Briefing to the Transport Minister – Part 1
The government has released the briefings ministers received from their ministries and of course this blog is fairly interested in what the transport ministry has to say. The briefing has been split into two sections, one giving an overview of the portfolio and the other the policy challenges and upcoming decisions.…
28 Comments Transit Station 26 Jan 2012
As there’s been a lot of discussion about population density here I figure this post from good ol’ Cap’nTransit is on the money. Yes this is my view too, you think more density is needed? Well build the transit and the density will follow [all else being equal], foolish to try to wait for some ideal density then meet that demand with infrastructure.…
Transit Station
This is a new kind of post for readers interested in a quick roundup of transit related news and analysis from around the world. The plan is to aggregate a bunch of links that relate either directly or tangentially to Auckland transit issues.…
Traffic falling in the USA too
One of the most interesting things to note when it comes to transport trends over the past few years is the complete lack in growth of state highway traffic volumes since around 2005, with a little bumping around we actually find ourselves with the same level of traffic on our state highways in 2010 as we had in 2005: It’s perhaps a bit early to comprehensively know whether this is a short-term “bucking” of the long-term trend of inexorable growth – or something more permanent.…
Peak travel?
I came across an interesting journal article the other day – entitled Are We Reaching Peak Travel? Trends in Passenger Transport in Eight Industrialized Countries by Adam Millard-Ball and Lee Schipper. It is an interesting examination of an issue that I’ve been looking at in my analysis of recent traffic trends on roads in New Zealand – the idea that perhaps we’re shifting away from the decades long process of people travelling more and more each year.…
Changing transport trends
In a comment on yesterday’s post about changing attitudes towards transport among young people, Stu Donovan pointed towards a very interesting piece of research undertaken by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute on changing transport trends in a number of different countries around the world.…
IEA: Peak Oil happened in 2006
There was a fascinating interview on Radio NZ this morning of the International Energy Agency’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol, about increasing oil scarcity. You can listen to the interview here.
Mr Birol talks a lot about things I’ve mentioned many times on this blog before: that there are two underlying key factors behind higher oil prices – continually increasing demand (particularly in developing nations) as well as the geological constraints of peaked oil supply in many countries.…
Higher petrol prices – how prepared are we?
As I got off the bus this evening I noticed that BP had raised their price for 91 octane petrol to 221.9 c a litre. From memory this is the highest price, in nominal terms, we’ve ever seen for petrol in New Zealand.…
IMF: the economic impacts of oil scarcity
It’s a bit difficult to talk about “peak oil” without being written off as some sort of conspiracy theorist. I guess perhaps it’s because the supply of relatively cheap oil is so deeply embedded into the operation of our modern economy and society that people struggle to consider what life might be like with oil doubling or tripling in price within a relatively short time period.…
Oil prices and transport priorities
There was an interesting question and answer session in parliament today between the Green Party’s Gareth Hughes and Finance Minister Bill English, over the government’s infrastructure investment priorities and how they may be affected by rising fuel prices: The full text of the debate can be read here.…
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