Road Building Brouhaha

Part of it will be one of her main issues (drug reform) being a tough sell to be involved in for conservative MPs who are afraid to have their name anywhere near anything to do with drugs (besides saying the classic “drugs are bad mmm kay”).

If the others are having more success that’s good to hear. Maybe there is hope for politics after all.

I totally agree. When people say there should be less politics they usually mean that everybody should agree with them. There was nothing apolitical about the Clarke government prior to 2008 and nor should there have been. Democracy only works when people stand for something other than just getting back in.

I think it is a matter of degree. Nobody wants the old days when a National party member chose the engines for the railways and bought some too big for the Kaimai tunnel.
But transport always involves large sums of public money and represents a wealth transfer so there needs to be political accountability. Instead we have moved to a system where business people get appointed to AT or NZTA and get to set the goals to suit others like themselves and the people paying get no say in the outcomes. Rules should be set by elected people. Technocrats should apply those rules.
Nobody has a right to expect the next government to do what the previous crowd did.

Back when Muldoon corporatised the railways department one of Muldoon’s lackeys was put in charge. He went on a trip and arranged a deal to buy locomotives that had to be cancelled when he got back as they were too big for NZ tunnels. I think Prebble also mentions it in I’ve Been Thinking. Or maybe it was Hard Labour by Mike Moore- something I read in the 80’s or 90’s.
Back then politicians were involved in purchasing decisions when they didn’t know anything about the product. Muldoon required Air NZ to get Rolls Royce engines instead of GE because he had done a deal for market access.

Interesting thoughts, Matt, including about delving into new territory of thought. Matthew, I tend to agree that democracy is limited but it’s probably the best we have and we need to work better at it.

Democracy means, to me, a far better system than what we have. Democracy doesn’t mean those few in the population who are motivated and have time on their hands get to decide through a consultation-clothed vote about what sort of scalpel a surgeon should use for operations in the public health system, or what sort of homework children aged 6 should get, or how to divide up the public realm for different demographic needs. That’s a silly system. The public would be overwhelmed by having to submit all the time. The experts would be frustrated and barely be able to function.

In NZ there aren’t many areas that are functioning this poorly, but transport is getting close. Change-averse voices are being allowed to overrule basic freedoms for other groups. In a good democracy the public don’t expect to micromanage experts like this.

I think China and USSR are not shining examples, because of the human rights aspects. I would’ve thought that somewhere like Finland would be a better example: in ruin after the Winter War and the Continuation War, they collectively invested in their infrastructure and their people. Yet as with any example, there’ll be a reason why Finland, too, isn’t a good example.

A country’s decision to use public money to make progress is interesting, to me, regardless of the political system, but knowledge of that political system makes it more interesting. So please do share examples and information in the comments!

Thank you Ari, this is a much more accurate picture of what happened in USSR and China. Matt G doesn’t understand that China’s population has risen from poverty in recent years only through the adoption of capitalism, albeit a corrupt autocratic form.
That aside, for Matt G to suggest communist model’s as an alternative to our current democratic capitalist society tells you a lot about the idealogy of some of the contributors….

I wrote a book a few years ago which details specific alternatives, going fairly deep on one alternative and how we could transition to it. It’s a moneyless system often referred to as a resource-based economy. I’m usually hesitant to name alternative systems in comment forums like this because its almost impossible to describe them in a few hundred words and it usually leads to people googling things and coming away with a surface understanding and the wrong impression. Anyone who’s read Adam Smith or Karl Marx would appreciate the crazy scale of influences involved in economic systems. THat’s why I find labeling economic systems to be counter-productive to having meaningful discussion about their merits, as kind of happened with Ari refering to China as state capitalist and me as centrally co-ordinated (neither are incorrect and both our points were salient but nobody really comes away any more informed on the topic). I didn’t start this train of converssation to self-promote but if anyone is interested in reading the book get in touch and I’ll email you a free copy in the format you need for whatever device you read on…. (I’m not sure of the commenting rules am I allowed to share my email address?) Oh and Heidi, those are good points about democracy. In the book I suggest a version of democracy more like you envisage but I don’t see any signs of voters being willing to relegate their input to the required levels in a capitalist democracies today.

The point is not whether capitalism/democracy is best.

The point is whether a laissez faire, neoliberal “modern American” form of capitalism/democracy is better for society (society, not just the economy) or whether a (relatively) high tax, high public service, “modern Northern European” model delivers a better outcome for society (again, not just the economy.

Of course, even the US was a high tax, high public service system until the late 1970s (Robert Reich says 1978) until the wealthy got hold of the system and decided they would just take almost all the profits. Reagan was the perfect President to preside over the dismantling of that system.

Which is why real wages havent risen since the ’80s.

Calling any alternative to a laissez faire, neoliberal “modern American” form of capitalism/democracy “socialism” (meaning really Communism) and then pointing to former Communist regimes, is just a strawman argument. For a start, despite the official names of those states, they were not “socialist” – they were Russian dominated (or even worse, like in Romania, non-Russian dominated) dictatorships that paid lip service to any kind of equality.

We are only discussing different flavours of capitalism/democracy. We should be able to do that without having silly strawman arguments tossed around.

The Quay Park junction is at capacity and would need to be grade separated to allow any increase on existing frequencies. That won’t be cheap.

Even if this happened using the Albert St tunnel will only allow a small increase in frequency, there is a limited number of trains that can be turned around at a two track terminus.

There is no way what you suggest will get anywhere near the frequencies proposed with the CRL.

It still doesn’t really get you get any more trains into or out of Britomart, and therefore no more trains into the city, and no more trains across the network (assuming they all go to the city).

About the only think you could do is stack some trains inside the tunnel stub for interpeak stabling, saving you the need to bring them out again (but also meaning the train has to stay there until the evening peak, so its literally owning each of those train for one run per day).

From a point clear of the platforms to the end of the tunnel you have 610m of track length. So with two tracks you might just be able to store eight 150m long trains, saving you eight throat tunnel movements across the peak in total.

So that would allow you to bring in and send out again another four trains across the peak period above what we do today. I.e. Raising from the current 40 trains to Britomart in two hours, to 44 trains. So a 10% gain in capacity.

Jezza – back to the time savings – if Newmarket was bypassed or an additional platform built north of the junction (plenty of room there) then the saving from the west would only be 2 or 3 mins to Britomart – and say 5 mins to a the centre of gravity of the employment (which is NOT outside the Aotea Station like the deceptive business case places it). So combine that with the 5 mins additional time from the South (even Aotea is 2 mins longer than Britomart is at the mo) and the zero saving from the Eastern and Onehunga lines – the total time savings must be next to nothing.

For the very few Aucklanders who will use this – and mostly from expensive areas to highly paid jobs – I just dont see how it will contribute to the transport woes of 95% of Aucklanders. There are not even that many people working in the CBD – little more than Wellington.

Graeme – with the frequencies proposed post-CRL for the Western, Southern and Onehunga lines the Newmarket junction would have to be grade separated as well. This will eat into most of the space between the junction and the Cowie St bridge, not to mention pushing Newmarket Station out of the centre of Newmarket.

The centre of gravity of employment and education might not be right at Aotea but it’s a hell of a lot closer to there than it is to Britomart and is certainly more than 2-3 minutes walk from Britomart.

I am glad you agree with scrapping the project. There are way cheaper ways to improve rail such as express lines on the Southern and Western lines – and removing the 26 rail crossings on the Western Line. Also fast tracking elec to Pukekohe and Helensville would be great.

How embarrassing Graeme. You have just revealed you don’t understand the project. Perhaps that’s why you don’t see the value?

So frustrating to see that people haven’t taken the time to do some basic reading, years after the project has been accepted as necessary by every expert – and even Gerry Brownlee. My old woodwork teacher is far from an expert but he accepted the need for the project eventually.

Hopefully, we’ll see them using reallocated traffic lanes. It’ll be good to reclaim some of that investment we’ve spent so much money on and put it to efficient use. Too often they’re stuck in the congestion caused by space-inefficient general traffic.

Craziest thing of all is when planning includes building completely new lanes for buses instead of reallocating existing traffic lanes. That’s a lost opportunity to reduce vkt while increasing people flow.

Sorry Joe I should have said self driving cabs. I think this is the future of public transport and we should be preparing for it now. Or its a brave bet against Google, Apple. GM and the Chinese govt who all think they are going make trillions selling us this service.
The compelling factor is the trips will be so cheap – and all point to point. It will undermine the frequency of station to station modes and when you have done that the model collapses.

Here’s a thought, lets test this self driving taxi thing.

Why don’t we spend a year with the government paying the wages of every taxi and uber driver in the country, and anyone else that wan’ts to be one, so that they are everywhere and price of taxing a taxi is half what it is today. This will be the same for the user as if they were driverless.

Then we can clearly see if driverless taxis will fix transport and get rid of congestion.

And that’s a small low-density town of 40,000. For Auckland, with space restraints, all driverless cars or uber provide is congestion, lack of access, and a waste of transport investment in an inefficient mode.

The space requirements of cars mean their only future is as the luxury or special needs niche of transport, in Auckland. There’s no way around that.

Graeme, I read the article:

… with ridership increasing each year, costs will only rise… If you operate a regular bus system, you have a much better idea of what those costs will look like five or 10 years from now… the town has taken the extraordinary step of deterring people from using Uber too much, capping the number of rides a resident can take per month. For mall worker Arrega, who has been “working like crazy”, that often means exceeding the limit midway through the month… when people start using it in any numbers, it devours the the entire budget… As for the environmental impact, there is even less doubt about the negative impact…

Which bit about cars being space inefficient do you not understand?

I’m not sure, but I think Graeme’s just enjoying wasting our time. But really, he’s simply giving us the opportunity to be prepared for some odd things things people might say if they haven’t thought something through.

Self-driving cars are massively overhyped. It’s an incredibly difficult problem technologically, and there are also many difficult legal and social issues blocking it. Waymo is quite far ahead of everyone else but even they are far away from handling the full range of conditions you need for a general-purpose autonomous taxi fleet.

More than 20 years ago I was at CMU when their autonomous driving group did “No Hands Across America”. What we have now isn’t that much more advanced then what they had then. We will see incremental deployments in limited situations over the coming decades but forget about general replacement of human drivers in the next 20 years.

Do you have any evidence that the benefit would be contained to wealthy people?

I agree 100%.

And yes if journey times were calculated over all modes, I am sure we would be seeing a downward trend. people on PT at peak times or on a bike would be enjoying shorter travel times for sure.