Rudman: People use something they don't pay for

That's Brian Rudman's latest piece of genius. He is pleased that public transport patronage went up a fair bit in the last nine months in Auckland.

Much of that is due to the Northern Busway, and a lesser extent due to greater use of rail services. Not that surprising when you consider how much the price of petrol went up for part of that period, which made public transport more "competitive" price wise.

However, the increased usage isn't from people paying for what they use. The Northern busway cost NZ$210 million (paid for by all road users) and has a lot of unused capacity (empty space that other vehicles could used). Rail passengers moreso don't pay anything towards upgrades to the system, and only pay a third of the cost of running the trains through fares.

For ARTA Chairman Mark Ford to regard it as an "investment" under circumstances where the investment costs more money is a little stretch.

However, Brian is making a far bigger claim saying "These were 3.7 million trips that were not taken in a private car on our congested roads." How does he know what would have happened otherwise? How many train trips were previously bus trips? How many trips were previously people car sharing? How many trips wouldn't have been made at ALL?

How many of those trips would have occurred had the bus and train passengers had to pay the same proportion of cost of providing those services and infrastructure as motorists do?

Brian goes on about the Tamaki Drive bus lane, which he thinks shouldn't be allowed to be used by other vehicles. Far better for trucks and fully loaded cars to be stuck in congestion, rather than the near empty bus lane let a few more vehicles in, right Brian? Those evil car drivers and their passengers should catch the bus!

The real issue in Auckland is congestion, which is a result of supply not matching demand, which is itself a function of price and funding. Pouring a fortune into subsidising public transport is tinkering at the edges, and the most successful example is, funnily enough, the one that requires the least ongoing subsidies - buses.

However, what I really want to know is has ARTA done surveys as to where new bus and train users come from? What were they doing before? After all, if a majority of them weren't driving cars, then isn't this all a great big subsidy for people who weren't on the roads in the first place?

Talk about a bad investment?

Stuff reports: "Transmission Gully could be one of a host of shelved projects to get the green light under a radical idea that would see KiwiSaver funds channelled into long-term strategic infrastructure assets.

The brainchild of Tower Investments chief executive Sam Stubbs, Public KiwiSaver Partnerships (PKPs) would allocate a proportion of funds directly into core infrastructure projects, freeing up government cash for investment in goods and services."

Well nice idea, if the investments were profitable. Commercial enterprises make sense of course, but Transmission Gully? What's he on?

Tolls wouldn't pay for more than 10% of the road, there isn't enough money in the National Land Transport Fund to pay for it either, so is he suggesting that taxpayer funds be poured into a road (lent to pay for it) that taxpayers would have to pay for? A road that users can barely pay a fraction of the cost of isn't profitable.

Sorry Sam, try again.

Sri Lanka poisoned by nationalism

Tamil protestors have been out in force in London for several weeks. I said to one that the tragic support of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) meant I saw both sides as equally in the wrong. However, none of this takes away from the humanitarian disaster that this war has seen inflicted on Tamils and the Sinhalese. The apparent ceasefire by the LTTE may hopefully see an end to the killing, but it wont resolve the underlying sore - the malignancy of nationalism on both sides.

The LTTE is a terrorist organisation that maintained a gangster "state" in the north of Sri Lanka for years. It's own tactics which included, until recently, child soldiers as well as bombing civilian targets have badly hurt the cause of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The LTTE, with shades of Hamas, happily has used civilians as human shields. However, which most Tamils support a cause which is based on resisting the nationalist chauvinism of the Buddhist Sinhalese, there is a darker side to this resistance. It is based not on promoting a Sri Lanka where the state is blind to nationality, but on separatism. To resist bigotry and nationalism by promoting your own nationalism by murderous means is not claiming the moral highground. For Tamils to start to claim that, they need to condemn and reject the LTTE, and demand equality under the law and before the law in Sri Lanka. After all, Tamils in India have little appetite for separatism, as India itself is not ethnically or religiously defined.

However, while Wikipedia has lists of attacks by the LTTE, it also has them of the Sri Lankan military. There is little doubt that the Sri Lankan military is far from innocent in this conflict. Its own application of severe censorship on reporting the war means its own antics will be hidden. Sinhalese paramilitary have assisted the Sri Lankan government in attacking Tamil areas. China too has helped armed the Sri Lankan government, demonstrating its willingness to turn a back while its customers kill.

So it looks like the Sri Lankan government will win, but for the conflict to truly be over, Tamils must no longer fear that government - which means it should be open, which means removing restrictions on the media - it should seek transparency and reconciliation, acknowledging what wrong has been done, so Sri Lanka as a whole can start to put this conflict behind it. Tamils and Sinhalese both have to admit people in their communities have assaulted, murdered and destroyed, and the will must be to live side by side.

However, whilst too many in Sri Lankan politics pander to Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, they will continue to see Tamils as the "other", a group that deserve nothing, instead of treating all those in Sri Lanka as individuals. Sri Lanka has tremendous potential in tourism, and in enjoying a share of India's economic revival.

It can only do it best if the religious, nationalist and Marxist elements of Sri Lanka's politics can be eschewed. Yes, Sri Lanka, start treating each other as individuals, not as Tamils, Sinhalese, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever.

Auckland motorists go have some fun!

Have a drive on a new motorway!

According to the NZ Herald, from 3pm this afternoon, the eastbound lanes of the Mt Roskill extension will be open from Maioro Street and Sandringham Street, so you can have a clear run from there to Kirkbride Road near the airport or to Roscommon Road in Wiri. The westbound lanes wont be open till Monday at the earliest, but still go on - have fun in one direction - your petrol taxes and road user charges paid for it, and you'll get a taste of the time savings. On top of that, you can be of clear conscience that NO land was compulsorily purchased for the motorway.

Oh and it will annoy the Greens, because they actively opposed building this motorway. It will annoy a small group who wanted to protect the volcanic cones.

UPDATE: Oh, by the way as you enjoy this new motorway, notice it goes through Phil Goff's electorate. Notice the absence of tunnels even though it involves passing alongside hills and going uphill itself. This project was brought to you by the fifth Labour government, fully funded from the National Land Transport Fund.

Bullshit about the Waterview Connection

There is so much so I thought I'd clear up some myths:

1. First the easy one to get out of the way, the one spread by some friends on the right - the route for this motorway has NOT been designated at ALL, the motorway designation for SH20 starts at Manukau and ended at Richardson Road. There is a gap thanks to Auckland local authorities dithering and abandoning the Avondale peninsula route option in the 1970s. So please don't believe private property rights for those on the route can be ignored - they did NOT buy land on a motorway route.

2. Idiot Savant says the announcement by the NZTA on the preferred route for the Waterview connection is “an affront to democracy”. Complete bollocks. When did people vote for the route of ANY road? It never happened for any other section of the Western Ring Route, nor the Northern Gateway, nor the Waikato Expressway, nor the Christchurch Southern Motorway. The system is designed to be a rational appraisal based on statutory criteria, not on counting the heads of the loudest. The USA has that, and you see bridges collapse due to lack of political interest. It is entirely within the role of NZTA to decide on its preferred route as the government wont be borrowing to pay for a greenplated route.

3. He also talks nonsense in claiming “the plan centres on using an existing rail designation for a motorway. So, Auckland won't be getting a proper rail-based public transport network because National will have already built a stinking great road there.” Funnily enough there remains room for the motorway there (the map he links to shows this) and even ARTA has no plans to built the Avondale-Southdown railway till 2030. The project isn’t worth it, so to claim Auckland “wont be getting a proper rail-based public transport network” because one line that would be barely used isn’t to be built, is extreme hyperbole.

4. Bomber at Tumeke thinks it is a conspiracy with National favouring its big business mates at Macquaries and hating public transport. For starters, Labour’s plans would have benefited Macquaries far more as it would have been a bigger scheme and a PPP. On top of that, the Waterview connection wont be tolled, nor will it be a PPP, Macquaries provides finance for PPP toll roads, it isn’t in the road construction business in New Zealand. The company can't benefit from this decision at all. So that makes this conspiracy theory totally fatuous. Tim Selwyn posts more intelligently on the issue to be fair.

5. The Standard tries to spin that the government is misleading on costs, something that NZTA clears up quite quickly. It also makes some of the same mistakes as others do.

All options require work at SH16 worth $242 million.

Labour wanted a four lane bored tunnel. $1.974 billion. National is now proposing a four lane mix of surface, bored tunnel and cut and cover tunnel at $1.165 billion, with provision for six laning built in (Labour’s option did not allow for that). That’s over $800 million difference. To put that in context, Transit’s total budget last year for ALL state highways activities was $1.2 billion. So National's proposal saves a lot of money, AND allows for future growth.

Labour had proposed a PPP for the motorway, so financing costs (interest) of $554 million had been included for its option. However, Labour had NO budgetary provision for the motorway at all. Financing costs are the costs of paying a PPP operator to borrow, build and operate the road. The money to pay the PPP operator would still need to come from somewhere

It did not know whether it would pay it back through general taxes or the National Land Transport Fund, or even some contribution from tolls. So the money for this motorway had to come from somewhere as yet unidentified. National is taking the money from road users, through the National Land Transport Fund. There isn’t enough revenue from road users to fund Labour’s proposal, so general taxpayers would have had to subsidise it.

In short, there was never money to build this motorway before (there was money for investigation and design), National has chosen one option (the most fair one, as it means road users pay for a road). Labour either would have to have chosen the same option, and take money from general taxation (from other spending like health), or take all the money from general taxation.

What National DOES need to answer is what the National Land Transport Programme looks like for the next few years. That will come out in June. Then we will all know how projects have been reprioritised to help fund this strategic section of motorway, although it will be a couple of years before construction can commence.

Finally, doesn’t this all show you how utterly inept arguments about things become when they are political? There is an alternative – it has been done in Australia – it means telling the private sector it can build, own and operate the road, and toll it, pick the route and do it all itself. It can even be paid a share of roading taxes collected from using the new road. Decisions like this should not be up to politicians – because they spend money like teenagers given dad’s credit card.