Bernard

Who said buses work? What is the subsidy per bus ride? Public transport is not about energy efficiency it is a social service and it frankly p%%es me off how the bureaucrats (and green politicians) keep trying to spin it into an environmentally friendly 'solution' whilst carefully hiding the facts from us all.

Hugh wants to built great tranches of cheap houses on the fringe, how is that going to be serviced, basically his 'solutions' to the housing price crisis requires cheap oil and that may well be at risk.

Electrifying the rail network in Auckland is a stopgap measure which will reduce demand on the motorway system so we can continue BAU for a few more years (exactly as the northern busway was about extending the life of the harbour bridge) and at $500 million costs half of Helens looney plan to tunnel thru waterview

Its not the money that annoys me its the lack of transparency.

Neven

Matt,

How much does that train trip cost you? Or more accurately, how much does it cost me and other taxpayers?
You might find it's cheaper to take a taxi if you had to pay yourself.
I have a better suggestion. Cycle.
I often cycle from the edge of Greenlane/Epsom to Herne Bay for work and it takes 25 minutes. Cycle with me and you can ride in my slipstream. I have a very large slipstream....
That costs the taxpayer nothing, costs me nothing in petrol, and generates little greenhouse gases, apart from my coughing, wheezing and burping.

Neven911
I agree on the lack of transparency. Who knows how much it really costs? Or what the benefits are? Especially when we have no idea yet what our greenhouse gas costs will be.

cheers
Bernard

Bernard
But how much does congested motorways cost the economy in terms of business (congestion related time delays), the environment (green house gases), and our health (air quality)?? Hugely I would suggest.
I agree that cycling should be encouraged too.
thanks for the slipstream offer!!!!

Steve,
I don't mind governments spending on infrastructure. But we should do a proper cost benefit analysis first. This has never been done for electrification.

Matt in Auckland,
You may be right on time delays and greenhouse gases. But I haven't seen any proper studies on the impact.
My bet is more money on broadband, allowing more people to work from home, would deliver more bang for our buck. But again, until we have an analysis, we shouldn't be spending money on either.

cheers
Bernard

Bernard

Nice to hear that you are not flatulent (for those who cycle behind you). Certainly Matt has rose tinted glasses as far public transport is concerned, its a faith based "build it and they will come", unfortunately it is a mirage, the more services you put on the lower your utilization, and without a regular service they won't come at all. utilization is the key to efficiency, the most perverse thing is that to majorly increase the efficiency of public transport you have to carry people further, which is why it is cheaper per k to fly to Sydney than take a bus into Auckland CBD. So you end up with this Kafkaesque situation that public transport is efficient as long as we move people a long way, somewhat self defeating on the environmental front wouldn't you say?

I have a copy of a report from the ARTA called "TRANSPORT COST ANALYSIS: a case study of the total costs of private and public transport in Auckland" which is an interesting read, basically a justification of public transport based on dragging in every cost they can think of (including the Humanitarain cost of car accidents) and as bus users don't generally die (though we have had a spate of buses killing pedestrians lately) you guessed it, that public transport is actually subsidized less that private transport

What is also in this report is public transport is actually a small part of Auckland transport (and therefore doesn't carry the burden of costs) and therefore if you scaled it up to the point where is significantly contributes (by spending billions of taxpayer dollars) the scales would probably tip, so that t was the largest polluter, it did the most environmental damage and people still required a car.

What we need is a vision of a city where you can function with neither a bus/train or car

Neven

The only time I have agreed with Marcus Lush was when he suggested that the motorways in Auckland be changed to cycleways. No significant hills, lots of room, a good surface - hitting a pothole while on your bike is not pleasant at all - and no drivers opening their doors just as you approach their car.

this public transport spend up is going to send the country broke if it isnt allready.Rail is allways fantastically expensive ,especially for our tiny population and running trains and buses 24/7 when they only full a small part of the time is crazy.Read Sir Rog Douglas speech over the weekend,he's onto it.Slaves on wages like me cannot afford whopping rates increases to subsidise the train lobby- make it full user pays I say !

I disagree with you regarding the railway upgrade. Railway is an essential public infrastructure which is a lot more utilized in other developed countries. If you only look at carrying people, it might look uneconomical, but because New Zealand (not just Auckland, but also inter-regional connection as well) don't have a well-functioning railway system, industries are heavily relying on motor vehicles for transporting goods and people. Inadequate railway system in NZ certainly discouraged development of manufacturing sector, and also wrongly facilitated building badly designed motorway junctions which soon became chronic bottlenecks of the traffic. Buses are used in a lot lower population density areas, and relying on buses on congested road is so unreliable. Auckland certainly has enough mass to have railway reasonably utilized; there are a number of cities about the same size as Auckland but have better railway system. I should also note that poor infrastructure really disappoints foreign investors too.

The nearest city to Auckland with a 'real' metro rail network is Sydney. The train lines were largely built many years ago, but development tends to run alongside the lines. For example areas like Hornsby and Waitara (20km or so from the CBD) are packed with hi-rise apartment buildings only two or three minutes from the railway station.

Building a decent rail network in Auckland, then letting developers create good, affordable home near the stations would solve more than just simple traffic problems.

It's one of those tricky things! I went for a 'round the world trip a few years ago and quickly learned to categorise cities into those where public transport sucked or it didn't. Where it didn't suck they invariably had rail, which could get you where you were going faster than a car.

Where it did suck you were stuck with buses, which were by definition slower, generally wound around circuitous routes rather than going direct, and were a pain in the ass to figure out routing for.

If done properly rail is a great solution from a citizen productivity point of view. Rail should provide very high speed transport between major hubs, with buses and private transport filling in the gaps. An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine a massive park 'n ride combined with a free high speed express trip into the city. Why sit in your car for 30 minutes when you could be there in 10 and not have to find or pay for a parking spot in the city? What effect could this have on the congested motorways? What effect could it have for the thousands of people who suddenly have an extra hour in every day?

Of course it all costs money, and rail is expensive. Bernard may well be right and it might be too expensive for us ... but with a proper solution it could have tremendous benefits. I'm probably in the minority but I have no problem with my taxpayer dollars being spent on a decent rail system for Auckland ... this despite the fact I live in Christchurch!!

Bernard

Well isn't this thread the antithesis to Hugh "Whack em up on the fringes for 200K and we'll all be sweet" Pavlitich?.

Actually I think rail is old and passe they should be looking at a monorail, quiet, automated and could probably be self funding.

Neven

Link to the article referred to by Neven above: TRANSPORT COST ANALYSIS: a case study of the total costs of private and public transport in Auckland.

Bryan

Thanks for adding the link! on page 4
This has been calculated via the average bus (26.29 passengers) and car (1.3 passengers) occupancy and total annual vehicle kilometres travelled for buses (26 million km) and cars (6,968 million km) in 2001

This is blatantly twisted and downright wrong, no bus service in Auckland averages 26.29 pax, it is closer to 5, This they actually do not know because bus companies do not report their repositioning K's to the ARTA. If they used the figure of 26 for the rest of the report then the case for buses is overstated by a mere 500%

Neven

Hi Neven

Where do you get your number of 5 passengers average from ? As a regular bus user I tend to agree but would interested if you can point to some research.

Bryan

Matt Nolan argues that the regional fuel tax much better tax policy here.

Bryan

From Richard Scott (TRANSPORT NETWORK ANALYST) at the ARTA,
From emails I exchanged with him
The total bus patronage for the year ending June 2007 was 42.7 million boardings and the total service Km 42.9 [million k]which equates to .99 passengers per bus km. and
Passenger kilometres is a different measure and the annual passenger Km
for 2007 was 259,899,000.
Giving an average journey of 6.08km.

Which gives an overall average load of 6.02 which I reduced to 5 because the 42.9 million k does not include repositions (all those buses saying 'sorry - out of service')

The reason I asked him this question was that I was sitting at a bus stop trying to get into the CBD on a Friday afternoon and 4 buses came past displaying 'sorry - out of service', repositioning for the out of town rushhour, I then did a little "thought experiment" and realized to my horror that a rushhour bus can never be more than 50% full and one that stops on its run 25%, that is the ideal, so was not surprised when it came back at 6.02

I then queried Richard on how many of these K's were empty repositioning, the answer was a classic, they don't know because it is a cost to the bus co and therefore "commercially sensitive", so these guys are preaching environmental benefits to us and they cant quantify if there are any!

Neven

Look, every half truthful study on this issue comes up with the following realities.

The true cost of running public transport is so high that if fares were "user pays", nobody would use it.

The true cost can be calculated simply by dividing total running costs of public transport by total fare revenue: then just multiply every fare by that factor.

If it is cheaper for a given traveller to run a given car rather than pay true-cost reflecting public transport fares, then that car uses less resources than public transport; not even counting the energy used to get to and from bus stops.

The cost benefit ratio of getting a shift like 10% of car users, to public transport, is exponentially worse than the cost benefit ratio of simply providing new roads and lanes; if there is even a benefit at all. Because most travel is done only at certain times of day, huge "investments" in rolling stock would be necessary to cope with such a shift. Roughly ten times as many people use cars as what use public transport. This means that a 10% decline in car use, shifting to public transport, requires nearly a 100% increase in public transport subsidies. It is a myth that increased patronage will bring efficiencies sufficient to negate this need.

If we attempted to run a public transport based, car-free transport system, the cost would be greater than our entire current GDP and/or the lost flexibilities of individual motor vehicles would lead to massive economic contraction. Look at the former USSR. Do you think that their public transport was more efficient than our car use? Did you know that they were far worse wreckers of the environment on every measure, and used more resources per unit value of GDP, than capitalist countries?

Car-free societies absent totalitarian planning, were (Victorian England) and are (Slumdog Millionaire) mixed-use land use societies with people and animals living above and around factories and offices. We will only reach the stated aim of resource conservation and emmissions reductions to the extent we return to such a society. Long distances are the main problem, not modes of transport.

Limiting sprawl does not achieve the desired result because of the effect on land prices. Alain Bertaud's work on urban density profiles show that average commute lengths have increased in cities like Portland precisely because of this effect. The cost of land closer to the urban center becomes prohibitive, and most of the infill development takes place closer to the more affordable fringes. Seriously, take a look at his graphs.

Cities that have been allowed to develop closer to Lassez-Faire principles actually end up with lots of mixed use land use and multiple nodes and much lower average commute distances, and urban density profiles that slope evenly from the highest at the centre, to the lowest at the fringes. The low density at the fringes means that the commuting done by these people is of minimal effect, while the affordability of land is retained over the whole urban area, meaning that many people who could not have afforded to live closer to work under the controlled scenario, can do so under the "free" one.

Trains initially served the use of getting wealthy people over longer distances faster and in more comfort than horse drawn carriage. Trains have had their day long since.

We are doing ourselves serious economic and environmental harm with our mistaken assumptions about all public transport.

People run their own cars by choice. The taxes they pay for petrol alone, covers the cost of roads and externalities. It is public transport that does not pay its way even for running costs let alone externalities.

No-one would use public transport by choice if they had to pay the true cost.

The worst thing here is that people are being lied to about what their hard-earned rates and tax money being spent on public transport, actually achieves. It has never achieved cost-benefit justifiable reductions in road congestion and it has never achieved real reductions in resource use or emissions, let alone cost-benefit-justifiable reductions. We would have been better off in every way to have never spent a cent on public transport subsidies, and simply built more roads and lanes and had lower congestion.

If there were no public transport subsidies, and no government interference in transport, entrepreneurs would identify opportunities to run appropriate vehicles on appropriate routes at appropriate times of day, and make a profit on it.

If you understand economics, you will understand that if people buy product A because it is cheaper than product B, it is simply because the making of product A is a more efficient use of scarce resources than the making of product B. It is not necessary to attempt to trace the whole process from one end to the other: (refer to the essay "I, Pencil" by Leonard Read: to see how complicated it is to calculate all the inputs into making a pencil) the price is the quick answer.

If public transport fares absent subsidies would have to be more than people would pay, then it is not an efficient user of scarce resources. Actually, you do not have to look very far into the way Public Transport is run, to get a gut confirmation of this.

It is NOT a question of running 30 people from A to B by bus, compared with 30 people running their cars from A to B, and it never has been.

The 30 people get from 30 different "A"'s to 30 different "B's". To get the bus to pick them all up and drop them all off, would take so long that nobody would use it. The only people that use the bus today, are the small minority who it really suits.

The bus has to start somewhere empty and finish somewhere empty. Its average loading for the 1 trip is more like 15 people. Then it has to go back to the start mostly empty; average loading drops to below 10. That is just for the peak times of the day, which are the only times when running these services might make any sense at all. But then we have the lunacy of running that same bus around all day, with average loadings not exceeding 3 people.

Why is it so freakin' HARD for ratepayers and taxpayers to see this? You are being fleeced for no good reason. The environment is not being saved and there are stuff all less cars on the road; if public transport use increases 10% there are only 1% less people on the road. It is exponentially cheaper to build new roads for the 10% odd people who do not yet use cars for their travel, than it would be to provide buses and trains for the 90% of people who do not use public transport: in fact the latter has been calculated to cost more than our entire GDP.

As for the social objectives of running buses and trains for poor people to use during the day, this is so expensive that we could provide hired stretch-limos for them at a lower cost, to pick them up at their door and drop them off where they want to go.

This might be a dumb question - but isn't it already electrified? What are those wires slung over the tracks? If all we are talking is new locomotives then there is no difference - a diesel locomotive is just an electric locomotive with a giant diesel generator bolted on. Sure locomotives cost 25 times the cost of a bus, but they haul at least ten times as many people and last 4 times longer. Trains can shift huge numbers at peak times, unlike busses that still largely sit in traffic. We need buses, but they won't form the backbone of a city of 2m people, which Auckland should be planning for. Long term the choice is really between European style dense cities or American style sprawl with inner city decay. There are some lovely American cities - Boston, San Francisco and New York, but they all have great public transport unlike the hell-holes of Detroit and LA that have relied on the "free market" or should I say corporate sponsored private motor vehicle solution.

Steps

This is all predicated on cheap oil, despite Phils ravings he doesn't seem to understand "the" fundamental of economic growth and that is incremental production or a substitute has to be cheaper than the current production. This has been the case for the past 100 years because its has been underwritten by cheap energy, it didn't matter that the quality of copper ore declined, we had bigger and more powerful machines to extract it.

The whole energy ponzi scheme may be coming to an abrupt halt, this puts the kybosh on Hughs suburbs and what we may have to realise is that we can no longer 'afford' the dream that was on offer.

Yes we love our cars but if they cost 4 times what they cost now to run would we love them as much? Unfortunately if public transport offers no respite (ie it is as energy inefficient as private transport) then it is not a solution, it is a false deity. The only way to avoid this is Bernards bike (I also bike a lot and work from home)

Neven

Chicken and egg. If there is good public transport that goes to somewhere people want to go, then people build houses near that public transport, and companies open offices near that public transport.

For Auckland, I have no problem with using the existing railway lines. They're already in, the corridor exists. I suspect that with a good service and zoning rules that allowed infill housing, that people would start living closer to the stations.

The problem is probably where it terminates - how many people's jobs are close to the end of the railway? How do you get from the station to work?

That would be a start, but it won't fix all the problems - too many places in Akld are nowhere near a train station. There could be park and ride to help with that (maybe with apartments built above it), or we need another option. I doubt new rail lines would ever pay for themselves (they certainly don't in Sydney), another alternative is buses for those areas that don't have rail. Problem is, now we're multimode - ride the train till you're close, shift to bus. It's enormously more efficient on a single mode.

Over 30 years, Auckland might change to locate along the railway line, if it were there and useable. Maybe we need some vision now to start the changes.

Careful Mr English, you're starting to look like Mr Mag00 on roller skates.
Here a billion there a Billion,
old MacEnglish had a Vault
it was empty not his fault
so he borrowed billions to stimulate
but the end result was not that great
the soverign rating took a hit
and from that point on,
we were in the sh

Steps

I'm not talking about cars like ours (my current list 1973 911E, 1970 914/6, 1985 Golf GTI), I'm talking utilitarian commuter cars, When its costing you $100's to commute from your Hugh McMansion in Kaukapakapa 100k's everyday, suddenly your cheap house isn't so cheap no more

Actually Camaro & Bradford? What strange bedfellows (couldn't find a Jupiter?)

The problem with Auckland is not the consultants, it is its whole genesis, a car designed conurbation of the 20th century, like its ugly friends, LA, Houston, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne...

Neven

Video here of an interview on TVNZ Breakfast with a spokesman for the Campaign for Better Transport discussing the proposed national fuel tax.

Phil

Neven911, would you agree with me that the free market will sort out all the unknowns far more effectively than 10 year plans?

Not in the case of falling net energy, the 'free' market is based on endless growth. We have falling net energy per capita currently and neither TPTB or the economists can appreciate the effects. And if you think efficiency increases, electric vehicles or car pooling will make any difference then you don't appreciate Jevons paradox

All the essays and studys you pointed to were composed in this growth environment, where the philosophy of public transport was more important than the energy efficiency, but now the rules have changed.

I fully expect in the next 5 years this will become self evident as the 30 Billion barrels of oil we burn a year drop by a gross of a few percent the net drop will be far faster and it will not be commuting we worry about, but food supply

Neven

neven911
"Actually Camaro & Bradford? What strange bedfellows (couldn't find a Jupiter?)"
Where u are concourse? had both there..the Camaro was the tow vechlie lol
Megiures made a nice job on the camaro.
Email me jowettnz.sytes.net web master lower left bar link

To Mark Hubbard:
"And then the below from: http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/business/2264120/BNZ-to-fight-big-t...

"Bank of New Zealand will square off against the Inland Revenue Department in the High Court in Wellington today in a case that could eventually cost the big banks about $2 billion in unpaid taxes and interest. "¦"

Yeah, we wouldn't want the banks to actually pay their taxes, would we.

$191M of tax on $2.87B profit is disgraceful. Go the IRD!!!

interesting article