Pro-car body says congestion tax 'a failure'... oh really?

In a nutshell Sydney's congestion tax isn't perfect - it doesn't target all vehicles that enter the CBD, and the effect - after admittedly a fairly short period of use - has been restricted. But it has had a small effect, and it has brought to local prominence the possibility of using variable charges to influence traffic congestion. Given the inelastic nature of the car-use demand curve, and the relatively modest impost involved, you could say it's actually been quite a success. But the opposition pollies, the lobbyists and the tabloid press - and even the broadsheets are tabloids nowadays - are howling about an(other) abysmal failure by the State government. But the complainants all have vested interests, don't they?

Now this is a world-wide issue, but I'm looking at Sydney as my example for the moment. The basic problem here is that we are at the cusp of a major change in attitude to transport planning and energy use, and it hurts. There are many lobby groups fighting these changes, trying to get the best deal they can for their special interest; and then there are the forces of change themselves that are making a nonsense of the lobbyists and their self-interest. History tells us that a compromise will be made, but that it will be a short-term one, followed by either radical change that will better our society long-term, or a succession of similarly poor compromises until we arrive incrementally at the same radical solution. Occasionally change doesn't happen fast or deep enough and the society perishes.

How's that for an overview? Could that actually happen? Well (mostly for reasons of land degradation, vulcanism and war) it's happened to big cities, nations and cultures in the past, so it can happen again. It sounds grim, but let's look at Sydney's planning, or perhaps non-planning as an example of a big city that has grown immensely over the last 200-odd years. For the last 70 years or so developed countries like Australia have chosen to vastly expand their road infrastructure, mostly at the expense of mass transport systems. Older, more established cities (especially in Europe) have mostly resisted, but all have had to face the challenge of the car. In many cases funds have been diverted from rail and tram building, mostly to road construction. Now this has largely been a popular move, at least up to now, and one based on 2 basic tenets: (1) that individualism is good and should be encouraged, even if that means encouraging the adoption of personal, individualised mechanised transport and (2) that fuel is cheap. Societies basically invested in the motor car by subsidising the road building and even the car-makers themselves. (And with each bail-out, import duty imposition, 'innovation funding' or tax concession to car manufacture or use we dig ourselves deeper.)

Well if we didn't wake up with the fuel shock of 1973 we started certainly doubting our basic premises in 2008. (Not that it's stopping us yet.)

Not every culture so worships individualism, indeed there's a sliding scale at work here. But Australia is a new-ish country, built along British lines but with an Irish urge to thumb the nose at authority. So we have the knack of falling into line like the British - or perhaps especially the English - whilst doing our utmost to pour scorn on our elected officials. So when Britain largely dumped trams and adopted buses, so did Australia - mostly. Melbourne resisted, at least a bit more than most Aussie cities. But Sydney had absorbed the English and Irish influences as well as a love for the USA and its individualistic 'freedoms'; thus the NSW capital not only adopted the bus but the car as well; and in so doing threw away its extensive - 2nd only to London in scope and size - tram infrastructure. Literally burning the carriages and burying the tracks under tar. All achieved by 1961, a brilliant result for the car and petroleum lobbyists in particular.

Now that was a radical change, but coming out of WW2, anything individualistic and "free" was looked at as "good". It felt good. It looked prosperous, fresh and new. Out with the old, in with the new!

But now, in 2009, let's face some facts. Sydney's inner-city road network was largely designed for horses, carts and pedestrians. For at least 150 years we didn't make wide boulevards, build garages or parking lots, indeed we didn't even pave main roads. But since then we have gone car-crazy, seemingly relegating the walking shoe, the bicycle and the horse to both the sporting pages and the lunatic fringe. And somehow convinced ourselves that fumes, noise and ferocity are acceptable prices to pay. It's OK to have cars and trucks travelling at 40, 50 or even 60 kilometres an hour just inches from pedestrians and cyclists. It's OK - even good- that we don't have to walk to the shops anymore. It's been so successful a deal - or brainwash - that we have closed down our corner stores and congregated our shops in huge malls that are largely out of walking range anyway. We have made the car a planning instrument in our daily lives.

And it's been a seductive sales pitch. Cars are comfortable and convenient and can reflect our moods. We are in control and can go where we please. Cars are a valued extension of ourselves, our prosperity and our personalities. But now we are tiring of the sheer sheetmetal involved - Aussie cars in particular are too big, too thirsty. We don't have big families like we once did and we fear that petrol will rise in price. Cars are becoming a dead weight around our necks. We fear also that we are doing something wrong to the planet by turning all of these fossil fuels loose in the atmosphere. Some of us fear calamity and are looking to change our habits.

Which brings me to the lobbyists that are fighting hard for "us". Groups such as the grandly-named National Roads and Motorists Association (of which I am a long-standing member), or NRMA for short. Although they claim to represent road users they do little or nothing to support bicyclists sharing those roads, or even cyclists having their own infrastructure. Although they claim to represent motorists they remain fixed on the old belief that car use should be subsidised by all (even the cyclists and pedestrians), to better grow the network of roads and encourage even more congestion. They say that they are against congestion but then again they don't want to pay for any decongestion: : PREMIER Nathan Rees' city congestion tax is a spectacular failure with a study revealing thousands of drivers now clogging alternative suburban routes to get to work to avoid the $4 toll.

Now logical analysis tells us that the CBD congestion tax will not be 'perfect' until we are charging it to all road-users who enter the CBD. That will be a technological and road-designing solution that I suspect will come to pass, but will cause even more political pain - something the NSW politicians in particular (on either side) do not want right now. However what we have now targets 2 congested roads - a bridge and a tunnel - and is effective. It has raised the cost of travelling along those arteries and put the minds of the motorists to work on solving the equation - is driving to work still worth it? In a year or so we will have the data and can assess its overall effectiveness at shifting congestion, either by time-shifting the road traffic or by moving people onto public mass transit. Tentatively it is doing both, yet the NRMA thinks not - although it states the opposite in its own analysis. Logically, if a small charge increase in peak hour drives some change, albeit a small one, a larger charge will drive more change. Whilst car use may be a fairly inelastic thing, a hefty enough charge will have an impact. Now that will drive more motorists to change their habits - and thus will reduce congestion. But the NRMA appears to want the opposite - no charge, and by logical extension, more congestion.

Go figure. Do we wind back road charges and build even more roads, or start asking a fair price from road users for public infrastructure?

What gets missed in carbon calculations - almost everything

It gets missed over and over again. The media is promoting some excellent ideas for a new carbon-reduced economy (here's another swag of great ideas) but it almost always involves simply replacing one existing form of engine or power-supply for another, with any pay-off well down the line. Yes, it's great to swap out petrol engines for electric, but the electricity still comes from somewhere.  Yes, reducing fuel use per kilometre is a great idea but what if it just means we drive further? Yes, solar cells are fabulous but how do they get onto your roof? Do they just materialise there, or are they trucked there? Do the workers drive to your site to fit them? How were the solar cells made - did it involve energy, and how much carbon was released? How long do we have to use the solar cells before we have neutralised the carbon released in their sales, marketing, manufacture, fitting and maintenance? We can ask the same about almost anything - including hybrid cars - and I can guarantee it won't be a pretty calculation.

I'm fairly certain (yes, this is an opinion only) that most of those who claim 'carbon-neutrality' haven't added it all up. In every case I've seen so far they look only at neutralising the variables, like fuel and power. When you add in everything else - the infrastructure, the elaborately manufactured goods, the services that supply, fit and maintain these goods - we can see an overwhelming problem. We are just fiddling with the edges and not attacking the central issue: our expectations are set sky-high and seemingly no-one is prepared to face that reality. We simply buy, use and discard too much stuff. And how do we propose to fix this? Well currently we propose to buy, use and discard even more - but slightly "better" or "greener" - stuff. Can someone explain how this helps?   

 

Interesting story about renewing water pipes #infrastructure

It's probably just me, but solutions to the infrastructure renewal problem are fascinating. Well, interesting, anyway. Infrastructure is one of those things we (a) take for granted and (b) ignore until it breaks. When it does break (or run out of capacity) then we blame someone else. Transport infrastructure is a popular example - we want more roads, better roads, smoother roads, fewer potholes, less traffic and so on but if we lose our homes, our trees or an historic building for a new road we will get onto the media and have a whinge. Conversely if no new roads are built others will get onto the media and whinge that no new roads are being built. And if we do build those roads, perhaps underground to save those trees and homes, we will be caned by someone for not spending the money more wisely - like on on public transport or bikeways. For governments, steering between the extremes is not easy.

Which brings me to water pipes. They age, they corrode, they break. They are underground. They are essential. So how do we maintain 'em? You can dig a trench and renew the pipes, causing massive disruption, or you can sleeve the pipes with other, smaller diameter pipes, typically using plastic. Obviously you can only do this so many times before you lose significant pipe capacity, but equally obviously we may get another 100 years out of a sleeved pipe, allowing us to "get away with it" and leave the problem for another generation. Here's another method, involving robots, cameras and inflatable plastic repair jobs. It's destined to be used in New York's 150-year-old wood-lined water pipes.

Well I liked it anyway.

Does a fast train make sense in Australia?

It seems to be one of those "big ideas" that get put forward now and again. A project of vision that will simultaneously inspire and drive economic prosperity. It also sounds so good. But does it make any sense?

On one level rail must be better than air travel, as lifting a massive weight off the ground is energy-intensive beyond our normal ken. We accept it because we don't really think about it, but it's simply the worst way to move things around. It depletes energy resources far quicker than any other form of transport (short of rocketry), dumps greenhouse gases at higher altitudes (where they can do their worst) and imposes immense noise footprints on anyone nearby.

On the other hand air travel is unimpeded by geography, so the path is shorter and has far less impact on what's below. There is less disturbance to land, landholders and the environment overall. Plants and animals remain blissfully unaware of aircraft passing almost silently, high above them.

So it's actually not as simple as it seems. We have to do some sums here. Let's take a fast train proposal from Sydney to Melbourne and peel back some layers. What does a fast train really mean?

Well it's going to be a new line, or a partially shared line that's largely quarantined from the existing lines. To achieve fast speeds - and we are looking at 250-300kmh - it will have to be straighter than the existing lines with gentler curves. It will also need to be level, or rise and fall more gradually than current track. So it will need massive viaducts and embankments. And it must not intersect with roads or other, slower rail traffic, so it must go over or under any such obstacle.

So it's going to duplicate existing track with a higher-quality, impeccably welded, ballasted and maintained track that will displace existing landholders, both suburban and country, as well as probably pass through national parks. These are not insurmountable challenges but they are costs that must be factored into any assessment. We would have to be careful to allow plants and animals to traverse over and under these tracks and maintain our biodiversity. We would have to reimburse farmers and other landholders, or tunnel for extended distances at massive cost.

Indeed I can imagine massive tunneling works at both the Sydney and Melbourne ends, for starters. To put new above-ground track down in populated suburban areas would be impossibly expensive and the noise generated would not be tolerated. If you don't allow the trains to go near full speed right into the cities then the time advantage is eroded.

So what is the time advantage? Current air travel is roughly 3 hours CBD-to-CBD, but who actually travels that route? Presumably trips start from all over, and siting the fast train terminals would be an opportunity - and a choice. Do you replicate airtravel "convenience" of location and interchange, or site away from existing airports to attract different customers? Indeed are you seeking to reduce airtravel by direct competition, or looking to take cars and trucks off the roads? Depending upon how you answer those (and many other) questions you may end up with an 850km track and a 3.5hour journey time. So you are 'in the ballpark' but have an opportunity to be different as well.

Of course if you do manage to cannibalise airtravel you'd incur the wrath of the airlines and the airport owners. So I suspect you'll end up compromising somewhat.

And then there are the fares. Having built massive new infrastructure - let's face it, it's not going to be just a few billion, is it? - you then have to decide how you recover that cost. Let the government (ie you and me) absorb it as a project of national importance? Or charge a fee that actually recovers costs over say 20 or 30 years? Do we privatise the service and let the government carry the can on track costs?

Of course spending money on a fast train means we can't spend it on existing rail, or education, or hospitals - or anywhere else. That's opportunity cost for you. We will have to think carefully about what we want here. Indeed, why not invest in improving our existing rail network, for example? Or site a new airport somewhere else in Sydney, to reduce congestion, travel time and cost in getting passengers to the current Sydney Airport?

My point? As seductive as a fast train sounds, we haven't even started to think about the costs and ramifications yet. Just look at volumes. Air travel between Sydney and Melbourne is roughly 90,000 people a week. If you grab 30% of that market (say 30,000 a week) you are spending umpteen billions to shift a relatively small number of people between 2 places. If the gods smile upon you and you grow the market, you may double that number. It still looks like a bad investment to me, given that you'll probably rob Peter to pay Paul here anyway. The airlines will compete with you and you will have even fewer people travelling on existing lines. Which will leave us where? With an immense white elephant?

Of course airtravel may just die a natural death anyway, with fuel costs going through the roof. But that doesn't mean we have to replicate what smaller-by-area and denser-by-population countries such as France and Japan do with their fast train networks. Just for comparison with our 30,000 passengers a week scenario, Japan's Shinkansen carries around 350,000 passengers per day. I may be totally wrong with my off-the-cuff analysis but I suspect that Australia has no truly compelling economic - let alone environmental - reason to even want to shift that sort of number of people between any 2 cities. But we may want to make some improvements to the rail infrastructure within our cities and improve our commute times between a much larger number of locations. Now there's a thought.

It's your money, spend wisely!