Spying on who?

Did the NZ police spy on the Transport Forum?

Earlier this year, this group of "terrorists" organised a national truck blockade that disrupted traffic in all our major cities for hours. Many thousands of people had their lawful activities disrupted or prevented completely by this action.

By comparison, a few greenies ripping up GE plants in a paddock somewhere pales into insignificance.

Are the police spying on former National party MP and Minister, Tony Friedlander, who leads the forum?

Why not?

His group has already done this country more REAL harm than any group of environmentalists I've ever heard of.

Do they spy on the farmers? A few years ago, the farmer-lead tractor blockade caused a great deal of disruption.

Or do the conservative police only spy on "lefties" while the Right does much more - and greater - harm? 

I hate toll roads

I hate the very idea of toll roads. It's visceral. It may even be irrational. Whether it is or not, I still hate it.

Thought experiment: Here we have a road. It's a perfectly good road. It may even take you where you want to go. Lovely. You might walk down it. You might ride your bicycle.

But.

You can't use it unless you pay to go there. Pedestrians and bicycles almost certainly aren't allowed. To prevent non-paying users, there are fences along the side of toll roads - maybe even walls. I've seen both.

If you don't want to pay or can't pay you'll have to go some other way. The people who want you to pay for roads will have a financial interest in making the other - tax-funded - way more difficult to use. There is no financial incentive for them to do otherwise. They will run down the maintenance to "save money". The public roads are degraded so the private roads might prosper....and profit at your expense.

Looking around at failed "PPP" (public private partnerships) roading projects in places like Canada and Australia, the case for obstructing the tax-funded roads would be even stronger, as failure of the pay road must not be allowed. Usually, the taxpayer underwrites these PPPs - to protect against failure by the private partner - while the private participant expends huge effort to shove costs onto the public partner through loopholes in the contract. Big bucks are eaten up by accountants and lawyers arguing over compliance and fulfullment. This is how it has too often gone elsewhere.

National's Maurice Williamson championed toll roads with multi-million dollar gantries of electronic sensing equipment to allow money to extracted from toll road users, based on their reg plates or a transponder installed on the vehicles of frequent users. He's at it again as the election approaches.

To me, it's just one more sign that this really is the same old 90's National Party....still pushing the same user-pays barrows to generate ticket-clipping profits for the small clique of transport (and other) cronies who back them......all the while claiming it's for our own good. People without memories lap it up. The market theory is so pretty. The reality of actual practice forgotten or unknown.

If we are constrained for roading infrastructure, the cheapest way to fix that is the invest in public transport. But, as we have seen in the power industry, there are no profits in conservation. Profits are largest when consumption is highest - however wasteful that may be overall. Never mind we could avoid spending billions on power plants if we use existing technologies to save power instead of generating more.

The same applies to roading. We have loads of roads. But we use them unwisely.

In the Herald article, Transport Minister, Annette King, lists roughly $7 billion worth of roading projects in Auckland alone. A good chuck of that would not need to be spent at all if there was better public transport. The new tunnels under the Waitemata Harbour won't alter much, but the volume of traffic carried through them and their capacity into the future could be greatly enhanced by better public transport - rail and road.

The people pushing toll roads aren't entrepreneurs or investors. They are would-be monopolists looking for the golden ticket. The NZ Herald quotes Willliamson as saying we will all be paying $50 / week to use the toll roads and be happier for it. I doubt it.

Combined with better public transit, I very much prefer tax-funded roads to roading-for-profit. Tax-funded roads are, effectively, funded by public roading insurance supported by the widest possible base: everyone who drives a car or truck. Any of us can go on any road we have collectively paid for. We own them all and can use them all.

Rational or not, that's how I feel. I won't pay to use a road on a per-use basis. Roading is public infrastructure. If we want more roads, we should stump up more tax.

While I might condone paying a toll for a defined period to recover the cost of construction of a public road, I won't vote for anyone who says I should pay a toll in perpetuity to use a road owned by one of their cronies.

Road user charges and the real cost of transport

As oil prices have risen, the truckies have been asking for loosening of rules regulating the size and weight of trucks. They want bigger trucks so each vehicle can carry more goods. The government announced a trial of special permits allowing larger trucks just over a month ago.

I have owned several diesel vehicles over the years and the road user charges have remained very stable for a very long time. There were no increases at all between 1989 and 2007.

The cost of roads and maintaining roads has been anything but stable, rising steadily over time. There had to be a catch up at some point.

The reality is that the diesel vehicles have enjoyed what amounts to a subsidy for some time now. The Green Party said today:

It is time to stop subsidising the trucking industry and price transport on a level playing field if New Zealand is to make the transition to a sustainable economy, Green Party Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says.

“At the moment, truck drivers only pay 56 percent of their costs to the economy, compared to rail freight users who pay on average 82 percent and ordinary motorists who pay 64 percent, according to the Ministry of Transport’s Surface Transport Costs and Charges study from 2005.

“This distorts the decisions of freight customers when choosing whether to send their products by road or rail because true costs are not reflected in the prices.

“It is important to remember that Road User Charges for trucks have been increased only once since 1989,” Ms Fitzsimons says.

“If we want to see more of our heavy freight on rail instead of big trucks on the road, we need fair Road User Charges.

“I hope those living in tomorrow’s protest areas will respond by using the rail system, cycling, walking or even taking the day off,” Ms Fitzsimons says.

Transport Minister, Annette King, says the truckie's protest was organised weeks ago. Long before they knew road user charges were increasing.

The head of the Road Transport Users Forum, Tony Friedlander, is a former National Party MP and Minister of Transport. In fact, he was the transport Minister in the Muldoon government when the law was changed to allow trucks to carry good more than 150kms, more or less creating the trucking industry as it is today. It would seem very likely he was very much involved in organising tomorrow's protest.

I guess we'll have to chalk it up as just one more activity in the Crosby / Textor playbook of playing on public ignorance for political advantage.

Why Kiwirail is a good idea

It appears the world is headed for a period of very expensive fossil fuels while it begins to transition to alternatives. If the US or Israel attack Iran, we may even find ourselves faced with fuel rationing in the event supplies are disrupted. Definitely a worst-case scenario, but over the past years diplomats have estimated the odds of an attack as high as 50%.

Against that background, the government's move to ensure a viable, long-term, electrified rail network not only makes sense, it looks like the only rational thing to do. Toll would not pay for that additional security and the government could have poured subisidies into Toll forever only to see then slide away as "profits" instead of infrastructure.

While much of the discussion around public transport has focused on moving people to and from work in urban settings, we may find we need a national public transit network based on electric rail before too much more time has passed.

Anyone who has seen first-hand the huge waste associated endlessly negotiating improvements (and monitoring compliance) with funder / provider arrangements should get down on their knees and thank the Universe for the clarity that the Government has now brought to our national rail system.

One can only hope that organisations like ARTA (Auckland Regional Transport Authority) are similarly enabled in the near future, rather than being endlessly frustrated, as they have been, by the time consuming waste and messy politics of the seemingly sadistic complexity introduced by the funder / provider regime now in operation.

That regime is why bus companies run buses all the way from South Auckland into the central city - parallel to the train lines - rather than buses feeding passengers to the trains. To get from the bus lines, you have to walk in some cases over 500 metres to get to a train station. But if the private operators do integrate with the train system, they stand to lose money.....never mind how much sense it makes in terms of providing more efficent public trasnport (as opposed to revenues for one small part of it).

Private business more efficient? Let's not fall for that one ever again. Sometimes it is...and sometimes it is not. We have to be clear-eyed when it is not.

Rail was an example of when it is not.

Thank you, Jim Bolger. Good luck Kiwirail

I have a lot of respect for Jim Bolger. I don't agree with everything he did while he was Prime Minister, but he didn't get it all wrong, either. He was the last of the genuine conservatives to head the national party before the clergy of the Neo-Liberal Faith took over, dumping Bolger for their (first) puppet, Jenny Shipley.

Since then, Bolger's common sense and pragmatism have shone through. He has Chaired Kiwibank's board for several years, during which time that state-founded and owned bank has gone from strength to strength, demonstrating both a need and clear public support for a significant, New Zealand owned banking presence.

Bolger heading the new Kiwirail is a good sign that the idea stacks up. That it gives National heartburn merely serves to show how out of touch they are with what is good for the future of New Zealand.

Electric cars: "Made in NZ"?

Scoop is carrying a press release from Carbon News this morning about the possibility of homegrown electric cars being made here in New Zealand.

[...]
Carbon News says entrepreneur and engineer Ian Macrae, the man who has funded Waikato University’s NZ Eco Ultra-Commuter electric vehicle project, is meeting a UK car maker with a view to establishing a UK/Australia/New Zealand consortium.

The consortium would produce an electric car and electric car technology in New Zealand, says Mike Duke, senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at the university.
[...]

Music to my ears. If they sell shares and the vehicle proposed looks viable, I'll invest in that.

Here is an opportunity for New Zealand to take the lead and make a product the world will see value in buying. The spin-offs for the rest of the NZ economy could be enormous.

The government does appear to be making some effort in this area. A new "Vehicle Energy and Renewables Group", incluing Ian Macrae mentioned above, is advising government on what incentives might be used to encourage manufacturers to use renewable energy sources in transport.