MoT’s review of capital spending on roads, part 2
This is the second post in a series on the Ministry of Transport’s working paper on New Zealand’s capital spending on roads, which was prepared as an input to the 2015/16 Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport Funding. It was released to Matt under the Official Information Act just before Christmas.…
6 Comments Big city, small firms
Urbanists often argue for better cities by appealing to our desire to be happier, healthier, or more environmentally sustainable. Cities, they argue, can improve our well-being in all sorts of ways. There is definitely something to this idea. As I’ve previously written, good urban policies, such as mixed-use developments, denser neighbourhoods, shared spaces, and useful public transport, can make us better off in all sorts of ways.…
Parking is massively oversupplied in US cities
When people discuss the costs of car-centric transport systems, they tend to tend to talk about congestion, fuel costs, crashes, or, if they’re environmentally-minded, carbon emissions.
However, one of the largest costs of auto-dependency is hidden in plain sight: the cost of providing parking spaces.…
We need more choice in transport markets
Via economist Donal Curtin, I ran across the draft report that the Australian Competition Policy Review issued last September. It’s a long and fairly technical document, but the introduction made some good points in accessible language:
Competition policy sits well with the values Australians express in their everyday interactions.…
The pace of transport policy innovation
Economists who study firm performance or countries’ economic development know that the best way to get ahead is often to adapt or adopt proven ideas from elsewhere. Technology transfer has always been a crucial part of innovation.
What’s true for firms is also true for cities.…
Will people choose to buy new vehicle technologies?
Last year we started to take a look at an emerging technology that some claim will revolutionise urban transport – driverless cars. My view is that they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be – if we wanted to, we could easily get the purported benefits by investing in existing, proven technology:
While driverless cars (or hoverboards for that matter) sound exciting, we can’t afford to pin all of our hopes on them.…
The geometry of urban labour markets
Every half-decade, Census data gives us an interesting and detailed insight into how New Zealanders are travelling. Back in August, the Ministry of Transport published a comprehensive analysis of journey to work patterns in Auckland (ably summarised by Matt here).
Here’s one of the key maps from the report.…
Sunday reading 11 January 2015
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.
McKenzie Funk, “The Wreck of the Kulluk“, New York Times: The Arctic was a long-term investment — Shell would not start production on such a big project in such a distant place until at least a decade after it found oil — but the future is always getting closer, and by 2010 the company was anxious.…
The importance of expensive apartments
Apartment development in Auckland often seems to be caught in a Catch-22. When we build cheap apartments, they’re criticised as a blight on the city – “shoeboxes” that nobody would ever want to live in. (Never mind that many people do live in them, and value the fact that they are an affordable way to live near jobs and universities in the city centre.)…
What will happen as we build our “missing modes”?
Last year I started to take a look at demand for new transport investments. I found that demand for toll roads has massively underperformed, showing that people are unwilling to pay for new roads. On the other hand, demand for new public transport facilities has taken off more rapidly than projected.…
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