Bicycles are great. Bicycles are wonderful. More people should ride bicycles to work. Fewer cars on the road would be great. And, in general, making our suburbs more accessible to transport modes other than cars is a Good Thing. But Eliot Fishman, in the midst of a piece in New Matilda singing the praises of federal spending on bicycle infrastructure, seems to me to be conflating “problem”, “symptom” and “cause” to serve his argument:
Fourthly, the Commonwealth, as well as all state governments have expressed deep concern over traffic congestion. Few public policy issues have been handled quite as badly as the one to “solve” our congestion “problem”. The quotation marks are used because it’s not actually a problem and it cannot be solved. As urban planning commentator Jane Jacobs pointed out in the 1960s, congestion is a symptom and automobile dependence is the problem. With some 80 per cent of all trips to work in Australia being done by car, almost always with only one occupant, it is very clearly our over-reliance on motor vehicles that is the real issue. Building roads to reduce congestion is like adding holes to a belt to solve an obesity problem. Failure to acknowledge this reality has resulted in massive road-building exercises that have simply induced traffic, providing no real improvement for anyone.
As Eliot goes on to correctly note, single-occupant vehicles are a very space-inefficient way to transport things around; they might well be viewed as a cause of chronic congestion problems in our cities. But congestion – or, more precisely, the inability to get people to where they want to go on a prompt (and just as importantly, predictable) schedule in comfort and safety – is the problem, not cars per se. Congestion can occur in all modes of transport. Melbourne has been suffering from train congestion for the last couple of years. New York had pedestrian congestion way back in 1916, according to the Times. And, guess what, cities that have recently started to encourage cycling are having cycling traffic jams. When public transport or cycling routes suffer congestion, what’s the response of user groups for both organizations? More space-utilizing and potentially expensive infrastructure – pretty much the same response as the road lobby!
One of the most basic lessons from my own field is that framing problems is hugely important in determining solutions, and the overly narrow focus on increasing traffic flow of organizations like the road bureaucracies has been hugely costly, and environmentally damaging. But such a reverse framing exercise – defining the problem in such a way as to narrow the solution options to his preferred ones – is unnecessary and counterproductive. The case for less car-dependent cities can be made without such logical detours.
I agree that more infrastructure (in public transport, roads or bike paths) will lead to more use of it— induced demand.
But isn’t the point about building roads that if you build better roads there will be induced demand— people will drive more, they will live further away from their workplaces, and so on? Whereas the new users of new bike paths will to a large extent be choosing to cycle where once they had driven (or gone by public transport). More displaced demand, rather than induced demand.
(The provision of public transport goes both ways; at least the late 19th century suburbs showed that people chose to live further out once the trains went in).
And these things are not equivalent– it is clearly better for health and environment if we can change many car commuters to bike commuters.
So I don’t see “that’s the same response as the car lobby” as being a particularly devastating critique.
The day we have to worry about capacity constraints on bike paths will be a happy day indeed.
kumbos, you’ll be ecstatic to hear that the Upfield bike path in nothern Melbourne is capacity constrained every weekday morning. The count data shows a really ugly rise-rise-rise-flat while the parallel on-road route on Sydney Road went flat-flat-rise-RISE as the excess cyclists choose to deal with two lanes of motorists each way with trams and bad intersection design as bonus problems. Which tells you just how congested the bike path is.
Unfortunately the Upfield Path is the size it is, and where it is, because we don’t have a road-style budget to widen it or straighten it. Given sufficient funding and compulsion powers it could be pushed out to the standard minimum of 2.5m (two 1.25m lanes) or even the traffic-level recommended 3.5m but for now it’s 2.5m wide only in a few places, and it’s a shared path the whole distance. The narrow points are less than 2m, but at least the local council is working on making it flat and removing the worst blind corners.
I would love to see integrated transport planning, ideally integrated in the sense of “we don’t have the transport capacity for that new subdivision so you can’t build it”. Even the “common control for all modes” style integrated would be better than anything I’ve seen in Australia. All too often promising noises turn into worst-case compromises, which makes me cynical when I hear new plans.
The latest scary idea is to bump tram+train capacity in Sydney Road to allow more 3-4 story apartment development (residential over retail), but I fear we’ll get the latter without any change to already-congested transport options. The cheap fix would actually be to take the curbside motor vehicle lane and make it a dedicated bicycle lane, giving a more than tenfold capacity increase for little to no expenditure, but without motor vehicle restrictions in the tram lane you’d also kill the trams. Making it two bike lanes plus two tram & bus lanes (from say 6am to 8pm) would be brilliant albeit politically impractical
Very well, then allow me to present a variety of solutions:
Buddhist: let go of the desire to go anywhere.
Hindu: The traffic jam is an illusion.
etc…..
Why not develop an anti-gravity bike, so we can have 3-D bike lanes?
Elise, it’s actually practical in some cases to elevate the bike lanes. Building a double deck bike lane is a lot cheaper than a road that has to carry motorists, and compared to the cost of other transport options around Sydney Road/Upfield bike path the option of adding a second layer to the existing bike path might be quite cheap. But it would require enough cyclists to significantly dent traffic volumes on Sydney Road and I’m not sure we’d get them.
I do wonder why instead of cut and fill or tunnels to sink the railways and roads out of sight we don’t build and roof. Same effect, but you gain a foul stinking parking lot where the ground floor of adjacent buildings used to be. I’m thinking of the malls that extend over roads in some places – you get a 50-100m “tunnel” with a few stories of building over the top. More practical over a train line, of course, because of the pollution from motor vehicles. Which is itself an argument for banning the things.
One of the problems I encounter when using off-road bikeways in Brisbane is that many users seem not to realise that even in an off-road environment there are certain rules and courtesies which should be observed for the safety and happiness of all concerned, such as riding on the left, not cutting blind corners, keeping a safe distance behind the person in front, etc. Add to this the oblivious pedestrians, roller-bladers, skateboarders, dog-runners, etc., and you can see why I usually find on-road cycling less stressful and more proedictable in terms of the behaviour of other road users
Jetpacks!
That’s a pretty vague article on that link. I never experienced, nor heard of, any ‘bike jams’ in Copenhagen, which is the model of bike infrastructure I’d like to see replicated in Australian cities.
Car traffic jams, on the other hand, present much more tangible, measurable constraints to time and resources.
One problem of our big-city society is that we insist in building huge office blocks in the centre of the city so that every working day we have traffic streaming in to the centre of the city, and then streaming out, at about the same time. Moreover, most who stream in will, apart from saying Hi to a few other desk prisoners, then sit at their own allocated desk in front of a computer for most of the day.
A more sensible approach, it seems to me, would be to establish small work-centres in the burbs whereby Joe B can take a healthy stroll to the nearest local centre, recover his personal wheeled filing cabinet, and log on at a convenient vacant desk. Consulting with a supervisor or work conferences would be no problem at all via video links. Such work centres could incorporate a gym or sports centre, a café, or even some small shops. Besides the obvious alleviation of our urbane traffic problems, such devices would save Joe and many of his neighbourhood at least a few extra hours per day in boring travel and may even promote community socialisation.
Now, how do we sell the idea?
Perhaps we need to move away from looking at transport solutions to looking at why so many people need to travel often to the same place or in same direction at the same time. Do we need work times to be so tightly synchronized? Would it help to further decentralise where work is done? How many businesses really need their employees to turn up to one of their offices to work effectively? Are synchronised days off (eg weekends) a bit out of date now?
What others have said above applies to both cyclists and bus riders in Perth. It’s true that “more provision for us” logic is the same as that used by the motorist lobby, but those commuters who shun the car are still a fraction of those who prefer it, and there is a very long way to go on my commute at least before alternatives become congested. The 74-person capacity bus I rode today at rush hour had 10 people on board, max, and was held up for 10-15 minutes in a 200+ car queue that forms every day at the same place, same time. The choice at the moment is a prisoner’s dilemma. I could get to work a heck of lot more quickly if I drove too, because aside from the occasional blockage caused by bad road design, cars are very well provided for in Perth. While I would be contributing to the problem that affects others (and as well as blocking buses I would be worsening road conditions for cyclists), there is no real penalty for driving. So as Julie at 1 and Moz at 3 imply, restrictions on car-users would displace that demand, and we would have an _easier_ congestion problem because bike lanes are cheaper (especially if you have redundant car lanes!). And if people got out of the habit of using their car for commuting they might also take fewer trivial journeys at other times, which would be a good thing.
re Paul at 7, this issue is literally still a sore point for me, but until recently I would have been with you on bike paths vs roads. However last week I got bumped off my bike by a car on a highway section on my usual road to work, on which I have ridden from time to time since 1986. But it only takes one careless driver; I was very lucky just to get bruised. So unless there’s a cycle lane on the highway, a bit of shared use cycle path and an extra 5 minutes on the commute seems OK.
Rex @ 10.
I’ve thought about the location of offices myself, albeit without your telecommuting angle.
Consider, a firm that puts back room office workers in a smaller centre, or even a regional centre not only has less frustrated (and therefore more productive) workers, but they could probably pay more. If a worker has to spend less money on petrol/fares or alternatively on property prices to be near a city centre, they can be prepared to take a pay cut, because they won’t be any materially worse off. They make be prepared to sacrifice pay for the time saved commuting alone.
That this doesn’t happen suggests something.
Who decides where the office is? The firm collectively might find it more profitable to locate elsewhere, but a firm doesn’t make decisions. A manager does, and we’re all too painfully aware that a manager’s interests don’t quite go along with the interests of the whole firm.
If a business is in Sydney for instance, it might make sense to shift office workers to Parramatta, or Norwest business park or even Wollongong for the firm. But the manager may want to live, as prestige demands, on the Lower North Shore, and chooses office space that either reduces his (corporate Australia is a sausagefest) commute or has its own prestige that is worthless to the firm. So the office ends up in the City or Macquarie Park or North Sydney.
So maybe perverse incentives in corporations are contributing in some part to traffic messes.
That said, learn to teleconference guys!
I’ve worked for companies that do the “office in the suburbs” thing, but it works less well than you’d hope. The hassle is meating customers and suppliers. Selling all too often means face to face, and a lot of customer service stuff does too. So you commute to the centre less, but still commute. Working in/from Paramatta sucked because we spent so much time travelling to and from the Sydney CBD. In my case, travelling out to Paramatta a lot of the time, and back in again on work time all too often. That said, contraflow commuting on PT is much faster and more comfortable than going the other way.
In small cities it can be great because you’re only a few minutes away from anywhere (I worked like this in Christchurch), and extreme for me was working in a factory built in the middle of the boss’s orchard in a feeder town. Our clients were all over the place and mostly overseas, so exact location wasn’t important and he wanted to keep living on the orchard. So he did, much to the delight of many of his employees.
On the other hand I’ve worked for companies that should have been in the suburbs but boss wank factor meant we needed the “prestige” of a CBD office. Why everyone had to work in what should have been a receptionist and mail drop I do not know.
Having just got back from Amsterdam I can indeed confirm that there such things as a bike traffic jam. Waiting for two light changes is possible.
Driving on Irish “freeways” also provides for many stops and jams.
its only really matters if you are commuting and long distances.
It seems my point has been lost a little here (though there are a number of interesting comments).
What was trying to say is that the author of the piece is making a common mistake/distortion – he likes hammers, so the problem is a lack of nails in wood.
So you’d rather focus on different ways to frame traffic problems, rather than different solutions?
Hmm, I assume “I can haz traffic?” is not the sort of alternative framing you want?
I think there are a limited number of framings that fall out naturally: too much traffic, wrong sort of traffic, not enough traffic-carrying ability. We seem to have hit all of them. Trying to frame it as “we organise employment in a silly way and here’s some evidence” will go right over most people’s heads as they argue about either employment or motoring, but I doubt many would take your framing and run with it.
But yes, the way the question is framed does bias the answers. There are also costs to different framings. Suggest that “too many people ride bikes” and you’ll get one cost, “we don’t have enough tollways” will give you a different angry reaction, albeit from some of the same people.
Robert, people are entitled to ask “if not this, what?” and be tired of the elliptical and endless framing debates which has cost so much and solved so little over so many years.
Nobody who has actually teleconferenced with existing technology, or had to work with people in different offices (particularly where you need information from them and they don’t need anything from you) is as giddy with excitement about the possibility of these technologies.
Some of the offices at Sydney Olympic Park are quite good, but try ducking out at lunchtime to do something non-work-related and your options are few – the coffee is dire, for a start. Sydney CBD is a much better place to build a sense of community. North Sydney has an earnest council keen on green values and liveability, but North Sydney CBD is appallingly soulless. With one of Australia’s largest CBDs and highest UCVs and rate collections, you’d hope North Sydney would have more to show for municipal facilities than natty bus stops.
The idea of bike paths covering rail lines is one of those ideas that has been mouldering away in someone’s drawer for 30 years, and when some politician wants to look statesmanlike they pull it out, wave it around then dump it back into the drawer. The number of bridges which are too low over the tracks, and the new rail station refurbishments which also allow too little room, will make for disjointed rides and traffic blockages at key points, which will make the costs of any such infrastructure so prohibitive this proposal will never move from the bottom drawer to implementation.
Hmmn, I’m just reading my local free newspaper and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam (who I voted for) claims that “transport studies around the world have proven that if you build a new road or extend it, more cars will be attracted, leading to more congestion”
No, not really. I drive along Cannning Hwy and then the Kwinana Freeway to Perth city each morning. There used to be a terrific holdup caused by the amount of traffic wanting to cross the Narrows Bridge. The previous Liberal state government ‘duplicated’ the bridge = built another one. We’ve had years of easy driving thanks to that new bridge – it worked. It’s becoming congested again because we’ve had 10 years of growth and more people/cars. Should we not build the new Fiona Stanley mega-hospital because it will just attract sick people?
People in their 30s may think we should all commute to work, but if they were an over-55 like me and lived 15 kms from work, I don’t think they would be pushing their bike to work – into the howling east wind in summer, back into the cyclonic ‘sea-breeze’ in the evening – let alone days like today which were forcast to have winds of 120kms/hour. I do ride my bike down to the beach each morning (10 minutes) and the cycle paths are awful. In my working life there won’t be cycleways good enough to use to commute into the city. Public transport is a bad joke – nobody should have to start each day packed into a train carriage.
So, in the absence of any realistic alternative to driving myself to work, I support the government building and maintaining roads.
Someone I know from church has a great set-up where he works from home 2-3 days a week and commutes the other 2-3 days. He works as technical support for IBM. Build the infrastructure and people will use it. Take a looks at Los Angeles. They built a huge system of urban freeways which have basically failed, because more and more people drove. Here in Sydney we have built a couple of T-ways where it is a road used exclusively by buses (no private transport allowed) and by emergency services. It ensures a clear and fast run. I am also an advocate for Tramways, as they can be built with their own right-of-way, where buses get stuck in traffic jams causes by private motor cars.
Let’s put it this way. If we want 10% of commutes and trip to be made by bicycle, then 10% of road funding should go towards bicycle-specific infrastructure. Bicycle lanes should be at least 1.5m wide, and possibly the best way to achieve this is to abolish on-street parking (a major deterrent for anyone thinking of driving), and turn what was effectively a “parking lane” into a bicycle lane.
One of the costs of cycling – I’ve had more serious injuries from cycling accidents v cars – none from being in car accidents (touch wood!).
Doesn’t keep me off the bike, though.
I’m also a bit concerned about the emphasis on bicycles for commuting. It might be viable, who knows, but it makes a bit more sense to me to promote bicycle use for small localised trips. The 1-2 km trips to the shops/school/train station that are often on the upper bounds of walking so a car trip is used instead. This would be the most wasteful and dangerous use of cars we have. The transport of food from the shops to home is the least efficient part energy wise, so one trip by bike would be worth months of “buying local”. It also cuts down on car traffic where pedestrian use is high (and hopefully fatalities) and increases the catchment zone for public transport hubs which could ease larger congestion problems.
And encouraging it would be simple, just smaller bikelines along suburban streets, within one council area (so linking up paths is less difficult), a bit of widened shared footpath, a few pedestrian crossings with bike lights added and some better parking.
I hope this isn’t being overlooked in favour of BIG cycle infrastructure or recreational infrastructure. Intrasuburban bike use is important. I remember living in North Ryde when the Ryde to North Ryde to Naremburn cycleway opened along Epping Road and next to the freeway. Glorious, wide and free. And impossible to get on the damn thing from quiet suburban streets. Like building a freeway without on ramps.
Incidently, the mix of cycles for intra suburb travel and linking with the public transport that is used for commuting is prevalent in Japanese cities, is it similar in the Netherlands/Denmark as well?
And on topic, bicycle parking in Japan is a problem to a hilarious extent.
Russell, have you considered an electric-assist bike? They can take the pain out of cycling, while preserving most of its advantages. Seriously.
Public transport also isn’t an option if you either live in the country or have children you need to take to and from child care …
CF. the bushfires thread – Another good reason for only people who actually work in the country to live there, and why the treechange / commuter / sprawling dormitory suburb in the Periurban area is a thing we need to wind back. (You may well be one of the former Lynda, but there’s too many of the latter and Peak Oil is going to get ‘em.)
Yerbut Robert you were the one campaigning against Fibre To The Home (FTTH.
If there is one single thing that will fix this 19th century requirement to get peoples actual bodies into a dark satanic mill it is FTTH. Why should a fork lift driver be actually present in t’mill when he/she can operate the thing over a fast broadband network at home? Likewise office workers etc.
I would set up community nodes where people can actually be present with other people and actually walk to work in these.
Like you guys are just so 19th century.
Hugggy
The problem really amounts to human attitudes not technology,because the technology is multi-adaptable if some thought goes into it.For example trains buses trucks have been used by the more daredevil end of bicycle usage as a tow.Rail lines are under utilized.The problem is both safety comfort and no bicycle damage,but it is easy to see some sort of technology pulling along like another carriage a large number of bikes.Tram or overhead wires on rail are another example of little use except for electric train use.Why these overhead lines aren’t used in some other way whilst still providing the electricity for trains has me beat.Metal surfaces on trucks and buses are a powerful magnet or electro magnet away from having bicycles attached.More foldable bikes and willing car drivers could see bikes loaded on cars rapidly.Street lights could be used as elevators in some circumstances to drop a bike and rider on the back of tray trucks on in the back of doored trucks.In places where major arterial traffic goes past say Tertiary Education Centres,the Uni could organise bike hire to commuters and delivery of cars later by students to work or other addresses.Until the art of practical limitations is spurred on by necessity and imagination,commuters of all types will flounder in the process of thinking ,not only are themselves very limited,but other humans too. And it isn’t really the case at all.Why isn’t there an attempt by all transport companies and educationist to make life a little bit easier for everyone in city traffic!? Too busy,or a organisational,organizational tiredness !?
Re. forkies, Huggy, are you being sarcastic or are you an inspired genius?
To watch someone drive at 40km/h down a steel corridor three metres wide, stop and turn, lift the forks up fifteen or twenty metres, advance, lift, and reverse to grab a pallet, then lower it, turn and reverse at 40km/h is something you’ve just got to see to be impressed by. Then you watch them do it five or six times a minute, and you look on your own skills as the driver of a hand pallet-jack and despair.
I can’t decide if the idea of forklift driving by TCP/IP is bone-chillingly horrifying or the coolest thing ever.
Hmmn, I’m just reading my local free newspaper and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam (who I voted for) claims that “transport studies around the world have proven that if you build a new road or extend it, more cars will be attracted, leading to more congestion”
No, not really. I drive along Cannning Hwy and then the Kwinana Freeway to Perth city each morning. There used to be a terrific holdup caused by the amount of traffic wanting to cross the Narrows Bridge. The previous Liberal state government ‘duplicated’ the bridge = built another one. We’ve had years of easy driving thanks to that new bridge – it worked. It’s becoming congested again because we’ve had 10 years of growth and more people/cars.
Russel, um yes, really, and your example is a classic demonstration. I probably would have chosen different words from Scott Ludlam (“more cars will be attracted”), but having worked with transport engineers in the past, this fact is well known in their profession, and has a solid body of evidence to back it.
Your example simply illustrates how it works – the road /bridge duplication was a terrific solution for 10 years, but it would be interesting to see what the cost of that duplication worked out as on an annual basis – and 10 years is hardly a long term solution. You say it has become congested because of growth / more people in cars – well of course. All infrastructure planning is based on projections ( 20 & 50 years are pretty standard time-frames) that determine rates of growth / contraction. This is one of the reasons that transport options based solely on vehicles / roads can be so problematic -they rely on a single ‘solution’ for a multi-facted problem.
Obviously there are going to be specific places, times etc. where building more roads is the most viable option, but it nearly always pays to look at other solutions or at least a suite of solutions, as road building and maintenance are very expensive.
A good eg I can give is a quiet debate here in Hobart. From the CBD along the western shore of the river, suburbs and satellite centres have grown up. They run alongside the major highway that connects Hobart to Launceston – the local stretch is known as the Brooker Hwy & has two lanes in each direction. There is also a now largely disused rail line running directly behind all these northern suburbs along the river, and parallel to the Brooker Hwy.
The Brooker is becoming increasingly congested because of people being prepared to commute longer (in Hobart terms) and of course the fact that it’s the major feeder road from the north, also for the Derwent Valley, and the rapidly growing satellite town of Brighton.
Because of the growth there is not a lot of room for the Brooker to reasonably expand, and maintenance is already a problem. Expanding it would also impact severely on some land values – but most importantly would emphasis the reliance on that road as the sole feeder route into Hobart from the north.
The Greens suggestion is to put a light rail public transport system on the existing rail line. It would provide a commute serive for the many people who travel into either the CBD or satellite northern areas for work, would run directly behind the key shopping centres thus benefitting those with reduced mobility, can connect people as far out as Brighton (a ‘park and ride’ option would be ideal), and connect some of the most socially disadvantaged suburbs to the city to assist with key barriers to gaining employment such as inability to travel to job interviews etc. It would also create jobs, and be relatively low cost because much of the infrastructure exists. There’s also a complementary bike path that follows the rail line already in place, which would also let people boe and ride etc.
So what are the big parties doing? – focussing on upgrading the Brooker at massive cost, of course.
Sorry Russell, I docked you an ‘l’!
myriad @ 29, the reason, of course, that either of the major parties will build more roads at enormous expense rather that do something which will actually work (as well as be cheaper) is out of friendship – they want to help their struggling mates who own construction companies.
One of the old rail corridors in Adelaide’s south was paved to become a bike path, I believe part of it will once again become a railway when the Noarlunga train is extended to Seaford. There are probably moves afoot for the line to extend all the way to Sellicks [the southern most reaches of the Mount Lofty Range], I hope someone has the good sense to say no to that.
As much as I favour public transport, the continued sprawl of Adelaide will get worse if the rail is extended even further. The McLaren Vale wine region is already being encroached upon, Aldinga Scrub Conservation Park, which is one of the few parks in the Metropolitan area that has endemic species [which are already under threat] has housing development right up to it’s northern boundary.
We can argue around this issue ’til the cows come home, but at some point we either have to set a population target whereby we can maintain the suburban lifestyle most are accustomed to, or we need to make high-density living more attractive. I don’t think our planners have done very well thus far, and public policy seems to target the amount of green space in urban plans, rather than the quality of that space to work as an actual retreat. If we get a few more of those things right, then the tree-change phenomena should lose it’s attraction, but lets face it….most Australian cities are places you want to retreat from, rather than really linger in.
Myriad – I’m not convinced. We could stop building hospitals on the grounds that they encourage people to be sick. Of course we could advise people to seek out alternatives – medical tourism, faith healers etc. But realistically, growing cities will have to provide more and more infrastructure for the people who live in/around them.
I’m all for more trams and cycleways, but they will never meet everyone’s needs. Tim, an electric assisted bike wouldn’t have been much use this morning with the river crashing over the miserably narrow cycleway that runs along the Freeway. Nor would I want to use it for the long trip home when I’m rostered to work at night.
Russell, with respect, just because the evidence presents something that is counter-intuitive to you doesn’t mean you are right. Otherwise the evidence would say so, and also we wouldn’t bother training people to be experts in their field etc.
A hospital is a poor analogy. People don’t choose to get sick. People do choose to a far greater degree where they work, where they live, and how they get between the two. Employers also choose where they situate their workplaces and government and planning can influence both where people live, where work is situated and the options for either communication or transport between them.
Furious Balancing nicely articulated what I was muddling about the edges of, transport options, congestion minimisation etc. all need to be thought about as part of planning, urban densities and the infrastructure required.
FB – with regard to extending the rail in SA, sounds like a classic case of ‘build it and they will come’ without a very comprehensive plan re: what we’re building, why we want them to come & what the (unintended) consequences will be. Sort of highlights the point of this post- public transport is a tool, not an end.
Russell: it doesn’t have to suit everybody all of the time.
Take 10% of cars off the road and replace them with bikes and there’s a big difference in congestion, environmental impact, etc. etc.
“People do choose to a far greater degree where they work, where they live, and how they get between the two”
In Perth you find that generally, rich people live in suburbs close to the city that are fairly well provided with transport options, and poor people live further out with fewer options and facilities. Are you suggesting that the poorer people have just made dumber choices?
“People don’t choose to get sick” – well, that’s debateable. Visit a large public hospital this weekend and see how many people are there because of alcohol/ drugs/ violent activities/ reckless driving / smoking/ eating too much, exercising too little ….
It’s too easy to say that we could all make a few changes and our lives would fall into some perfect virtuous pattern. You may live somewhere for a variety of reasons, but need to visit ageing parents across town, work somewhere else, take your kids to band practice or swimming training at some ungodly hour etc.
Clearly we have to think of the environmental and other costs of transport and plan for alternatives to cars, my point is just that, in growing and hugely sprawled cities like Perth, it isn’t realistic to advocate not spending money on roads. And I’ve heard the ‘roads attract cars’ theory for years and I still think it’s wrong!
Trains? You’re not kidding about the daredevil end, phillip.
I think it also answers Russell’s (to me, as a twice-daily train commuter) unreasonable complaint:
I could totally start the day on mountain bike, riding the Tangara slipstream and bouncing around on the track ballast.
…
Seriously though:
Actually, in some senses, acute care congestion at hospitals is a very good analogy for road congestion. The most effective way to clear up congestion in hospital emergency rooms isn’t to build more hospitals or provide more beds, because you’re just turning staffing into the limiting factor in congestion (a much more difficult aspect of public health to change). Health departments are much better off trying to decongest hospitals by encouraging patients where they can to seek care from their GP or from a medical centre and by getting patients who are admitted to beds out of those beds faster.
Though obviously future planning has to take growth into account.
Either that or use a bronchio-dilator or some some antibiotics …
Actually, in some senses, acute care congestion at hospitals is a very good analogy for road congestion.
Well now you’ve made it work to support my argument I’m all for it Liam.
In all seriousness, my brain wasn’t making the leap given the language Russell was using.
In Perth you find that generally, rich people live in suburbs close to the city that are fairly well provided with transport options, and poor people live further out with fewer options and facilities. Are you suggesting that the poorer people have just made dumber choices?
No Russell, that’s why I said ‘to a far greater degree’. What you’re describing is an excellent illustration of the failure of many governments at all 3 levels to engage in serious urban & infrastructure planning, and the fact that it’s generally the rich & well educated who somewhat punch through that problem by having the wherewithal to lobby.
“…you find that generally, rich people live in suburbs close to the city…”
I have a dumb question, if I may, regarding housing choices of wealthier people?
Why would wealthier people pay over the odds to live in a smaller house in an inner-ring suburban area, when they could have a castle+moat+drawbridge+helipad on the outskirts of town? Or even a McMansion in an outer-ring suburb?
Something to do with putting a price on their spare time being used for commuting?
Something to do with a greater tendancy to forward planning and recognising the implications of an oil crunch on housing prices in outer suburbs?
Even if it is just nearology to PLU’s (“people like us”), why did the first lot of PLU’s not choose a McMansion suburb?
Not rhetorical questions – I’d be curious to know what others thought were the drivers for the behaviour.
Yes Myriad – you did say that people could choose ‘to a far greater degree’ where they live etc as if that solved the problem, whereas the far greater degree doesn’t amount to much in reality.
“serious urban & infrastructure planning” would be an excellent thing, except that we might have very different ideas about the kind of life we want to plan for.
I’ve probably missed my calling as a triage nurse. Surely a lot of people turning up at public hospitals deserve a good slap and the diagnosis that they’ve made their bed and can now lie in it. Then sent back to their GP, as Myriad recommends – of course they won’t find a GP in the outer suburbs, so they’ll need to move houses first.
Russell, given your stubborn adherence to a very simplistic take on the issue and what I’ve said, I’m rather glad you’re not a triage nurse. All this nonsense about ‘myriad would send them back to a GP’ – where on earth are you getting it from, because it’s certainly not anything I’ve written here.
What I have suggested is that we start by accepting the evidence regarding the problem of just building more roads as it increases not decreases congestion – which you’ve rejected for years – and act on it as part of a much more comprehensive, long-term and sustainable approach to transport & urban planning.
Oops, sorry Myriad, the GP recommendation was from another commenter.
I dispute any ‘evidence’ that roads increase congestion, because it’s the opposite of my own experience. (I wonder how congested Perth’s roads would be if the freeway hadn’t been built? Gridlock. I imagine). Trains on the line nearest to me now have more railcars (2 rather than 4) because more people, in a growing city, want to catch the train. More people create more demand for the things they need.
If the population in Perth was falling would building more roads lead to more congestion?
Russell, I can’t say I have much sympathy for your refusal to accept the known fact that road availability increases traffic because of your “xpeeriens”. Maybe you also think the Earth doesn’t rotate because “well it obviously doesn’t move – look at it”. It’s at about the same level of rationality.
And as for the complaint about not being able to ride because of the weather (I rode along the Kwinana Freeway during the stormy weather yesterday – it was fun), that only reinforces my impression that around 99% of the insistence by some people that car commuting is necessary is essentially just laziness or frivolous lifestyle whinging. Sorry, if that sounds offensive, but why is it that people’s reasons why they “need” their daily drive are so often so pissweak? I mean – “boo hoo, I don’t like crowded trains”. Get over it, FFS.
“(I rode along the Kwinana Freeway during the stormy weather yesterday – it was fun)”
Tim – some people think sky-diving is fun. Not many people will want to parachute into the CBD though, so the implications for transport policy aren’t apparent. Howabout answering my last question then: if you build more roads in Ravensthorpe will it lead to congestion?
I know anecdotes don’t equal data but observations often lead to thinking and measuring.
Amsterdam (and indeed all of Netherlands)is awash with bike paths, many, maybe even most, dedicated and seperated and a lot shared and a fair few bits and pieces less than perfect but deliberately good enough. Few bike paths go directly anywhere but meander in and out of trams, traffic, buildings, lanes, canals, creeks, farms etc.
Netherlands is as flat as a shit carter’s hat. It’s flat in a way you’ve never understood flat before. Flat like a desk. Unrelentingly flat. Like Barnsey singing soul songs.
The houses are small. Tiny. Netherlands has one of the world’s highest population densities. The streets are basically lanes. Theres no car parking on streets to speak of. So people park their cars on footpaths.The fines are horrendous. Theres great public transport, trains connect the majority of bigger towns, four five times an hour is common. There’s buses in between and duplicating. Theres trams down middle of street. Taxis and the odd white delivery van can use tram tracks. Scarey but effective.
The price of public transport isn’t cheap.
Much much dearer than Melbourne for a day ticket or single trip.
And tickets aren’t integrated. Seperate bus, tram and train ticket. (thats changing a bit as from last week with kind of Myki/Smartcard train tick)
Bicycle share of trips in .nl is around 30% in Australia less than 1%. Fifty percent of trip in .nl are less than 3 ks. Bike usage in .nl is spread basically evenly through age groups and gender. In Oz its young males 20 – 30.
One of the obvious things, by abscence, in Amsterdam is lack of suits and business dress in the city where tourists go. Part of this is Dutch style a bit more casual than say Melbourne business dress but, as a general rule, they are not scruffy people.
But I hear you say, Amsterdam was once the centre of Commerce and Capitalism, and the other big Cs – Calvinism and Catholicism, and still is a major centre – there must be suits somewhere other than in the wardrobe or hanging as a metaphor.
Well yes – PWC has its branded multi story HQ along with others out in what we might call a suburban industrial estate. Not far from a train station but surrounded by roads and cars. And a couple of freeways close by. Sure theres cycle patsh but when we called in to the local Maccas out there on our bikes, we were the ONLY bikes in a full Maccas, with afull carpark and a line of cars in the drive 10 deep.
Theres loads of roads and freeways and bypasses, and ring roads and bridges in Netherlands – they are not in the pretty parts of the cities and villages but they are there, they are full of vehicles and there is plenty of new construction going on.
The difference between there and here is essentially population density and an determined anti car policy in central areas. Its no real fun at all driving a car for short trips in the denser populated areas.And there are sensible alternatives – bikes, trains etc – but as I mentioned public transport isn’t cheap.
A blanket anti car approach can’t work in Australia (or Netherlands) but we can have an anti car approach where alternatives are available – say Melbournes inner flat north out to Preston, Fairfield, Brunswick, Richmond.
Frankston to Whittlesea is further than from Rotterdam to Amsterdam and with less connecting roads and public transport. And less seperate identity.
Most people (not all – don’t all shout at once – I said most) work within 20ks or less of where they live – we can concentrate on giving people safe, convenient alternatives to the car locally – that means strip shops in neighbourhoods not just malls.
My big learning, I think, is that I’m not sure public transport has to be cheap at all, just ubiquitous and reliable.
Now you’re comparing cycle commuting to skydiving? Pathetic.
Russel, please ignore my last comment – it was uncalled for. The insistence on using cars to commute pushes some buttons of mine.
As far as I’m aware, all the studies that have been done on the relationship between road building and congestion were concerned with urban arterial roads, not rural and remote ones, so I have no idea whether the phenomenon applies to rural roads. It probably doesn’t.
Russell @43, the problem of road congestion has been modelled by many people, including researchers at MIT and London Business School. It is a complex modelling exercise with many feedback loops. Here is a link to one representation:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=-1OiTH90U48C&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Business+dynamics+traffic+model&source=bl&ots=HxvOobh1Oq&sig=lEPcvFmNkK65P2rSTU0M8clPTjI&hl=en&ei=uOCpSoSgJof6kAXD_ZCVBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=Business%20dynamics%20traffic%20model&f=false
The unfortunate conclusion of running the models, is that any attempt to reduce congestion from one part of the transport network causes more traffic to divert there from other parts of the network, until such point as travel times equalise by the different modes of transport. That is a simplistic summary of how I understood it, anyway.
If you think about it on a personal level, say you normally use one arterial road to get to the CBD and it becomes a linear carpark, so you divert onto another arterial. As everyone gets the same idea, it becomes a linear carpark too. Some people then decide cycling, trains or whatever are quicker. Then they widen the original arterial, so it is less congested and you switch back to it. So does everyone else, until the commute times equalise again.
Studies of efforts to improve travel times on the M1 in the UK have apparently proven that this actually occurs. That is, an initial improvement followed by a decline to the original conditions (with a concommitant increase in volume of traffic).
Bugger of a problem to solve…
Elise – while (very) far from wealthy, the Lady Friend and I chose (along with my little sis) to buy in North Carlton for exactly the reasons you suggest – trading yard/shed space* for proximity to the city and likeminded folks, and also a big component of actually living up to our own sustainability rhetoric.
*and if you knew me and my enthusiasms, you’d know what a gut-wrencher this was
Tim – I presume you’re not over 55? So how congested would those arterial roads be if the freeway hadn’t been built?
You can read in The West Australian today about the new extension to the freeway that’s about to open. This will hugely reduce congestion in Mandurah “as well as slashing 30 minutes off the journey from Perth to Bunbury, the road will save many lives, according to Main Roads statistics …. it’s very existence will have a positive impact on the lives of daily commuters and holidaymakers”
I can see that to create fast pleasurable driving is to create an incentive for people to not wait at train/bus stations – thus attracting people to the roads. And I did say earlier that I’m all in favour of more trams and cycle paths etc to create incentives for transport options other than driving. Still, in a growing city, with more and more people who need/want to drive, we will have to build more roads to stop congestion from stuffing up our lives.
fxh @46: “My big learning, I think, is that I’m not sure public transport has to be cheap at all, just ubiquitous and reliable.”
Great summary! Agree with your conclusions. That was my experience of the Netherlands also.
Perhaps you could add to ubiquitous and reliable, with the car alternative being a total pain?
In Amsterdam, The Hague and London, cars are a pain – the roads are choked, there are very few places to park, parking costs are stinking expensive, and often you can’t get near to where you need to go. The tram or tube station, on the other hand, is very convenient and takes you right there with no parking hassles.
Convenience is worth paying for, so the city can charge extra to improve the frequency and reliability of the service.
How about reliable, ubiquitous and civilised. I did commute by train for years until I was forced out by the overcrowding (sorry Tim).
But a low density, sprawling city like Perth will never have ubiquitous public transport. We’re nothing like London or Amsterdam. And we haven’t all got Tim’s knees.
elise – thanks – I had always had the implicit assumption, largely unquestioned, that public transport had to be cheap to be successful. I now suspect that is wrong for urban areas.
And as someone up further said. Anyone who has actually done a lot of video conferencing, hot desking, mobile working, etc will know that those who advocate it as a soultion have either never done it or have particular niche jobs where it works well.
Liam – re remote Fork That – didn’t the US Forces shooting rockets at the Taliban in Afghanistan do it all from a computer in caravan in California using Google earth?
Russell @53, looking at a map Perth looks very like a linear city. It has sprawled in two dimensions along the coast from Two Rocks through Perth to Mandurah.
A linear city should be servicable with a ubiquitous linear train service, shouldn’t it? With periodic bus/train changeover nodes connecting to the surrounding area?
Our Alannah McTiernan was on the ball and ahead of her time with revamping our train system, I reckon! The payoff will really be seen in the years to come.
Perhaps other cities could consider asking her to participate in auditing their public transport plans?
Perhaps the Rudd government could consider asking her to head up a taskforce to revamp the old Aussie public transport paradigm for the new realities of the next decade and beyond?
Probably, FXH.
But then the Taliban don’t have access to WorkCover when someone’s malfunctioning Mitsubishi drops a pallet full of IKEA table legs on the wedding next door.
Russell, I am not sure why you aren’t convinced by several others’ explanations, but Elises’ on equilibrisation seems like a helpful concept. In a big, sprawling under-populated city like Perth (covering the same area as cities that have 10x the population) the process will take many years, but it is happening. My answer to your question to Tim would be – there would now be much better alternatives to driving if some of those great roads hadn’t been built.
The other thing is that people can be so wedded to the status quo that it will take a stupendous disincentive for them to give it up. Perth still doesn’t really have congestion, not like a European city, just a series of minor annoyances, so we’re probably stuck in a halfway house for a while.
The answer to Robert’s question is that congestion-decongestion-equilibrisation-volume increase would also happen wrt bike lanes and buses, but in Perth, all the facilities are relatively good and the usage of non-car alternatives is relatively low, so there’s no problem with congestion specifically. In short I can’t see a qualitative difference between cyclists, public transport users and motorists each demanding better facilities, except that in general the first two are good for environment, health and safety and the third isn’t.
Elise – we can’t talk about Alannah because it’s Friday afternoon and we don’t want things to turn nasty.
“Russell, I am not sure why you aren’t convinced by several others’ explanations” – because simply repeating that ‘roads create congestion’ is not an explanation.
“there would now be much better alternatives to driving if some of those great roads hadn’t been built.” – who’s to say what would have happened, as you say Perth is not terribly congested but it might well be. The roads accompanied the sprawl, which happened because most people want to live in a suburban house and garden.
“people can be so wedded to the status quo ” – people are wedded to the advantages and convenience of cars. We may have to reduce our use of them, but that might reduce our quality of life.
Russell, I’m sorry, but induced demand is a well-studied phenomenon. See here for some discussion.
One advantage of denying induced demand is that it is also a reason not to build cycle facilities (or public transport) – if there are no cyclists now, building a bike path will not induce anyone to cycle, therefore the money is wasted.
Count me in the group of people who pay a premium for my spare time. Normally I commute about half an hour each way, but at the moment it’s less than 10 minutes. By a crude measure, that 40 minutes a day is worth about $80k to me
moz -you calculate your worth $380 an hour? Got any vacancies?
Robert, thanks for the link – at least it appears to be an argument. Thankfully, too, since the global financial crisis we have all been freed from having to accept the truisms of economists and that particular type of social science thinking – it just didn’t turn out to be much use in the real world.
This is the argument :
“Motorways and bypasses generate traffic, that is, produce extra traffic, partly by inducing people to travel who would not otherwise have done so by making the new route more convenient than the old, partly by people who go out of their direct route to enjoy the greater convenience of the new road, and partly by people who use the towns bypassed because they are more convenient for shopping and visits when through traffic has been removed …. New demand may also come from those who had used public transport before a roadway expansion, now deciding to switch to car use.
In the long term, land use patterns alter – e.g. new development occurs around the road with the new capacity, increasing demand for travel. Peoples’ choice of home and workplace locations also alter because of the new road (and although this is to be expected from urban economics, it also constitutes induced travel, usually because people travel farther to get to work as a result of the new road, increasing overall levels of vehicle-kilometres). Increased employment along a road may result in homebuilding along the same road, attract more businesses in a positive feedback loop ..”
So how does this work. In growing Perth there is unmet demand for housing of the suburban kind. Subdivisions take place at the fringe – a road is built. People drive out there because that’s where they can afford a house. As more people move there with more cars and the roads become congested, bigger roads are needed. Naturally when the new highway is built it’s more convenient and faster – that’s why it was built – to meet the growing demand. None of these roads would be built if people didn’t want to go places, quickly and conveniently, and live in low-density suburbs. We build roads in order to do the things we want to do. Changing what we want to do is the issue, and until we do that we need roads.
I don’t think it’s irrefutable science when the Wikipedia article says “Peoples’ choice of home and workplace locations also alter because of the new road (and although this is to be expected from urban economics, it also constitutes induced travel” – that’s an interpretation. I don’t think it constitutes induced travel. I think the new road made it possible for people to get what they wanted.
Russ – its also telling that even wiki states – “enviromentalists believe”- belief!! faith trumps reason in the real world
Uhuh, ‘costhat one quote you pulled out of an article that starts “Latent demand has been recognised by road traffic professionals for many decades.” – those stupid ideologically driven traffic engineers!
Shame too about all those wackjob greenie europeans living in beautiful, heritage listed cities full of quality high density living and excellent public transport. I’ve experienced this horror. It was awful the way the Zurich train system would grovellingly apologise for the train being 2 minutes late.
fxh: that’s what the change amounts to. I dropped about $80k in annual income and about 40 minutes a day in commute time. So in a crude economic way my revealed preference values my spare time at $380/hr.
In reality it’s a lot more complex than that, the spare time component is worth more like $70-$100/hr, but there are other factors that are also worth money. Currently I work part time by choice, and part of that choice is a lower hourly rate job that allows me to work part time. One confounding factor is that I’d prefer to ride the 30 minutes each way because it helps me keep fit and burn off all the food I like to eat. I’m much too lazy to exercise if I don’t “have to”. I wouldn’t work for less than I get now, but given two otherwise equivalent jobs at 10 minutes and 30 minutes cycling distance, I’d prefer the further one by $5k/year or so. By comparison, I dislike wearing a suit every day to the tune of $10k/year and have walked away from a job offer as a result. They wanted the lower rate *and* the suit. I wanted a pony
Myriad, I didn’t pull one quote from the article, I selected several bits to reflect (I think fairly) the arguments being made. Can we discuss the arguments and not who made them?
When you read it, and it says: a road is built and that induces people to move there, and they create demand for services so more people are induced to move there etc etc – didn’t you ask yourself ‘But why was the road built there?’ I think it was built because a developer knew there was a demand for housing there – no inducing required. Not the kind of housing you like perhaps, but there you go.
Zurich is a very nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The few Europeans I know lived most of their lives in apartments, but now, at my age, are more comfortably off and the first thing they do is buy a ‘villa’ out of the city and they DRIVE there every weekend and look forward to retiring there.
Lets ask some dumb questions:
1. Why do so many people travel to city centres 5 days/week? 20 years ago it made sense to have all the key office workers in big offices within easy walking distance of each other. In addition it was easier to do business with the bloke around the corner. Rapidly evolving technology is changing this and is likely to continue doing so. Rio Tinto now controls its crushers from Perth to avoid the cost of having control room operators on site. More and more people travel into work for fewer days of the week.
2. Why do so many people travel at the same time? This is changing as working arrangements become more flexible. I can remember when everyone arrived at the office just before 9 AM – Traffic congestion is speading starting times. Technology means that some of us may be working on the computor before we go to work or after we get home from an early departure.
3. What would happen if if workplaces were used 7 days/week with different people coming in on different days? Congestion would be halved it people travelled to work on an average of 3.5days/week See here for a related post. There would also be less weekend congestion for recreation related travel.
4. What would happen if cars were alot narrower? This safe motor bike design might be developed into a very narrow, safe, “tilt cabin” car that would need as much roadwidth as a motor cycle. would two cars to fit across aa single lane.
There are more dumb questions.
4.
myriad @ 65 – I wonder how much latent demand there is in Europe for affordable low density housing? How many migrants has Australia received because they want more space to live in? Even high quality high density housing has its drawbacks compared to low density housing and I really understand why many parents decide to put up with a commute in order to get a decent amount of space for their chidlren.
Sorry Russell I was talking to FXH there, not you, and I think my point is clear, ie that attempts to somehow make out that only environmentalists “believe” in induced demand in transport systems is demonstrably false.
I lived in Zurich for a year. The public transport – given I didn’t own a car – was a highlight.
To be frank, if you can’t work out how it works, or aren’t prepared to believe the many experts who’ve worked in traffic engineering / urban planning etc. who worked out the induced demand phenomenon, I’m really not that fussed. It would be a bit like me demanding that people stop having a particular medical treatment just because my biological knowledge isn’t up to following it.
Chris, don’t know what the latent demand is for affordable housing in Europe, but unless things have changed dramatically, we know that Europeans are much more likely to accept high density housing & long-term lease arrangements, and that Australia’s housing market is one of the most unaffordable in the world. POst-war european migrants came to Australia because they’d essentially lost everything / too much through the wars, to escape communist eastern europe etc. Later european migrants to Australia have been overwhelmingly english, which unless one owns a nice place in a small village with a good connection via fast train, tends to combine the worst of all worlds – patchy public transport, awful highways and small houses situated in cities / towns that more often lack the grace and forethought in terms of useable public space, access to town gardens etc that other parts of Europe have.
New York has some great, functional urban sanctuaries. I’m still trying to figure out how NY can work so well, given the population densities that exist there. It’s a pity about the coffee though…I found one decent cup and it was waaaay up in the 200′s…it had a nice view of the oldest trees on Manhattan Island though, and I took the subway to get there.
How many migrants continue to make their way to NYC, it doesn’t seem to have any problem attracting people either.
Also, check out the list of countries according to population densities, the only thing that is consistent about it is the lack of consistency* in terms of the wealth, living standards and types of governance amongst countries that have similar population densities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
*Although, the population density of 65 per square mile seems to share some commonality.
Another dumb question:
Population growth is one of the key causes of rising congestion – So does Brisbane really have to keep growing even though it is reducing our quality of life? Why do we keep pushing up the Australian population even though this can only be done using immigration? Why is china the only country in the world that is actively doing something to reduce its population?
John – China isn’t the only country, Vietnam, for example, has also worked at population control – with mixed results.
Myriad – interesting that you won’t discuss this theory in any real context. Look at what I quoted in #51. People in Perth want to get down to the Southwest (wineries, surf beaches etc) and the route goes through Mandurah – one of the fastest growing towns in Australia over the last 10 years. So the traffic inches through Mandurah, and there are accidents …. Now a new freeway extension will have the traffic zipping past Mandurah in 5 minutes, instead of 30.
Because it will now be easier and quicker to get ‘down South’ I’m sure a lot more people will drive down there leading, eventually, to the freeway and other local roads – to the wineries and beaches – becoming more congested. In time they may need widening or whatever. This is ‘induced demand’ – the freeway extension in facilitating people go where they want to, will result in more cars going there. It’s not rocket science. You apparently think that’s a bad thing, I think it’s a good and bad thing, but on balance I think the good things are worth having, so I say we should go on building roads, while also building more public transport. ‘Cars create congestion’ just doesn’t seem to me to be a useful or meaningful way of looking at the issue.
Russel: sounds like the main problem was population growth in Mandurah and Perth. I suspect induced demand was only a minor part of the problem.
It is pretty hard to build even part of a motorway for a couple of billion dollars these days. I ask the question, how far will 2 billion dollars go in establishing more regional cities. Australian governemnts walked away from regional development decades ago, and what we have now is the outcome of that. Oversized cities which encourage excessive travel distances for pretty well any activity at all.
As long as business feels a need to be sited near every other business then the problem will only become ever worse. Wake up stupid politicians. Business needs a critical mass to work effectively, but that mass is less than a tenth of the size of each of our principle cities. With the enormous length of our coast line, it is downright stupid that we do not have more medium sized fully functional cities spread along that coast line.
Which ever fool public servant or politician it was who said that the market will decide where people will live should have his superannuation removed. Because every family in Australia is paying the cost for that narrow understanding in the form of overpriced housing, longer distances to work and play, congestion delays, and degraded lifestyle, on a daily basis.
Sure BilB, much better to have boondoggles like Naypyidaw instead of letting people live where they want.
And I have to say, you’re inadvertently echoing Graeme Bird and his insistence that we must have numerous small-to-medium settlements spread over the continent (to hedge against nuclear attack in his scenario).
“overpriced housing, longer distances to work and play, congestion delays, and degraded lifestyle, on a daily basis.”
Overpriced housing – largely due to government failures of several kinds, and NIMBYism. Long commutes – ditto. Congestion delays – tragedy of the commons.
Yeah y’see that’s the problem. Now that bike riding’s becoming popular all the fucking dickheads that used to be on the raods in their cars are now riding bikes and they’re just as stupid as they always were.
Russell I’ve spent the big 3 days of my life in Perth and don’t know it well, so my ‘not discussing it’ is simply that I have no context for the places you’re talking about to be able to comment on what would be appropriate – hence using examples I do know, and ‘oddly’ suggesting that the same principles that have been found to be true time and again will no doubt also apply in your neck of the woods.
We can talk about Melbourne if you like, which I know quite well, and incidentally is still used as a prime example of an appallingly planned city, particularly in terms of traffic demand and management in urban planning classes.
Jarrah,
Every body will live where they want, regardless. The point is that every one with a family has to earn sufficient to live. Regional development incentives help business establish in places where they would prefer to be but could not otherwise afford due to competitive costs. Once a self supporting collection of businesses are established the incentives are no longer required, and the inclusive community becomes self developing. What we have in NSW is a string of holiday and tourist supported large towns along the coast that are beautiful places to be but the is no work. So you get the ridiculous situation with people drive from as far as Newcastle to Emu Plains, daily, to work at the BHP roofing factory here. That massive stream of traffic on the M3 every morning and afternoon is the visual measure of the failure of the NSW government and the federal government to understand what people and communities need.
Of course there is no solution because the regional planning takes decades. So there will be an ever worsening problem hidden under layers of bandaid solutions.
In short Our politicians have no real vision and absolutely no guts.
“Regional development incentives” = diverting public funds to favoured businesses. State-sponsored discrimination. A transfer of wealth from workers to capitalists. Socialism for the rich. Etc.
“the incentives are no longer required” = infant industry argument, one shown to be politically unworkable, so the ‘incentives’ tend to remain.
“What we have in NSW is a string of holiday and tourist supported large towns along the coast that are beautiful places to be but the is no work.”
Sometimes because development is vehemently opposed by the residents (or out-of-town greenies), on the basis of retaining the ‘character’ of their town, protecting the beauty of the coast, and so on. Of course counterproductive labour laws, including a minimum wage that doesn’t vary by region, aren’t going to help.
I’ve said this before elsewhere so why not say it again – in the grand tradition of cut’n'paste authors the world over:
hello hello – anybody there – have I reached the party to whom I am connected?
In the grand tradition of idiots on the net everywhere I shall now repost on the thread intended – carry on…..
Hehe.
Perth truly is a horrible town, but I’m grateful to it for teaching me that Adelaide aint so bad.
We have better wine and beaches too, and a delightful road that changes direction twice a day, just to move us to and fro efficiently.
Oh, and by the way, inner city growth in Perth outstripped the rest of the country in the years 1996-2001..when it experienced a 39% change from the preceding years. Chances are it continued the trend but I can’t find the more recent stats. Perth suffers more than any other city from inflated inner city prices – because of a lack of supply…I think the implication that people are following the sprawl out of desire/choice is quite flawed. Central Perth is a morgue after 5PM, except for the [very] many homeless people. I’m not sure why there isn’t more residential development in the centre, it would make it a much less creepy place, maybe noone wants to stare at all those ugly 70′s buildings?
More dumb questions:
1. Why do most of us live in mega-cities?
2. How many people would live outside of mega-cities if they had a choice? (Is the desire to move based on a realistic assement or simply a good holiday experience?)
3. Are technical developments going to break some of the bonds that tie us to mega-cities? (For example, video communication is close to the point where we could invite friends from the other side of Australia to “have dinner” with us.)
It is very easy to talk about weak politicians failing to create more small communities. However, most of our communities have a reason for existng. All the large Australian cities are based on ports, used to have adequate water supplies and have good links to other markets. The big ones are good places to be if you need a new job, are looking for workers without having to supply housing and services etc.
“Of course there is no solution because the regional planning takes decades”
I think you could make a difference if housing were allocated differently – there are a lot of elderly people in the cities still living in large family homes for lack of the alternative that they would like to move to. If I were dictator of W.A. I would remove stamp duty on house purchases (perhaps make up the funds by raising petrol taxes?), limit estate agent’s fees to $1000, and build the varied kind of housing that suits people at different stages of their lives. Families like to live in big houses on big blocks, so let’s make it attractive for people to be able to move in and out of that kind of housing as they need to. Ditto for being able to move closer to work as that changes, as people get divorced etc …
Myriad – “induced demand” as descibed in that one Wikipedia article is just common sense (make a road that goes somewhere easier to use, and more people will be attracted to go there by that easy route rather than by some other); what it leaves out is the value to people of that easier route. It only counts attracting that increased traffic as a cost (further enlarging required eventually), not also as a gain for the people using it.
Russell, a wikipedia article is at best a short to very short summary of a body of research & applied policy analysis. This_is_why_people_get_degrees_in_it. That you can’t respect that people who have put several years of their life into the study of urban planning and traffic engineers, and then added many years of applied learning, might know a little something more than you is not my problem, it’s yours.
If I believed in some kind of interventionist deity I might pray for you to actually go and do your own reading and spare me yet anther person on a blog squeaking to be fed an entire tertiary field in small pre-masticated pieces. But as I’m an athiest I’ll have to do the sparing myself.
Honestly, if this is how you enjoy ‘discussing’ why not just turn a ping-ong table up in half and play at home?
Myriad – I did say it was just one Wikipedia article, I am aware that it may not totally capture the complexity and brilliance of the “induced demand” concept. Still, I’m disappointed that on a left-wing blog all I get in response to querying the implications of an idea is a resort to authority (“experts with degrees say …”) rather than any meaningful engagement. I’m quite prepared to read – as with Robert’s link – what you can offer as an argument.
That sounds like the typical string of excuses for doing nothing, Jarrah.
…and as for
“A transfer of wealth from workers to capitalists”
…you’d have to be fresh out of a communism workshop to be sprouting comments like that, in this day and age. Especially after the “workers” have just been handed 40 billion dollars of future earnings to spend up big, today.
Russell 85, you make good point, there. Property transaction taxes prevent mobility. A mobility that we really do need to have.
BilB, you can call them ‘excuses’, but I prefer ‘reasons’. And you’re now echoing Rudd et al – claiming that to oppose a choice of action is to opt to “do nothing”. I have a long list of actions we can take that don’t involve bribing businesses to set up shop in unsustainable areas.
“…you’d have to be fresh out of a communism workshop to be sprouting comments like that”
No, just someone who opposes welfare for the rich.
My comments about a transfer of wealth are justified. You want to take public funds and give them to private interests, plain and simple. It would involve taking tax revenue from everyone* and giving it to a few, who happen to be wealthy enough to own businesses and are by definition ‘capitalists’ in the Marxian sense.
* Unless you earmarked a specific source of revenue that only came from those who stood to benefit from your largesse, in which case it’s redundant! Not to mention wasteful due to deadweight losses.
Jarrah,
You are clearly forgetting that businesses pay tax as well. If profit is not extracted from a business in the form of dividends, then it is retained within the business for growth and tax revenue is extracted as company tax. You might cyte businesses that do not (appear to) pay tax, but you will find that all of the profits have been dispersed as dividends and the individuals who benefit from the business in this way pay the tax as personal income tax.
Business is about people earning a living.
I think that your views on business and wealth are way out of wack. Wealth is not a prerequisite of being in business. In fact it is rare for start up businesses to be spawned with surplus wealth. In Australia no-one, other than individuals specifically ordered by the courts, is excluded from going into business. Anyone can do this, and more are by percentage every year.
Regional development incentives are usually made with varying rates of depreciation on capital (equipment bought) depending upon remoteness. There is no hand out from government. It is simply a matter of how taxation is handled, which effectively involves the rate at which the government gives back to the business money (in the form of tax rebate) that was paid as tax on money used in the purchase of the equipment. This is money that has to be refunded regardless, just how quickly. So there is no “worker sweat” money involved in this at all.
The net gain from regional development incentives is more employment variety of opportunity, which leads to for more dynamic communities.
I’m forgetting nothing. You are fixating on the ‘workers’ part of my half-tongue-in-cheek description, the core part of which is what you should be grappling with – your desire to transfer from the many to the few.
And so what that businesses also pay tax? Even assuming you meant that all businesses benefit from the favourable treatment, that you want to churn their own money back to them is absurd. And wasteful.
Also, the only business you have mentioned so far is major manufacturing. That, I assure you, requires wealth.
Since you have now specified your preferred favourable treatment, I see you haven’t thought it through. Do you really think accelerated depreciation is enough to spawn “medium-sized cities”? As if.
“The net gain from regional development incentives is more employment variety of opportunity, which leads to for more dynamic communities.”
Spare me the nebulous waffle. You’re channeling Rudd again.
You’ve gpt a bit of a hate on there for business, I see, Jarrah.
Err… I doubt it BilB.
why do you say that, FDB?
Just Jarrah’s commenting history (under an older alias too) suggests someone with fairly strong free market tendencies. Perhaps you are confusing anti-cronyism/pork barrelling with anti-business?
No, FDB, I don’t buy that….
“desire to transfer from the many to the few.”
“who happen to be wealthy enough to own businesses and are by definition ‘capitalists’ in the Marxian sense”
“You’re channeling Rudd again”
…I think that we are talking retired union shop floor stewerd, here.
He campaigned for the LDP.
But anyway, enough talking about someone who’s not even here.
Jarrah’s one of them ‘lefty’ libertarians. Y’know the kind. Doesn’t worship at the altar on which The Big Book of Rules lies but, um, thinks maybe we shouldn;t cook the planet either. I believe that he’s studying economics so who knows how he’ll end up.
Getting back to the subject, I just had a call from a guy, for whom I make some products, at McDonalds in Christchurch NZ. So I asked this ex Aucklander what he thought about living in a city of 400,000. He lives at the northern end of the city but it takes, he said, just 15 to 20 minutes to get to work in the centre every day. The city is alive with variety of food, entertainment and activities. Right now all of the trees are coming to life, the daffodils are out all over and all of the gardens are blooming. On trips back to Auckland he finds it hard to understand how he survived the congestion for so long.
There is a better way.