in two halves, just as it is about to become standardised for the first time in over 30 years, with the consequential duplicated maintenance and stabling facilities; or by having AC and DC in close proximity, with all the likely electrical issues.
Enlarging on what I said before, split AC/DC operation is perhaps possible, definitely not easy (fairly or not) or comfortable – and very expensive!
Far,easier to change the network and trains over to AC.
I don’t disagree, but I suggest that the chances of converting to AC, thereby throwing away all the money that’s been spent in recent years on upgrading the DC network, are remote (to say the least), particularly when none of the operators involved has any interest in such a project proceeding.
Or use dual voltage locos as found elsewhere.
I understand the Matangi’s can be easily changed over to 25KV AC
Any half wit who thinks trucks can replace rail needs to have his head read
During WW2, the railhead was the key for logistics. Trucks cannot move the quantities required. Just doesn’t happen. Especially with bulky goods.
So railways should be ripped up, paved over and turned into truckways?
Um – cost? Loading gauge? Single tracks? Tunnels? Cost-benefit analysis? Hint: we have a road network *already*.
I assumed this was just the brain-fart of an attention-seeking politician until I reread the top line and saw that it was from the CEO of the Ministry of Transport.
That’s alarming. The job of senior officials should be to moderate the sillier statements of the politicians, not to add to them.
Interesing comments, especially no one asking how this driverless car system works outside the cities, down all those rural roads (with wandering stock) and travelling between small towns or to the beach, or along the beach ….
I think the CEO is just deluded and living in a climate change denial world in his vision. Mind you the NZ Initiative also suggests there is no need to have rail public transport because driverless vehicles.
The reason why kiwirail are deciding whether
or not to go back to diesels on the central section of the main train is becaue diesel locomotive technology is more advanced than what it was back then there’s no oil crisis these days and even if trains do use diesel its still more energy efficient than road transport but I think they should overhaul the ef class and electrify the whole nimt and reopen all the lines they closed and utilize rail to its necessary capacity for freight.
The reason why kiwirail are deciding whether
or not to go back to diesels on the central section of the main train is because diesel locomotive technology is more advanced than what it was back then there’s no oil crisis these days and even if trains do use diesel its still more energy-efficient than road transport but I think they should overhaul the ef class and electrify the whole nimt and reopen all the lines they closed and utilize rail to its necessary capacity for freight.