The Campaign For Better Transport

The Herald reports that Local Government NZ is concerned about Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s proposed changes to transport funding.

Not only is public transport infrastructure spending to be slashed by 60%, but funding for the renewal and maintenance of local roads will also be cut by up to $225m over the next three years.

This means significant projects throughout the country in these categories will now have to be funded by local body rates or they will not proceed at all.

If the Minister of Transport is truly interested in investing in transport infrastructure for economic growth, he needs to be aware that none of the proposed roads of “national significance” have economic benefits comparable to investments in public transport and the maintenance and efficient operation of our existing local roading network.

Mr Joyce should have regard to the views of Local Government NZ, as he is required to do under the Land Transport Management Act. It is regrettable that the advice he has taken to date will not achieve the economic outcomes he seeks.

The NZ Herald reports:

KiwiRail is optimistic that a rail line it runs one train a week on can be improved at minimum cost to carry higher containers and attract new business.

The Napier-to-Gisborne line is a marginal branch line on which KiwiRail makes a loss.

Given its scenic location it is an obvious candidate for a cycleway to boost tourism at a time when the Government is investigating an idea of a national cycleway.

KiwiRail was pleasantly surprised when a Gisborne Herald online poll was 62 per cent in favour of keeping the line for freight and steam excursion trains, with 27 per cent in favour of operating a cycleway and excursion trains.

“We run one train a week because we don’t want to not run a service, but we run one train a week and lose money,” said KiwiRail’s commercial general manager Aaron Temperton.

KiwiRail will soon run a trial on the line to identify how much work is needed to be able to put high-cube containers on the line. They are 2.9m high. Work on the network in the lower North Island in the last year or so has removed blockages to such containers.

The new business KiwiRail is eyeing includes the proposed Hikurangi Forest Farms veneer and plywood mill, which has resource consents, and could be operating by late 2011 as well as other forestry industry clients…

Good to see KiwiRail taking measures to counter the threat of branch line closures.

Somewhat continuing the theme of Friday’s post, it can feel difficult to be a “peak oil believer” at the moment. The narrow-minded retorts of “oil was $147 a barrel in July 2008, now it’s barely a third of that – pah!” seem to blind the average driver/politician/roading-lobbyist into believing that the $2.20 a litre prices of last year were a blip and that things have somewhat returned to normality – even if normality is now $1.60 a litre and not $1.10 a litre they feel it should be. Petrol probably would be $1.10 a litre if we had the same exchange rate we had when it was $2.20 a litre, but that’s a completely different story. Perhaps some of the smarter folk figure that rising petrol prices are an inevitability in the long-run, but they ignore the potential effects of that by simply pointing to hybrids, bio-fuels, electric cars, hydrogen economies and other technological advances. All, seemingly, to avoid the conclusion that throwing all our eggs in the “build more roads for more cars” might be slightly reckless. Others say “but there’s heaps more oil out there we just haven’t found yet!” Read the rest of this entry »

The Government Policy Statement (GPS) on transport guides central and local transport planning throughout the country, so it’s an important document.

The Government has announced changes to the GPS. The new GPS has not been released yet, but the Minister of Transport has signalled his intentions with this document, which discusses the amendments that are about to be made in general terms, and also reallocates funding across different categories.

I’ve crunched the numbers, and the results are somewhat surprising.

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Now if I’m being honest here, I will admit that public transport advocates do get hammered a bit on the whole “economics of transport” debate. The roads lobby constantly states how through petrol taxes trucks and cars pay their way, yet at the same time rail and buses simply can’t fund themselves and require massive subsidies. Now I’ve always thought this strange – that something which just seems so much more efficient (putting a whole lot of people inside a metal box and moving them) could actually be not as economically justifiable as something which just was so obviously less efficient (putting one person in a metal box and then shifting heaps of those metal boxes).

Thanks to a most excellent book that I own, called “Asphalt Nation: how the automobile took over America and how we can take it back“, by Jane Holtz Kay, we can see the argument for cars over public transport start to unravel. Not only in terms of the environmental and social impact of cars – but in their economic inefficiency, striking at the very heart of those who promote roads-centric policies. It’s a book that Steven Joyce, Minister of Transport, should definitely read. It is written from an American perspective, but pretty much everything can be applied to New Zealand as we’re definitely one of the most auto-oriented countries in the world, particularly in the case of Auckland. An interesting quote on page 128 looks at the overall cost to individuals of transportation:

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Transport planners Julie Anne Genter, Stuart Donovan and Professor of Economics Tim Hazledine explain why there is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as free parking. Read the rest of this entry »

The NZ Herald reports:

Infratil subsidiary NZ Bus is selling its interest in Auckland-based ferry operator Fullers Ferries for $40 million. Infratil said the deal took the amount it would receive from announced divestments to more than $100m in the 2009/10 financial year.

Fullers is being bought by Souter Holdings, which operates Howick & Eastern buses in Auckland and has a 74 per cent ownership of Mana Coachlines in Wellington.

NZ Bus chief executive Bruce Emson said the sale of Fullers signaled the intention of NZ Bus to focus on further developing its core land-based public transport business.

It will be interesting to see if Howick and Eastern come up with some kind of integrated ticket for the Half Moon Bay ferry. Waiheke’s Campaign 4 Fair Ferry Fares are worried that Waiheke pass holders will lose the current right to use NZ Bus and Waiheke Buses. They pay $315 a month for this.