Bernard Hickey asks why the Government is over-spending on motorways when new technologies could render them white elephants

How driverless cars will affect the future is purely speculative. Many commentators have been burnt by predicting the future of technology improvements. We don't know if driverless cars is something that will happen quickly like smartphone technology, slowly and in small incremental steps like electric/hybrid cars or something that is always 20-30 years away like fusion technology.

If it does happen it will be massive for urban design because it will dramatically improve the major flaw in automobile based transport systems -the massive demand cars make for realestate.

The major flaw I see in the governments RoNS programme is not that NZ is spending more on transport than others. We have had decades of under spending and we are a long spread out country so it is natural we have high spending. But that transport spending is orientated on replacing rail with trucks it is not about modernising our cities to increase mobility and affordability for the 75% of kiwis who live and work in major metropolitan areas. We are still stuck in the mindset that agricultural is going to be our export rescue.

Introducing road user charges more widely may be necessary if fuel tax revenues decline.

That last NZIER graph is basically useless -it is obviously spin. What is the start point for public transport spending? I have seen other figures showing we spend more money on policing our roads than we do on public transport.

For my mind this is the National government using to it's max the ponzi scheme that is population growth. They are going to walk away, probably thinking they smell of roses and leave the major issues they will have ignored and the one's they will have created for another government to try to sort.

National usually leave some sort of mess for someone else to sort and this government could top the lot.

The only problem i see with all these new roads is that they are all 20 to 30 years to late.Huntly ,Hamilton.Ngaruawahia,Cambridge,Te Awamutu bypasses should all have been done years ago.

It is possible that future roads will require some modification and that relies on government to "get its finger out". But as we all know that is easier said than done.

I used to do a lot of night driving. You see all the special night driving safety deatures. The problem is these features were put there years ago and for the past 20 years or so they have been allowing them to deteriorate.

Most people are not aware of what these featurs are so here is an example.

You will notice the white sticks spaced along the side of the road.

You will also notice some chevrons pointing in the direction of a bend.

You will also notice some are white and some are orange.

At night, you see in your headlights, the white (side of the road) sticks become closer together and apear to cross the road. This tells you that "Up ahead is a bend, and it vears to the right" The closer together these sticks apear the tighter the bend.

If you see in you headlights orange markers on the sticks it tells you the road vears to the left and as above the closer together the tighter the bend.

Some bends use a big board with chevrons on them. Some are white and some are orange. The same rule aplies "White is right - Orange is left"

Over the years they have neglected this signage. Now you come to a bend and the orange chevrons point right. Then the next bend the may point left. They do not care about safety anymore.

There are many more instances of road safety neglect.

Oh, i should have added (above) "they only care about safety if there is a way to take your money off you. Like speeding, no seat belt etc.

If it is a safety feature and they cannot fine you then they dont care.

There was a time when there were predictions of masses of people tele-comuting, this has yet to occur and the technology is still not up to it. The sea-change was largely driven by forecasts of how we would work in the futue, not a lot has changed in twenty + years, we are working longer hours than ever, people have a social need and desire to go to a work place; empty motorways and driverless cars are a dream scenario, many people are slow to change or want to accept any change - people are still watching Coronation St !!!

Public transport in Auckland is a shambles of disorganised schedules with no hubs, and poor infratructure, things will change but not as fast as one would think.

The bulk of the Waterview tunnel should not be seen to be transport expenditure. It should be seen to be a complete waste of money. The project would have been way less than half the cost if Helen Cark hadn't  stuck her nose in and wasted the taxpayers money: another case of completely unjustified political interference.

If electric cars result in less petrol taxs being collected then this will happen way in the future when these cars start to be bought in significant numbers: not now. If they are bought in significant numbers this will affect the tax base then, not now. Conversely the electricity network  will need beefing up then so expenditure is just going to be diverted to something else.

Platooning. Haha. Doesn't this happen now with the tailgating of all the 4WDs around Auckland?

I don't think there is an issue here at all. Bernard/NZIER are making something out of nothing. If there are more motorways than needed, well, they can be used for electric buses/ bikes/ other things.

Organisations like to put these things out there as though they alone know what the future holds. Its posturing. People are supposed to go: wow! This organisation really knows what the future holds. I've got to ask them more questions!

Yeah right. Who knows. CNG/LPG may stage a comback. Or something made from coal. Or wood. Who knows.

Driverless cars will be great for tourists. Road user will be charged via GPS based systems such as those developed by Eroad.

Good points Bernard but stream seems to be focused on the workability or otherwise of drverless cars.  Siimpler and quicker result.  Charge road use on user basis - very high fees at peak periods, very low off peak.  Keep adjusting the rates until the vehciles are spread evenly across 24 hours.  Then see how much new roading is required. Hitting the pocket always works.

It's a given that this government could be smarter, Bernard. But putting that aside, this is a conversation we need to start having starting today. So thanks for for gee-ing it along.

A couple of points before everyone infarcts and makes a nasty mess.

First, it could easily be true that we have under-invested for years and that what we are seeing now is catch-up. Before about 1990 we theoretically did all our long-haul freight by coastal shipping or rail. The near universal use of trucks is relatively recent. If you extended the analysis back to c1955 you may find that we are still under-invested compared to, say, Finland (TM). 

It's too soon to argue about driverless cars. What we know today is communication between any two devices is more or less free and instant. So we can start developing all sorts of technologies on that assumption. What we are already doing should be enough to make us confident that some form of demand management on our roads is inevitable and arriving sooner than we think. Already we are:

• using GPS to calculate least cost rather than shortest routes
• using embedded chips in cars to manage congestion in London, Singapore and elsewhere
• driving self-parking cars (giving up control while the car parks)
• driving cars with collision-avoiding systems
• driving cars in "platoons" (admittedly on a flat car behind a train) under the Channel

We are also starting to make both bicycles and cars available at the side of the road for short term rent in Paris (maybe London soon). The point being that we are already using technologies and practices that manage the demand side for roading and they will continue to develop pretty quickly. Just please don't ask our public service to predict the future and redesign our roads for a specific technology.

Now is the time to have the conversation not about how much we spend on roads but what kind of roads we should be building. The other major aspect of our roads is that that they basically determine the shape and function of our cities (not to mention the price of our houses). We need to talk about - or even better decide - whether we want big motorways to the centre or a network of smaller roads that open up more usable urban spaces.

As a for instance the government have already decided what shape Auckland will be through their road building programme. As NZTA have steadily worked to improve SH1 from Auckland to Hamilton development has followed the road. In the latest estimates of population Waikato District turns up as one of the fastest growing places in the country. Good roads, maybe much cheaper land, easy access to two big cities; why wouldn't you?

But we could feel more comfortable about getting a more modest but wider-reaching mesh of roads knowing that we are rapidly taking up technologies that would let us manage peak loads on those roads. And the bonus would be affordable houses for all. What's not to like?