France’s President, Nicholas Sarkozy, has is currently holding an environment summit to look at ways of reducing France’s greenhouse emissions. Most of France’s electricity comes from nuclear power, so it’s already zero emission. So one major focus of the summit is reducing emissions from road transport – and one of the major proposals to achieve that is a freeze on new freeway construction.
By contrast, in Australia, we have Mark Vaille promising to spend $700 million on a new Toowoomba bypass, and Labor promising to spend a billion dollars on upgrading Melbourne’s Western Ring Road (a freeway) and the West Gate Bridge.
If you look at Labor’s transport policies, they’ve made 19 announcements about building new roads. By contrast, they’ve made one on shipping and one on rail, in which Martin Ferguson had this to say:
Let me say, however, that easing urban congestion does not equal urban public transport.
The best thing the Federal government can do to ease urban congestion is invest in freight corridors to take traffic off commuter roads and passenger rail lines.
..and then went on to make absolutely no actual funding commitments to build any “freight corridors”.
Labor is talking the talk on climate change. But are they prepared to actually change the trajectory of government funding for transport to help do something about it? Not at the moment, it seems.
The problem with Ferguson’s comments that in Melbourne investing in freight rail corridors means investment in urban rail public transport. The lines in Melbourne used by freighta nd passenger rail are one and the same so they cannot be seperated.
But Mar’n sees his role as delivering for the freight industry so in an election environemnt he won’t acknowledge this truth.
Marn is a climate change denialist. What do you expect?
Vaille is just pushing pork, and fixing roads and traffic congestion is always a vote winner.
Look at this way, the freeways will make a good corridor for rail on one side and horse-and-cart on the other circa 2030.
My electorate so needs to become marginal so that the bloody Barton Highway can be completed. But apparently lives around here are cheap, and it’s a strongly held Liberal seat, so it won’t be happening anytime soon.
LOL. I have more faith in human ingenuity than you carbonsink – I see baboon rickshaws as the way of the future.
As it turns out, they’re also the ones used by country passenger rail. We’ve recently had some major country rail upgrades done, courtesy of the Bracks state govt, cutting up to 20 minutes from a 90 minute trip from Ballarat. But they got all shy when it came to upgrading the metro network, which could have taken yet another 20 min off.
Fixing urban rail (and tram & bus) is a state thing.
I’d like to hear Kev-oh-sev do some stern talking to the Labour premiers about public transport….
Well … if you want to take the optimistic view, freeways will still make a good corridor for rail on one side, and intelligent, self-driving EVs on the other. Either way, I can’t see the freeways being used for fossil fuel guzzling ICEs ten years from now.
Howard is over here in Perth promising highway overpasses.
Mindy: “My electorate so needs to become marginal so that the bloody Barton Highway can be completed.”
Good news, Mindy – the Coalition will do it. They have promised to complete the Murrumbateman bypass by 2014, and start work on the duplication of the rest of the highway straight after that! That means you only have to re-elect them … umm … another 4 times (unless they move to 4-year terms, then it might only be 3 times).
Actually, no they’re not in some cases, it’s about a 50/50 split. What’s weirder is that there has actually been federal and state funding on improving said tracks quietly being spent and neither side has capitalised on it…
The Labor Right is heavily into climate change denialism, anti-environmentalism and promoting urban sprawl and more road traffic / road building.
http://www.thenewcity.info
Awful, just awful.
The best thing the Federal Government can do to ease congestion is to stop giving cities money for freeways and start allocating it for public transport. The money that has been earmarked for expansion of Brisbane’s highways and the NorthernLink tunnel could itself pay for an inner city light rail system. Throw another few hundred million out there (of the $34 billion in tax cuts) and you could expand the heavy rail network in cities as well.
While we’re at it, give regional cities funding for bus networks because the local governments sure don’t have the funds to do it. Big regional towns like Rockhampton are starting to sprawl and everyone’s going to continue to drive because there’s no other option. Even a radial light rail system with a few suburban bus routes linking major suburbs would be worth looking at.
The two big parties have failed to recognise that freeway upgrades are a short term measure which make real long term solutions harder to implement.
And it’s not just an environmental issue regarding greenhouse gas emissions. I have not heard one of these nutters mention planning of any description concerning the issue of peak oil.
Spending on private transport infrastructure is sheer folly. It is redundant transport mode that can not be saved by biofuel substitution. As pointed out in a recent article in Pacific Ecologist,
Though given our recent form concerning sharing & caring, I don’t like the chances of the poor in this one. Hey – they can come here on 457 visas & pull the rickshaws. That idea must be worth a job at Mac Bank in Niccy Moore’s office…..
I agree completely that both parties should stop spending money on freeway development in cities. Instead, send the money up here. We could do with roads – just good gravel ones would do – to all major Aboriginal communities and a few bridges over rivers would help as well.
In the NT we could provide access to the largest Aboriginal community in the Territory for 12 months of the year for the cost of one freeway overpass. Thankfully, Mar’un has said we will get something even though we are in a safe Labor seat. Good bloke that Mar’un.
Marn is actually from the left, the soft left at least. The same faction as Julia Gillard.
That newcity link seems to be a production of the Peter Walsh right, who is a founder of the denialist Lavoisier Group along with other nutbars such as Ray Evans. Remember Ray’s rants the night the Great Global Warming Swindle was aired?
A careful reader of The New City will see that our position on climate change is more complex than the frenzied term ‘denialism’ suggests.
John Muscat
Co-editor, The New City
John Muscat, would you prefer “dangerously deluded and irresponsible”?
Your nuanced position essentially boils down to “we cannot do everything, so we should do nothing”, and greatly overestimates the cost of unilateral action.
You also completely ignore the political reality that until the developed world acts, the developing world won’t.
Sure, John. That’d be why your web site lists the following news briefs:
* Iemma urged to back clean coal [SMH]
* Rudd rules out more forestry protection [ABC]
* Tim Flannery an idiot, says Costa [SMH]
* Coal mine wins approval despite protests [Aus]
* BP, Rio in clean coal push [Aus]
Or your “featured person”, who’s got the following article titles:
* Global warming’s real inconvenient truth
* Global warming and hot air
* Greenhouse guessing
* Hollywood’s climate follies
Your link to the Great Global Warming Swindle certainly gives the impression of a complex position.
Shorter The New City – Global warming’s not happening! But if it is, then invest in clean coal and nuclear energy.
There you go again Robert. Just because a politician talks about something, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
Here in Sydney we know about the gap between what politicians say about roads and what actually happens.
In terms of the freight industry, it should be possible to change the way rail is regulated and funded in order to make it part of the equation. Right now “freight industry” = trucking, which is both narrow-minded and extremely inefficient.
I accept that the Coalition is not capable of new and expansive thinking on this issue, which is why I will vote against them – but it’s wishful thinking to assume that Labor generally, and Mar’n particularly, is capable of this.
Speaking of new thinking, it is surely a proven loser to oppose any and all road projects on environmental grounds. It just gives environmentalism a bad name.
If these road upgrades are such good ideas, why can’t they fund the bloody things with tolls? In Melbourne and Sydney at least, everyone already has an E-Tag.
Why don’t they fund the building of roads with road based taxes like fuel tax, motor vehicle registration, and licencing fees?
Ooopps – they already impose those taxes, don’t they?
Many have an E-tag, not all (in Melbourne): some swear blind they will NEVER drive on CityLink, ‘cos Jeff built it. Which usually leaves it clear for others. I use it occasionally, and am quite sure my C emission for such trips is significantly lower than when I used the old stop-start routes.
Public transport is terrific if done well; in parts of Melb it’s OK; other parts it’s not (yet). Don’t assume trams are less C emitting than cars: it depends on passenger numbers. And Victoria’s electricity (tram fuel) is mostly from burning brown coal; not yet a clean technology.
Upgrade to Victorian country passenger rail? For Traralgon line to Melb, you’d be lucky if it has shaved 5 minutes off a 90 minute trip. But Bracksy was from Ballarat, and that line may pass through fewer suburban kilometres?
amortiser: that pays for the deaths and injury caused by the pollution coming out of your tailpipe causes.
Seriously, the trouble with that argument is that there’s no correlation between the amount spent on a particular road, and the demand for that particular road. It’s whichever marginal seat can bleat the loudest.
How will you convince people like me that we should stop building freeways?
Perth is a hugely sprawled suburban city – more trains and trams would be nice for commuters, but public transport will never replace the private car. For example:
how will my very old, frail mother get to the shops, doctors etc other than being taken ( look at shopping centres in the middle of the day – lots of middle-aged people helping their aged parents do their banking, shopping etc);
how will my brother, this Saturday morning, take his son to where his hockey team is playing on one side of town, and take his daughter to where her netball team is playing on the other side of town (meanwhile returning her library books, and picking up the shopping etc)
How will my sister’s 15 year old grandaughter get home from her job at McDonald’s at 10.00 at night
How would the early morning swimmers I see at the beach get there in anything but cars (I’m close enough to ride a bike, but I drive when it’s raining and I drive if I go down after work as well)
I could go on. Once you have a spread-out city where so many people need to drive, you’re going to need highways and freeways because when it’s hot everyone wants to get to the beach, when there’s a long weekend half of Perth wants to get ‘down-South’ etc etc
Russell, you operate on the mistaken assumption that investment in public transport entails banning the private car. PT isn’t the best solution for every trip that needs to be taken but getting the commuters, revellers, sports fans, concert-goers and students out of their cars and in to a more space-efficient mode of transport will go much further in relieving congestion that building infrastructure that encourages people to drive.
Trains to coastal towns with special services on the weekends for the beach-goers is one way to provide access without having to expand the freeway network. Roads aren’t everything.
Also, what happens to the coastal towns and the beach trip when the price of petrol rises? You know who’s going to be complaining that they have to spend so much money on petrol just to get to work and that there’s no public transport near their house so they need to drive to get to work? You and the rest of the freeway cheer squad.
Russell: like Sam said. It’s not about replacing the private car. It’s about acknowledging that roads are expensive, encourage pollution, and don’t scale particularly well, so we should be looking to make the use of the roads we already have as efficent as we possibly can (by having more than one person in a car at a time, particularly in peak periods), and provide alternatives where they make better sense.
Just on the politics of it, I wonder if we’ll see someone, over the next month, make an issue of Rudd’s involvement in the Goss Labor Government’s electorally disastrous approval of the infamous Eastern Tollway, and Ferguson’s involvement as ACTU President in listing the silly thing as one of 100 major projects that had to be fast-tracked.
NB: For the benefit of non-Queenslanders, the road was eventually not built after the voters of south-east Brisbane beat the stuffing out of Goss and Labor in the 1995 State election.
Answer: we won’t. Not until the true cost of driving a private car is reflected at the petrol bowser.
Australians have been almost completely insulated from the oil price shock by two factors:
1. The surge in the Australian dollar almost completely matches the surge in the crude oil price. Plot a graph of the AUD vs WTI from 2000-2007 and you’ll see what I mean.
2. The Howard government froze the fuel excise at 38c/L in 2001. At the time the fuel excise represented more than 40% of the price paid at the bowser, today its less than 30%.
If the Australian dollar was at its long time average of 70 cents and fuel excise indexation had been continued we’ be paying close to $2/L today. But I doubt even $2/L would change driving habits. It might change the kind of car we choose to buy, but I doubt people would drive less or use public transport. I think we’ll see real change at about $5/L, which is coming sooner than you think.
I also think that $2 a litre wouldn’t have much effect, but $5 a litre would – in that a lot of people would switch to small cars – but a lot of Suzuki Swifts or Toyota Yaris’ will still need roads and highways.
There could be an argument that why should car users pay the full cost when public transport users don’t. Both have a need to go places and public transport doesn’t now and will never be able to replace private vehicles.
I have picked up generally from reading, a sort of glee from some environmentalists that oil is going to ‘run out’ soon and that that will be the end of private vehicles. I don’t think we’re headed for such a sudden change. It’s a pity that we haven’t over the last 30 years regulated vehicles so that they had to continually meet stricter and stricter targets for fuel consumption and emissions etc. Even given the small amount of research done so far the major car companies have invented cars that use half the fuel of the ones they sell today. As the price of oil goes up new solutions will be found.
So I think it’s more realistic to be improving / extending public transport while also improving road transport. I agree , Robert, that we can make roads more efficient, but not by trying to get people to share car use, but by spending more money on them: replacing intersections with overpasses, co-ordinating traffic lights and doing other stuff that keeps traffic flowing freely. Telling people that in the future they will have to behave in ways that they don’t want to is not going to get the support that will force governments to make changes.
Oil won’t ‘run out’ anytime soon, but we will soon hit peak oil production. After that rate of production will inevitably decline, and if the history of oil production tells us anything, the rate of decline will accelerate. Consider this scenario in the light of world oil demand growing at 2% p.a. as China and India industrialize. Something has to break.
My guess is we’ll see real problems with oil production in the 2010-2012 timeframe. Large oil projects have a 6-7 year lead time, so we know that very little new oil production capacity is coming online after 2010 (Google “Chris Skrebowski megaproject”)
All the alternatives have serious downsides; oil sands, oil shale and coal-to-liquids are very energy and greenhouse intensive, biofuels compete with food crops and native forests and have dubious greenhouse benefits, batteries for electric vehicles have nowhere near the energy density of liquid fuels and are slow to recharge…
Oh, and I think you’ll find the consequences of this a little more serious than the demise of the private vehicle
Russell: you’re not paying the full cost of driving.
Aside from the damage you’re doing to the global climate, the other pollutants from vehicle exhausts kill twice as many Australians as car accidents do.
Robert, I think most of us must agree with Madeline Albright – it’s a price we’re prepared to pay. Isn’t the emission problem something that can be solved, or solved enough, by technological advances? Smaller, lighter, hybrid or whatever vehicles with clever technology that captures emissions?
Would all biofuels compete with food crops ? Isn’t there room for a huge expansion of the sugar industry in the North of WA ? I think Brazil uses sugar cane to produce ethanol – why don’t we?
Russell, I went through the numbers once with BilB. From memory Australia uses 19 billion litres of petrol per annum. If we converted all our sugarcane tomorrow to ethanol production, we could produce around 2.5 billion litres of ethanol. Ethanol has around 70% the energy content of petrol, so that’s the equivalent of 1.75 billion litres of petrol, or less than 10% of our current requirements.
Yes we could replant the entire Ord River with sugarcane and we might double ethanol production, but that would mean replacing food crops and it would take decades to complete the changeover.
Then there is the small matter of diesel.
Brazil supplies more than 30% of its automotive fuels from sugar cane ethanol, but most of Brazil is in the tropics and gets a lot more rain than Australia. Of course, both Brazil and Australia are vastly better off in terms of biofuel production than most nations. The U.S. consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day but most of the U.S. is only suited to corn (maize) ethanol production. Europe so far has out-sourced its biofuel production to SE Asia where palm-oil plantations (for biodiesel) have devastated huge areas of tropical rainforest.
Despite the inherent risks of confusion adding another namesake to this thread, I can’t help but comment on this:
Did you just drop out of a 1960s time-warp Russell? Improved traffic management has pretty severe limitations, notably that most congestion occurs at destinations, because of queuing traffic. As far as traffic management goes, overpasses and coordinated traffic lights largely shift the problem around, not solve it. And if you want people to actually use the city streets for something other than driving (and presumably you do, unless you’re that rare breed of unreconstructed modernist that thinks fast moving traffic actually means something), then overpasses are about as pleasant as several thousand tons of concrete unceremoniously dumped on your front lawn. Which, funnily enough is almost exactly what they are.
Tunneling technology is pretty cost effective these days (on the right route) and there’ll be more or and more infrastructure (roads and p/t) put through them in the future. But the days of big freeways and efficient intersections in existing neighbourhoods are ending. Regardless of the efficiency and green credentials of your car.
As another Perth resident, having spent years commuting here by bike, bus or car (in that order), I reckon 2 things about Perth roads -
1, as a few posts imply, a lot of driving is just habitual. I could go on about this for ages but the reasons behind a lot of driving on many routes seems to boil down to laziness and a love of the car for itself. Or conversely, the negatives are still not well-perceived here because our road system evolved with the car and mostly caters for it well. But between major nodes, and many other places, public transport alternatives are here. Travel-Smart style campaigning has worked well when applied.
2, as well-understood generally and implied above, cars create sprawl, and complex travel behaviour. A hundred years ago people still played sport, went to the beach and took holidays down south! Trouble is in Perth there’s presently so much disposable income that I agree $2/l would do little to change habits. And electric cars would still create congestion (so would bio-fuel cars, which anyway are still inefficient as per previous threads).
Agreed with carbonsink, we need fuel for our whole economy, not just for personal transport, so we should value it more highly. Unlikely for any politician to drastically increase fuel excise, as they probably should, so it comes down to trying to convince people to reduce car driving voluntarily. Maybe a campaign like what we have on drink-driving and cigs, to convince enough people that what comes out of their tailpipes is a whole lot more harmful than a cloud of tobacco smoke.
Not convinced yet.
“A hundred years ago people still played sport, went to the beach and took holidays down south!” – well, that’s when Perth was 1 tenth of its present size and its population was 100,000 not 1 and a half million.
“Improved traffic management has pretty severe limitations” – I drive along the freeway to work and used to face the congestion at the Narrows Bridge, but since they ‘duplicated’ the bridge, no more congestion, I just breeze into the City.
“Yes we could replant the entire Ord River with sugarcane and we might double ethanol production, but that would mean replacing food crops” – I think there’s a lot more land up there with sufficient water to grow a lot more sugarcane.
“so it comes down to trying to convince people to reduce car driving voluntarily.” Good luck with that. It would be nice if we could use the internet to reduce commuting – if employers agreed, a lot of people could work from home 1 or 2 days a week. That’s something people would actually want to do.
Forgot this point:
“But between major nodes, and many other places, public transport alternatives are here. ” and they might suit the people that use them. You apparently are happy with them. But other people don’t want to use public transport – perhaps they need the saved time that car travel gives them, perhaps they don’t feel safe walking from stations to home, mayne they don’t like being crushed into peak-hour trains ….. there will be many reasons these tax-payers will expect some of their taxes to be spent on roads, as well as on the public transport they don’t use.
Russell mate, you’re in for a shock. We’re not going to suddenly transform northern Australia into vast swathes of sugarcane that will keep us happily motoring through the 21st Century. The soils are poor, the rainfall erratic, and outside of The Ord there are no big dams or irrigation.
If you own a big-ass 4WD or family car, sell it now. This is not some do-gooder, save the planet message. You need to sell it now because it will be worthless in 3-4 years time.
You don’t have to (and indeed shouldn’t) believe me. Educate yourself, make up your own mind. I would suggest Robert Rapier’s blog as a good starting point.
Russel,
the key idea for me is that people should drive because the *want* to drive, not because they *have* to drive. As an example, I work with a fellow who *loves* driving, to the point that he and his mates regularly go out to the racetrack and spend the day driving round in circles. But he’d much rather catch public transport to work, except he can drive to work in 15min, but buses take almost an hour (assuming they show up on time and he makes the connections). I’m a dedicated public transport user but if I had a job where my arrival was really time sensitive, I couldn’t afford to risk the Brisbane bus network.
Trying to solve congestion problems by building more roads is like trying to solve obesity by buying bigger pants. It’s alleviates a couple of symptoms in the short term but makes the problems worse over time. More roads encourages more use of the roads which means more traffic and more congestion in other parts of the network. Planners project traffic growth and decide to build/duplicate a road, this new road reduces travel time, so driving becomes *more* appealing and more cars enter the road network. Congestion grows more quickly than was projected and the planners decide to accelerate their road construction because they underestimated growth.
It’s a vicious cycle and a classic application of “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’. Governments see traffic as a problem of inadequate supply and barely even give lip service to demand management. There are huge gains to be had by *marginally* reducing car use. If, for example, commuting drivers were able to not drive one day a week, that’s 20% of the peak hour cars off our roads. That’s a low hanging fruit and a few billion dollars over a few years would return *huge* dividends to the public.
d
Carbonsink,
I’d like a shock or two, life is fairly boring. But I think my 9 year old Corolla will be going a bit longer yet. Don’t know how much sugarcane can be produced up North, but fairly sure it would be more than is now – and could play just a part (along with smaller, lighter, much more efficient cars, and working from home etc) – in keeping us all able to enjoy the advantages of our own personal transport for a while to come.
And if we fall suddenly into an oil-less chasm I won’t mind cycling – when everybody else is cycling, but not before. I did it in China for 3 years and enjoyed it (though I was 20 years younger then).
I know there’s some truth to Daryl’s statement “More roads encourages more use of the roads which means more traffic ” but there are actually more cars because there are more and more people in Perth. The ‘duplicated’ Narrows Bridge was done about 5 years ago and is beautifully un-congested. I think ‘the tunnel’ is still working well too.
The point about what people don’t want to do is all very well, but in the end, they might just have to do it anyway. Personal freedom only goes so far. To put the view from the other side more strongly, single occupant vehicles have been clogging my daily commute – and it is definitely congested at what used to be ridiculous times of the morning – for years. Population has made it worse, but just underlines the need for something more creative. In my less charitable moments I just wish “they” gave priority to multiple occupant vehicles (buses and carpoolers), working vehicles (trucks, taxis and tradies) and calorie-burning one-wheel-drives (bikes). Any diehard lone car drivers should just go on to a roster. It’s happened with water.
I take the point that it would be damn difficult to get people to give up driving voluntarily. But google Travel Smart/South Perth and they did it 10 years ago. I maintain, it’s either persuasion or coercion, but something has to give and I reckon it has to be behaviour, with or without technology.
Re enjoying your personal transport. Seriously, when was the last time
“Re enjoying your personal transport. Seriously, when was the last time”
Joe, every day really. How about this: yesterday afternoon I decided to leave work early, 3.30; I shot down the freeway and cruised down Canning hwy; changed at home, picked up a novel and some mandarins and was at Port Beach 30 minutes after I walked out of the office. After a walk and a swim I sat across the two front seats of the car with the door open facing the sun – I was as warm as toast, eating my mandarins, reading my novel, in my sheltered, private little space. Very calming. Watched the sun go down and motored home.
…whoops. I was just going to add, when was the last time anyone enjoyed attending the steering wheel, creeping through rush hour. Number one reason to ride a bike to work – it’s more fun.
While population of a city clearly influences its public transport choices, bigger doesn’t mean public transport is harder. Numerous 19th-20th C cities much larger than modern Perth got their citizens around (and still do) without 60% of the commuters driving, and arguably just as fast (a factoid whose source I’ve forgotten – average vehicle speed in London, c1890s, 19kmh; average vehicle speed in London, c1990s, 19kmh). It was something to do with the lack of alternatives.
Getting back to not building more roads as a disincentive to private transport, there is one good example around of how the political system can positively respond – by doing nothing.
The F3 extension in NSW is a 30 odd kilometre, $700+ million idea to skirt a few towns in the Lower Hunter Valley and ease congestion on the troubled Pacific Hwy in favour of the inland New England Hwy.
This idea has been around for probably three decades and already cost taxpayers millions in feasibility studies and land acquisitions.
But the thing has not progressed partly because of State and Federal bickering on sharing costs. More important has been the fact there are no marginal seats in either parliament in the way of the ‘idea’ so it has gone nowhere. If gas does reach $5 a litre there probably won’t be much call for it in our lifetimes. Thank god for safe seats!
Carbonsink: by the way, I think you’re being too optimistic/pessimistic (or both at the same time) in expecting peak oil to save us from the greenhouse effect.
The trouble is that the most readily available, known-to-work alternative is turning natural gas or coal into transport fuel. Natural gas isn’t so bad, but it’s supply-limited as well. Coal-to-liquid is a greenhouse nightmare unless the process gas is sequestered.
The Greens are proposing to mandate a 10% biofuel target by 2020. I think it’s a bloody stupid idea and I told them so on their blog…
Russell, my commute’s a bit too long for a bicycle, so I ride a motor scooter. Use less than half the fuel I would in a car, and it’s a hell of a lot more fun (if more risky). And, as soon as one that can do 100 km/h becomes available and affordable, I’ll switch to an electric scooter.
Robert, I am most definitely absolutely 100% not of the opinion that peak oil will save us from climate change. How on earth did you get that idea?!
Actually the most readily available, known-to-work alternative to conventional oil is tar sands, and they are already producing over one million barrels a day in Canada at great cost in terms of energy and carbon emissions.
I agree the Greens 10% biofuel target is a dumb idea.
Unfortunately, I think we’ve left it all too late. We’ve been in denial about climate change and oil depletion for too long, and when TSHTF we’ll go for the easiest alternatives and that will mean oil sands and coal-to-liquids, both of which are a greenhouse nightmare.