There are people absolutely loving the price of fuel going up and eager for there to be fossil fuel shortages. It’s getting them terribly agitated, in a quasi-sadistic scolding way. “Told them so” said one, “those car fascists are going to pay” said one politician, “if only there were cycleways, the teachers and nurses would use them to get to work” said an earnest unionist. “It’s ironic that the white supremacist genocidal Zionists are helping up” said keffiyeh wearing angry woman.
It started online of course, chatting together getting all excited. “Shortages will show them we were right all along, public transport is better, that’s why we need to tax people more to make it free” said the urban planner. “The people, well I mean they aren’t really human are they, that own Ford Rangers or RAM are going to feel it bad, and they’ll realise how uncool and hate filled such vehicles are” shouted the Greenpeace staffer. “Child murderers!” cried out the neurodiverse kindness campaigners. “They’re not all ACT or Winston supporting straight white men who don’t have degrees though right?” said the elder gentleman who once marched against apartheid”. “No, but 90% of them are” said the suspicious purple haired non-binary student. The university lecturer noted “Look this will expose the far-right white supremacist Zionist Trumpist terror supporters to the mass of good people who support a powerful exemplar of decolonising resistance”, before the photographer yawned and said “steady on now, we need to be practical if we are to free people from the car addiction they don’t want.
A failed list candidate said “Great, even though the climate destroying far-right scum are in power, it’s election year and can get The People on our side. We can finally show people how wonderful it is to share journeys with others on public transport, or enjoy being with nature in a cycleway”. A sick, sniffing one said “and it doesn’t matter about the Nazi Ranger drivers, all we need is for the Greens to give Labour enough of a boost to kick out Peters and Seymour”.
I might jest, but they really are almost tumescent in their excitement.
This is the chance, the central planners can take more taxes, they can impose new rules, they can spend more of your money and direct the poor “addicted” car users to the more enlightened future of more public transport use, more cycling, more walking and of course freight should go by rail. Not having convinced enough people that abandoning driving was necessary to save the planet, they think they can convince people that it is for their own good to abandon their transport choices.
What do they want? You don’t even need to ask it’s all pretty clear:
• Make driving less attractive. Slower speed limits, remove general traffic lanes, remove parking, tax cars more.
• Tax you more (now or later) to subsidise public transport even more with cheaper fares, despite demand being up and the cost of providing services going up as well.
• Tax you more to subsidise rail freight, because businesses that use it already need a helping hand from… you.
• Tax you more to subsidise people who can afford to buy new cars to buy EVs, and for other people to buy e-bikes.
Lunatic fringe academic Timothy Welch is one of these people . He’s a senior lecturer in urban planning, which of course is something we need much less of. He gets republished by leftwing media because he plays to its unconscious bias, as he really knows little about the commercial side of the transport sector and is keen to selectively quote data as facts to support his own point of view. His claims are mostly value judgment nonsense.
His latest piece of polemic sees him supporting taxing buyers of petrol vehicles to subsidise buyers of EVs (it wasn't long ago he was bemoaning EVs saying "EVs require the same amount of road space and, due to their increased weight, potentially cause more road damage. But EV owners don’t buy petrol, which means they don’t pay excise tax – the same tax that pays for expanding roads". EV's don't cause more road damage, but then after the Government put EVs onto road user charges he bemoans it making EVs "less competitive". More generally he supports making new vehicles more expensive (through the “Clean Car Standard”) which helps ensure the vehicle fleet stays older for longer, but Welch doesn’t like cars at all. He loved that fewer utes and SUVs sold under the Clean Car Standard. He bemoans the car ownership rate of 815 cars per 1000 people “one of the highest in the world”. This should be celebrated that so many can afford a car and have the freedom it provides (urban planners aren't big on this), but he ignores that NZ is larger than the UK with 8% of the population. He claims that every decade there is an oil shock, which isn't really true, but even when it happens that all dies down (remember people like him warned us of Peak Oil? That was until fracking discovered more). The 1979 oil shock one provoked Rob Muldoon to advance Think Big, and every single one of those projects turned out to be a net drain on the economy, because in a few years oil prices dropped right back. Welch doesn’t let that stop his excitement for reducing car ownership. He finishes with this absurdity:
Every bus electrified, every cycleway built, every train funded is a direct reduction in exposure to the next crisis. The question now is whether New Zealanders begin to treat their car dependence not as a lifestyle choice but as a strategic liability.
What utter rot. Unless the bus is taking people out of cars, and unless a cycleway takes enough people out of driving cars to offset its cost of construction, it does nothing to reduce exposure. He advocates fully taxpayer funded public transport, which has been shown in multiple examples (e.g. Tallinn, Estonia) to largely replace walking instead of driving (in Tallinn car use dropped 5%, but walking dropped 40%, and car mode share climbed back up because public transport was overcrowded with people riding it for short trips).
There’s photographer Patrick Reynolds made a name for himself as an urbanist, and has for some years been an activist for the Green-left’s war on private motoring. This is why he was appointed to be board of NZTA in the first term of the Ardern Government, as the Greens strongly advocated for him. He’s positively excited about the crisis on the Green Party Greater Auckland blog. He says we should think strategically (i.e. don’t just react to the crisis, but think of the “long term”). His next step is to “rapidly reduce demand” and to “ensure an equitable path”. He said we are “structurally addicted” to driving. Curiously he floats the idea of lower speed limits for everyone but EV drivers, which is nonsense of course. Of course he doesn’t talk about aviation or shipping because These are blind spots because, by and large, governments don’t tax you to pay for their infrastructure, vehicles or services, because you’re willing to pay for them yourself (directly or indirectly through freight).
Of course it is now rounded off by the Greens. Chloe Swarbrick has, finally, taken time out shouting for the destruction of Israel and touting Hamas propaganda to demand "free" public transport and a new tax.
This wont excite the car hating mob though. Nothing gets them over the top quite as much as penalising car driving. Cars, the epitome of individual freedom, expensive capital assets that exist purely to sit idle for the owner to use when wanted, to go when and where they want to go. So unlike public transport which is planned (!) and scheduled and directed to be a sharing experience, not so fast, not so direct and not so "selfish".
And No. Unlike the control freaks, I really don't care how you get around, or how goods get around, as long as people pay for it themselves. No modes of transport are "bad" or "good", they just are well suited for different purposes. For as long as this fuel crisis continues, people will respond to the price signals in the ways they want. Some will drive a bit less, some may buy vehicles that use less or no fuel, some will ride public transport, some will bike and some will walk. Most people are quite happy buying their own cars, fares, bikes and shoes, and the way it SHOULD work, is the more people buy of one mode, the more that can be provided.
Funny how the planners don't really think that should be the way isn't it?
UPDATE: Oh look another one, this time from Professor Alistair Woodward, from the University of Auckland's Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, who RNZ conveniently cited without counter-argument that there should be regulations on people buying vehicles he thinks are bad. The public health lobby's appetite for micro-managing what everyone does, because a small handful engage in bad behaviour has no end.
