Hard News: Policy, finally
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"But while we're on the subject of you, you say you choose to work in the Hutt - but from your description it sounds more as though you had the Hutt workplace wished upon you, and you choose to live in Miramar."
Will try to explain better.
We bought a property in Miramar, while I was still training to be a teacher - my wife has a job in Miramar, so that made sense. Tried to find teaching work in local area, but wasn't able too.
Job offer was made at a school in Lower Hutt. Wanted/needed a job - so took it. Have reconsidered job at times, because of practicalities, impact and time factors of commute. Used public transport and alternated single car use with partner for two years - and only bought a second car in the last 3 months.
As said, I still use public transport at times - but like any choice it's weighing up benefits and disadvantages. Sometimes public transport works better for me, and sometimes taking the car works better.
And yes - I might be able to now - with some experience as a teacher, get work in a local school. But I really enjoy my current job, despite the stresses and strains, and I work with good people, doing imho, good things. And that counts for a quite a bit, in how I choose to live.
I am aware of the environmental impact of driving my car, I do my best to minimize journeys, and I also recognize that if I had to ride a horse to work, I'd still have an environmental impact on my surroundings. And neighbours. ;)
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What would public transport be like if we each spent that sort of money on it?
Heaps better. And cars will be heaps better by then too, so I'll have one of those thanks. Then it will be all round choice, rather than not particularly choice if you're a commuter, and heaps worse for everyone else.
I don't see the big cars vs public transport dichotomy. It can be both. It should be both. It will be both.
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So when you've done everything you can (at great expense to ratepayers/taxpayers) to encourage people onto public transport and yet still they won't budge from their cars, what options are left? Random Slapping?
I think I get you now. You think it's futile? I don't think so. Definitely more people need to get into buses and trains so more facilities for those things will be needed. And more needs to go to the roads too, which can be developed at the same time. If train-lines are being built then the roads are getting major works anyway.
I'd love it if there was a good cycle lane all the way to the city and through it. And bus lanes to make using the bus fast. And lots of express buses using the motorway, where I am most likely to be. And trains beside and under. It's all good and it all should be worked on.
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I'm so gonna steal this
"Driving a car in the in 07 is a bit like smoking in the 70's discuss."
Although in far more agreement than not, I would like to quibble over "choice". We only choose the options open to us by govt & because of the sell offs and abdecation of Govt responsibility onto private sector/person for getting from A to B, it's a mess.
Where govt has still kept an interest in transport its alot better - (Republic of) CHCH is the best in Australasia. -
If I have understood this correctly then:
a) The government re-nationalise key transport infrastructure ?
b) Cantabrains still don't get out much <wink>
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So when you've done everything you can (at great expense to ratepayers/taxpayers) to encourage people onto public transport and yet still they won't budge from their cars, what options are left?
I thought it was quite obvious - put a whacking great 'sin tax' on petrol and imported cars, just as the Government currently does with tobacco. I have to travel from the North Shore to Newmarket every Thursday to record my PA Radio piece, and public transport isn't as convenient as taking the car because unfortunately the timetables don't magically realign with my convenience. But it's sure cheaper and marginally kinder on my blood pressure.
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Handwringing over comparisons of public transport uptake in NZ with that in other countries strikes me as somewhat unrealistic.
Public transport is always going to be more expensive per capita in NZ than in almost any other country, purely as a result of our low population density.
Some crude back-of-envelope calculations. Compare Tokyo with greater Auckland: they're roughly the same area, but Tokyo has 20 times the population, which allows for a very efficient, convenient, yet cheap, public transport system. Especially as regards the train network. Inside the central 23 wards (pop=20M), generally there's less than 1km between train stations in any direction; trains run at least 4 times an hour, from 5am-midnight, 7 days a week; for any journey over 2km, tickets end up costing less than 100 yen/km (i.e., under $NZ1/km); services run rigorously to timetable. (Buses inside the 23 wards have a flat fee of 200 yen, though service is less regular than the trains.) Under Tokyo conditions, all of this is possible, and even profitable for the transport operators (which include some private companies).Now try doing the same thing with 1/20 the population. Even being conservative and ignoring economies of scale, if it's to be profitable you'll get at most 1/20 the service, i.e. services once every 5 hours(!) on average, and/or stopping only (on average) once every 4.5km, and/or costing $NZ20 for an average journey of a few km. Clearly, no-one would ever want to use such a patently inconvenient "service". In particular, $1/km probably would be close to the maximum viable fee level (seeing as most people could walk it in 10 minutes).
Hence, a PT system good enough to use under NZ conditions requires massive subsidies from city councils/local bodies/central government. Getting to Tokyo standards would require 95% subsidisation of the actual cost. (Note that even 90% subsidisation doubles the cost to the commuter, pushing it over the viable maximum.) Christchurch actually comes close (journeys are more expensive than in Tokyo, though not onerously so). Wellington buses, by contrast, are generally less frequent, more expensive, and deviate wildly from timetable (and the Wellington train network is worse on all three counts). Auckland doesn't even come up to Wellington's mediocre standard.
So, if the service is any less convenient (lower frequency/ lower network density/ higher cost) than some critical level, then public transport will not be chosen over cars wherever the latter are available. Some critical mass of service is required before a critical mass of the public will choose to use it. Councils can't expect the users to show up until the service is available.
The fact that increasing spending on Auckland's PT system by 90% only increased usage by ~2% thus indicates only that even the improved Auckland PT system still sucks, and needs to have far more spent on it to reach anything remotely like an equivalence with private cars under NZ conditions. (But there are clear limits on what is practical; there is no possible environmental benefit if the average bus service has less than 2 passengers!)
The other side of the coin is that in Japan it is, as a matter of policy, considerably less convenient to own and run a car than in NZ: vehicle licensing and inspection costs are notoriously high; and fees for parking and for using motorways will almost always be more expensive than the public-transport fee. Presumably NZ could adopt similar policies to reduce the competitive advantage of cars.
--Robert
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Robert -
I would agree up to a point but figures like this can be misleading.
From what I understand, part of Tokyo's efficiency rests with a competition not unlike the "how many can I fit in a mini" game at peak times. Similar experiences are shared on PT systems the world over; but less often in NZ. From this point of view, what constitutes a critical mass might be somewhat less than people think.
If there has in fact been a 90% increase in the spend; one must be careful to divide the absolute costs from the relative costs, investment from operation, as well as inflation and of course the rather ridiculous subsidies for private companies.
Along similar lines the real costs of the alternative need to be considered on the balance sheet. A case in point, is basic mitigation of pollution which will either require changes or relocations to a number of schools. The impact on public health is rarely factored into these calculation despite some very real costs.
I'm just very wary of arguments which lend themselves to putting the PT/car problem in the too hard tray. Financial arguments of this type just aren't that clear cut.
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BTW. Can I have a quote on Sin Tax for Brian the Bish's; Boat,Explorer and Harley.
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81stcolumn: I'm not sure how you'd get a level of service better than Tokyo (with more space per passenger), without "ridiculous subsidies". The point I was making is that 95% subsidisation of all costs is pretty much a minimum to provide a level of service that is desirable compared to cars, at NZ population densities. Still, you're right that the true (environmental) cost of cars isn't being weighed in that comparison. I should clarify -- I didn't intend the cost of providing that level of PT as an argument for not doing it. Say Auckland currently has 90% subsidy of PT costs; that still means the service isn't at that critical level yet (so the lack of uptake is unsurprising). But the more hopeful conclusion is that a further 5-10% increase in expenditure might be enough to create such a service level as to increase passenger uptake. (Or, putting it another way: councils court the worst kind of failure, in the form of an expensive but unused PT system, if they start with "how much can we afford to spend this year?" rather than "what will commuters want to use?")
-- Robert. -
Robert, I don't think $/km is as big a factor as time/km. Until the $/km becomes more than $/time (or some relatively fixed fraction thereof), it's still profitable to use a system. So for wealthier people, a high cost faster alternative is always going to win. For people who earn nothing, their time costs a lot less, so slower options are fine.
A transport engineer friend of mine told me once that statistically cities don't move to highly efficient train systems until the average commute time exceeds 90 minutes. When people are spending more than 3 hours per day on average in transport, the alternatives are demanded.
Auckland is probably about halfway there, so its commuting population can grow quite a lot before we start getting really antsy for trains and other alternatives.
I don't see that we need to rush getting that point here faster by disincentivizing using cars. Passing on fair costs is ... fair, and I have no problem with that. Especially if it's ALL the costs, including pollution costs. But to do more than that is just hurting millions of people. Quite the opposite, roads should continue to be improved, in perpetuity. They are fantastically useful public works, and will always be, regardless of whether petrol runs out one day. They are one of the best uses of all that energy, since they reduce energy usage over their life. I think if the gas does run out, we'll be mighty bitter not to have made roads while we had it.
But train lines, undergrounds etc, are excellent too. We should have those.
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You know, I often think that London and New York and other great metropolises were starting to build their undergrounds when they were about the size Auckland is now.
But that 90 minute figure is really interesting, because before cars, crossing London by horse would have been at least 90 minutes... I'm going to have to think about this.
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Ben: Sure. I was actually equating time and money in my assumptions (taking $1/km = $1/10 minutes; the question for bus rides within most NZ cities being, how much would you pay to save yourself a 10-minute walk?) -- but yes, the longer the journey, the less practicable the walk, and hence the more attractive public transport becomes. (I fairly often choose to walk the 7km from my office to Ikebukuro in central Tokyo. My workmates regard this as utter insanity, given I could do the same journey as a 20-minute, 200-yen train ride; the point is that, over that scale, walking it only takes me an extra 45 minutes, and I can live with that. But even I would never consider walking the 50km from my office to my apartment in Saitama [50 minutes, 570 yen by train].)
--Robert. -
b) Cantabrains still don't get out much <wink>
LOL. Chch public transport is great, as long as you live inside the city. If you live in Rolleston, you can drive past the closed Rolly railway station and all the way into town right next to the railway line, but you can't take a train.
We have geography on our side, too. Most days in the summer, we don't use the car. My kids walk or bike to school - three whole blocks without getting run over, abducted or murdered! My partner bikes to work in the CBD. From Riccarton, biking takes about the same amount of time as walking, depending on the direction of the wind. And some of the cheapest property in town is in Philipstown, right next to the CBD.
But Auckland... I'm a big lefty liberal greenie, and I wouldn't use public transport in Auckland.
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Hence, a PT system good enough to use under NZ conditions requires massive subsidies from city councils/local bodies/central government. Getting to Tokyo standards would require 95% subsidisation of the actual cost.
That's a pretty simplistic analysis. I haven't been to Tokyo, but some of the economies of scale will have taken effect. 20 times the population won't mean 20 times the number of trains. It'll mean (depending on the time) more trains, but larger ones than you would see in a NZ city. Other economies of scale will have a lesser impact. If you have 20 times as many people travelling during peak hour, and in NZ the bus was full, well then in Tokyo you have 20 buses, which means 20 vehicles, 20 drivers etc. That's not really cheaper at all, just bigger.
Also, if getting to Tokyo standards means, 20 buses going past a bus stop every 10 minutes, which is the sort of volume they'd need there, then that's a bit silly for NZ.
I don't know what the actual figures are, but I'd presume that if we pay a reasonable subsidy now, then doubling it would have a pretty strong impact upon price/quality/convenience.
Personally I'm with some other people who have suggested that the more inconvenient cars get, the better public transport will both look, and actually be. If something is bad, and we want to discourage it, up the tariffs on it - purchase and use. Then we'll change the behaviour.
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[A previous version of this vanished in the ether; it hasn't reappeared after 30 minutes, so I'm trying again.]
Kyle: I'm happy to admit my comparison is simplistic. But the economies of scale (it's cheaper per capita to provide a higher total volume of service) actually strengthen my argument (that a viable public transport system in NZ requires higher levels of funding than most local bodies are comfortable with), and that's why I dismissed them with a handwave above. The estimate of a 95% cost subsidy still stands as a minimum for NZ, if we are to have a comparable level of service in terms of frequency (NB: not capacity! this is a per capita comparison) and network density (station/ route spacing), while still keeping costs to commuters down to something affordable.
NB by "Tokyo standards" of frequency I meant -- as stated -- 4 services per hour on average across the network. (Even in Tokyo, not many routes have more than 10 services per hour; some have only 1.) Frequency of service can't be reduced much below that point without seriously impacting convenience to commuters. Compare Wellington, where there are only 2 services per hour on average across the network as a whole (more on some routes, less on others) -- and an uncertainty of up to 15 minutes in arrival times. If the average journey takes only 30 minutes, but you have to wait that long for a bus or train anyway, surely that's a "bit silly"? :-)
--Robert.
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[A previous version of this rant has appeared numerous times on PAS; it hasn't stopped, so I'm venting again.]
Geez, I **really** hate how the LINK buses will stop for 5 minutes so that they can maintain their 'one-every-ten-minutes' schedule. And they always seem to stop at Victoria Park Market, when all I want is to get to the top of College Hill. Soooooo close ...
(and don't tell me to get off and walk up the hill, that defeats the purpose of catching the bus!)
(I saw Rudman on the LINK once -- he's shorter than he appears in the Herald)
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But that 90 minute figure is really interesting, because before cars, crossing London by horse would have been at least 90 minutes... I'm going to have to think about this.
I think the figure was not referring to the cities that did it before automobiles were widely used. From memory London had major traffic jams in the streets just from carts etc, every day, prior to the undergrounds being put in. They really needed it.
Personally I'm with some other people who have suggested that the more inconvenient cars get, the better public transport will both look, and actually be. If something is bad, and we want to discourage it, up the tariffs on it - purchase and use. Then we'll change the behaviour.
I agree with the first sentence, and not the second. Well, I don't agree automobiles are bad. They have their place. The costs should be true, for sure. After that, you're creating a problem rather than solving it.
Then again, my opinions are formed around not being one for trying to guess what the city of the future will look like. Is this huge rat race of masses of people moving into a small space and out again every day what is going to continue? Do we want it to continue? Personally I don't do it and I don't want to do it. I did it for years and hated it. Everyone I know who does it pretty much hates it. And they especially hate the commuting part, especially on the bus. Is the solution to bypass these outdated concepts of workplaces, rather than legislate against the most convenient form of transport to them, so as to bring the average level of commuting up to something that everyone still hates?
Perhaps I'm dreaming that considerable numbers of people could move towards my mode of work, commuting to the office on foot from the bedroom, and using the vehicle to zip around doing anything that can't be done at home. But I don't think so, not when I see what most people do all day, which resembles my work greatly. They sit at a computer and talk on the phone.
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Perhaps I'm dreaming that considerable numbers of people could move towards my mode of work, commuting to the office on foot from the bedroom
Sometimes you can look forward in time just by looking overseas. In California, where telecommuting seems be a lot more common than it is here, groups of e-lancers have started renting office space and all working in the same physical space, on their different projects. Simply because people miss that face-to-face bouncing ideas off each other dynamic that you get from a communal workplace.
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But the economies of scale (it's cheaper per capita to provide a higher total volume of service) actually strengthen my argument (that a viable public transport system in NZ requires higher levels of funding than most local bodies are comfortable with), and that's why I dismissed them with a handwave above. The estimate of a 95% cost subsidy still stands as a minimum for NZ, if we are to have a comparable level of service in terms of frequency (NB: not capacity! this is a per capita comparison) and network density (station/ route spacing), while still keeping costs to commuters down to something affordable.
What you've said, is that running a public transport system for one million people, costs exactly the same as running a public transport system for twenty million people. And therefore to make it viable for the one million, they should pay the same cost as the twenty million, and the money that the other nineteen million would have paid, should be paid by subsidy (95% of the total cost).
The first presumption, that running a public transport system for one million people costs as much as running one for twenty million people, is clearly nonsense. You don't need a ten buses running every ten minutes simply to deal with demand. You can have one running every ten minutes. That's nine buses, and nine drivers etc etc, that you don't pay for. The service is still just as good, there just aren't 20 million people trying to use it.
The point about economies of scale is that it wouldn't cost 1/20th to run the system for a million, it would probably cost 1/10th, making it twice as expensive per capita.
Once we see that your base presumption is nonsense, your 95% subsidy claim is also.
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Emma
If you live in Rolleston, you can drive past the closed Rolly railway station and all the way into town right next to the railway line, but you can't take a train.I've been told the magic number is a pop of 80K to justify light rail. Although Rolly will never get there. If it piggy backs onto the Industrial Dev at Rolly & stop the southern bypass motorway from Rolly to Lyttleton we might get some where.
Failing that light rail from CHCH to Ashburton & CHCH to Amberly encompassing all of the northern res devs up there? -
Whoops
stop the southern bypass motorway & use the existing train line -
Failing that light rail from CHCH to Ashburton & CHCH to Amberly encompassing all of the northern res devs up there?
I wouldn't go quite that far yet, but it seems logical that Chch is going to spread outside of the Green Belt - Templeton, Kaiapoi, etc.
The big problem with commuter rail in CHCH is the brilliant decision to move the 'central' railway station out to Riccarton. I guess there was a good reason for that at the time, but I dunno what it was.
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Kyle: can we agree that the truth is somewhere in between? The problem with low population density for a transport system is not that we've only got 1M people, but that they're taking up the same area as 20M. Also I think we're assuming different kinds of system.
I started off considering rail (since that's the mass transit system in Tokyo) -- and clearly didn't factor in rolling stock volumes (which part of the cost is, as you state, roughly proportional to passenger volume, so should be cheaper for 1M). On the other hand, line and station construction and maintenance is something that should be roughly constant for the same area of coverage, regardless of volume of use -- and represents the largest part of the cost for a railway system. But if you're considering public transport = buses, then fair enough: roading isn't part of that budget ... though perhaps it should be!The other part of my argument (which I think still emerges unscathed?) is that if in the 20M-person population a route is viable with one bus every 15 minutes, then for the 1M-person population that route no longer exists (1/20 of a bus = a car), and thus the overall system for 1M cannot be as flexible/ convenient as that for 20M if we are covering the same area (and conversely, if we do try to deliver as flexible a system, it will be grossly uneconomic). This, I think, we can agree on: it is not possible to deliver the same system for 1M people that we could for 20M. To return to where I came in: that becomes a problem if the system that we can deliver for 1M people is, as a result, so inconvenient as not to be used.
--Robert.
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Simply because people miss that face-to-face bouncing ideas off each other dynamic that you get from a communal workplace.
I miss the communal workplace period. Its social function is huge. But it doesn't need to be in the CBD.
Kyle:
You can have one running every ten minutes. That's nine buses, and nine drivers etc etc, that you don't pay for. The service is still just as good,...
No it's not. Waiting 10 minutes on average is a lot worse than waiting 1 minute. That's 9 minutes less waiting. If your trip is only 10 minutes in the first place, the more frequent service is roughly twice as good.
Of course most bus trips in Auckland are much longer than 10 minutes. That's partly because they stop everywhere which is also more shit than the equivalent service in a mega city, where express buses are much more frequent too, especially during the peak periods.
I don't agree with linger's maths, but his point that big cities have better PT services from economies of scale is a no-brainer.
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