An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance.
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MOTORWAY MADNESS – THE JUSTIFICATION
An examination by a New Zealand news channel of “A Very Expensive Stretch of Road” – a section of the Northern Corridor costing over 600 million (NZ$).
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Two points of note: (1) How irrelevant the cost-benefit ratio became when the numbers changed and it could no longer be used as justification for construction; and (2) The rationalization of the Transport Minister, Gerry Brownlee (at 2:05):
We’re a country of four and a half million people that likes to be part of the First World. We want to compete against countries that we consider to be similar to us – and that does mean we have to continue to improve our infrastructure to keep pace with all of that requirement.
So there you have it: The project may not make economic sense, our own numbers show that demand is falling, it diverts money from other projects and modes that are higher priority, there’s substantial community resistence – but the other guys are committed to Motordom, so we have to do it too.
Explains a lot.
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THE WAY OF THE BUGGY WHIP?
CAR sales in the European Union have been falling for five years, and there seems no end in sight to the slump. Official figures out a few days ago showed that registrations were down almost 11% in September compared with a year earlier. In France the fall was 18%, in Italy 26% and in Spain a staggering 37%. Britain was the only significant market to enjoy a small rise.
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LESSONS FROM SANDY
(1) Welcome to the New Normal
(2) This is life-without-subway in a World City.
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UPDATE: Gladys We passed along this quote from The Atlantic:
Ensuring the long-term survival of the subway system will require a radical shift in American values, said Dutta. Its longevity depends on society’s belief in public transportation as a public good. “Public transportation reduces carbon dioxide,” he said. “Carbon dioxide causes global warming, global warming brings water into the public transportation system, and the result is the reduction of public transportation. It’s a vicious circle and it’s not well understood.”
Two-thirds of New York state’s residents live in the MTA service area, he said, but there is a national narrative about highways and cars and roads that is much more powerful. Right now, federal transportation dollars are split 80/20 in favor of roads and highways. “If you want to solve the problem of climate change, we have to start reversing that split.”
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When confronted with such non-thinking non-sense as described above, it helps a lot to have something like the Transportation 2040 Plan to wave about so you can say things like: “This is our plan, and these are our priorities”.
New Zealand’s government has no clue on transport policy. They are at odds with local councils and pretty much everyone else. They are prepared to make cuts to education, health & welfare, just to build these Roads of National Significance or Roads of National (Party) Stupidity as what they should be called.