Public does not understand that we have an emergency

Public does not understand that we have an emergency

Welcome to our gridlocked nightmare

Epic Traffic Jam in China Enters Its 9th Day

By: Megan Gibson (3 days ago)

Image by © David Gray/Reuters/Corbis

Nothing is worse than sitting in traffic, right? How about sitting in traffic for nine days?

A 100-kilometer-long traffic jam in China's Heibei Province has left thousands of truck drivers stuck on the interstate heading towards Beijing since August 14. What's worse, officials are saying that the jam could continue for up to a month!

The original jam was caused by roadside construction work, but has been made worse by minor car accidents and breakdowns. (See the 50 worst cars of all time.)

The traffic jam has sparked some entrepreneurial spirit for local residents, which has added to traffic-hostages' annoyance. One truck driver complained that vendors were selling instant noodles for “four times the original price while I wait in the congestion.”

Makes that twenty-minute wait for the bus seem a little better, eh? (via the Global Times)

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/08/23/epic-traffic-jam-in-china-enters-its-9th-day/#ixzz0xkZ2b5AE

Biofuels: Worse than useless

Biofuels: Worse than useless

Renewable energy, for example, is a crucial part of every national and international strategy for curbing emissions, including plans to promote biofuels. However, rising ethanol production has been linked to losses of grassland habitats, while booming demand for palm oil, some of which is turned into biodiesel, is fuelling the clearance of biodiverse-rich forests across south-east Asia. TheEcologist

Oceans die. Car production continues. Oil wars continue.

Oceans die. Car production continues. Oil wars continue.

One of the most destructive and swift coral bleaching events ever recorded is underway in the waters off Indonesia, where water temperatures have climbed into the low 90s, according to data released by a conservation group this week. livescience

Permafrost Melting Releases Mercury Into Swedish Lake

by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 08.17.10

Science & Technology (science)

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photo: Rob Lee via flickr

Lots of environmentally bad stuff is happening as the world's permafrost melts, mostly in the realm of releasing stored greenhouse gases. But, as Conservation points out, a new report in the journal Science of the Total Environment finds that as a permafrost melts in northern Sweden, stored mercury has begun leaking from a peat bog into a nearby lake--something which could expand as temperatures continue to rise.

In addition to storing large amounts of greenhouse gases, peatlands also store mercury--some from natural sources, most coming from the emissions of burning fossil fuels. As you hopefully know, mercury and water is a highly toxic mix for life.

The study finds, "there is a very real potential that a substantial amount of mercury, and other organically bound and stored contaminants, might be released into arctic and sub-arctic surface waters from thawing permafrost."

Sediment Mercury Levels Rising at Rate Not Seen in Centuries
To come to that conclusion a team of researchers used core samples from a peat bog and lake-bottom sediments from northern Sweden to determine shifting mercury concentrations and compare them to past climate data. They found that "sediment mercury levels are now rising at 8.3 micrograms per square meter per year, a rate not seen in several centuries."

Read the original: Climate driven release of carbon and mercury from permafrost mires increase mercury loading to sub-arctic lakes

Will we keep subsidizing cars until we all die?

Will we keep subsidizing cars until we all die?

Death of the Car

Death of the Car

I’m delighted by Blake Morrison’s prediction of the imminent extinction of that small-brained, armoured, toxic, invasive and murderous species, the private car (“Silence, vroom, vroom, silence”, August 1 [guardianweekly.co.uk])

Cars are a lie. The real costs of the mobility, freedom, comfort and power that they promise include environmental and cultural mayhem in oil-producing regions like the Niger delta; the Iraq war; the 1.2 million people who die every year at the hands of the motoring Moloch; ecological disasters caused by oil spills; and the fouling of earth, air and water during all phases of the life-cycle from the extraction of raw materials to the eventual disposal of the corpses.

As much as 35% of urban land is colonised by cars - by noise, toxic fumes and acts of violence waiting to happen. This appalling monoculture has turned our cities into wastelands, and displaced our primary needs for peace and beauty on to ever more remote and threatened patches of wilderness. Car-based mobility has trumped not just community but common sense; divide the time spent driving, paying for, servicing and grooming a car by the distance travelled and the answer is walking speed.

A quarter of all carbon emissions are generated by road transport. Our addiction to cars is holding the future hostage and driving a planet to death.

Annie March - Letter to the Guardian Weekly

[With thanks from cvrjourneyjourney.blogspot.com]

The Locals: Public transport in Auckland

The Locals: Public transport in Auckland

In the first part of our series on local body elections we took a look at housing, libraries and water issues. In this second part of our season on the haunted house of local governance we turn the spotlight on another important issue - public transport.

The only place you’ll find more out of control cars than Kiwi horror The Locals are the streets of the nation’s largest metropolitan centre- Auckland. Local government politicians are like McDonald’s advertisements, both profess to promote healthy alternatives but in reality all they do is clog up arteries and arterial routes.

Big business have done all they can to ensure that Auckland has a public transport that is ridiculed across the world. Visiting Canadian economist Jim Stanford would write in one of his county's major papers a column that deserves wide republishing around Aotearoa,

City planners impose various pseudo-quantitative performance indicators on the contractors, such as sophisticated GPS systems to monitor on-time performance. But even this minimal nod to public accountability produces unintended consequences. Bus companies fear being fined for missing schedule targets, but are driven by the profit motive to ruthlessly minimize outlays on equipment and staff. The resulting pressure is intense on drivers (some of whom don’t even get paid overtime) to meet unrealistic timetables – a media exposé last year showed this often requires breaking the speed limit. Several times, we’ve watched an awaited bus race by without stopping, the driver shrugging helplessly and pointing at his watch.

That anecdote sums up perfectly the system’s irrationality. The top priority becomes ensuring that a private company reaches profit targets, not picking up people who need a ride.

Yet Aucklanders still pay for transit – three times over. Once through taxes – subsidies to private transit consume half of all property taxes collected by the regional government. Then again at the fare box. And finally a third time through inconvenience. No wonder Aucklanders take transit one-quarter as often as Torontonians.

So before you get carried away with enthusiasm for the inherent efficiency of the private sector, visit Auckland. It’s beautiful. But you’ll need to rent a car.

A disaster all right, public transport run down and privatised in the interests of corporate vultures. As Chris Trotter summed it up in a post on his blog,

The Auckland we’ve ended up with is a city of individuals who travel by car. It’s a city based on the tried and true formula: "real-estate equals roads – roads equal real-estate". This is what I call the "Auckland Racket", and it underpins the city’s speculative economy, its nouveau-riche property-developers’ culture and, most importantly, its far-right neoliberal politics.

If anyone has any doubt that selling the country’s rail network to the robber barons of the ‘80s and ‘ 90s like Michael Fay and David Richwhite was a bad idea they need only read the short history of the deregulation of railways provided by the Campaign for Better Transport,

The new owners began massive “rationalisation”, which meant sacking thousands of staff, closing stations & depots, cutting passenger services & some branch lines. The “human presence” of railways vanished as the workforce necessary to market, manage, load & operate the system were laid off. Soon less staff meant less business & less profit. This neglect of customer’s needs was quickly catered for by hungry truckers who soon captured the freight market from smaller business in the provinces.

Tomorrow the Green Party will rally its supporters of public transport for the launch of a campaign- Fast-Track the CBD Rail Loop. Under the slogan “A Super Rail Network for a Super City” the Greens aims to put pressure on Government policy makers for a “greater sense of urgency”. The facebook event has just 11 attendees suggesting that Aucklanders themselves aren’t all that bothered about the rail network. Yet a 2003 survey showed that poor public transport was the second most common complaint about living in the Auckland region (traffic congestion was number one).

According to the giddy McCarthyites of the Act Party, public transport advocates are, “scared of cars because automobiles allow individuals to make their own decisions. Car drivers can turn left or right, they can travel for miles or stay in the city, they can live out and commute in or live in and commute out. Planners and politicians can’t control them.”

Riiiggghhttt. I mean how many car turns can a car make when it is stuck in gridlock? The hilarious reality is that Auckland’s traffic jams and low public transport use are the direct result of the privatisation shock doctrine that the new right darlings brought about in Auckland in the early 1990s: “bus boardings declined from 42 million per year in 1990 to 31 million in 1994 – a drop which is not correlated with urban density or dispersed employment, as neither of these factors changed substantially over the period”

We don’t even have to look very far back to realise that this current crop of local body politicians hate sensible transport. Take the November ’08 announcements in John Bank’s “Christmas Grinch budget” where he slashed public transport in order to fund more roads and the Rugby World Cup piss-up. Socialist Aotearoa at the time said, “The $345 million dollar Eastern Highway will mean we can keep on driving till the icecaps melt and the oil wells run dry. Just don’t worry about what we’ll do after the oil runs out because this Council plans to cut footpath, cycleways and walkways spending by $66 million, public transport spending by $20.8 million and new park-and-ride facilities will be slashed by $5 million. So say hello to Smog City, a city where Banks can drive his Bently down the freeway while we all eat dust.”

2010 and not a lot has changed for Auckland. The Auckland Regional Council’s regional growth strategy makes for alarming reading,

• Car use is growing by around 4% pa.
• Congestion is perceived by the public to be one of the region’s most significant problems.
• Vehicle use , especially under congested conditions, is a major source of pollution.
• Total cost of congestion to the region is estimated in the order of $750 million pa including loss of production and costs of delay in moving goods.

Both of Auckland’s mayoral frontrunners profess support for further development of Auckland’s public transport system but cynics might say there proposals for integrated ticketing and upgrading ferry and rail networks are simply- too little, too late. Aucklanders who seriously want to unfuck the public transport system will need to do more than vote to end local Government inaction. Getting active in community campaigns for free and frequent public transport and against further roading spending is the first step. Fighting for public ownership of transport companies and free and frequent public transport as well as a massive investment in the innercity loop, rail link with the airport and a cycle lane on the bridge won't be easy. Direct action like the GetAcross Harbour Bridge protest or the anti-SH20 protests will no doubt become more common, but Aucklanders have to keep fighting for these improvements and more if they want a liveable, sustainable, free flowing and connected worldclass city in the future.

Post by Omar. From socialistaotearoa.blogspot.com

Moving our city with free public transport

The Dominion Post reported; “Round-the-clock gridlock has been predicted if The Terrace and Mt Victoria tunnels are closed for five weeks to kickstart a $80 million project to remedy serious safety problems.”

Could we use this sense of crisis to achieve immediate improvements in public transport services and safe cycle and walk ways between Wellington CBD and its suburbs?

A report to the Greater Wellington’s Transport and Access Committee is proposing that all fares be increased from 1 October 2010, to take account of the GST increase, and to produce a 3% increase in fare revenue to balance increased costs

Fare increases: bad timing

Greater Wellington Regional Councillor Paul Bruce said that coinciding Public Transport fare increases with the Mt Victoria tunnel safety upgrades is bad timing. “If we are going to close off routes, we must provide some counter balancing measure to help people move freely about Wellington city.

One of these measures could be moving the subsidy for free weekend public parking to zero inner city fares. Mr Bruce said that many other cities provide zero fare services, including Auckland, Christchurch and Invercargill.

Use the business levy

Shifting some of the Wellington City Council business levy to cover bus fares in the central business district ties in with a move towards integrated fares, allowing people arriving from outer suburbs to proceed through to Courtenay Place without any extra cost.

This will attract extra riders and lead to fewer cars in the inner city area, which in turn will improve traffic flow and air quality and thus ambience and … retail sales. Convenient public transport will also give an added pull to tourists.

Other advantages to alternative transport

There are also health, social and environmental advantages to funding alternative modes of transport such as cycling, walking and public transport.

Physical inactivity accounts for almost 10 percent of New Zealand’s 20 leading causes of death. It is a contributor to obesity and type 2 diabetes, which together cost the health system over $500 million per year. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is now promoting “car reduced” communities. And the British government’s 2001 planning document says: “Development comprising jobs, shopping, leisure and services should not be designed and located on the assumption that the car will represent the only realistic means of access for the vast majority of people”.

Car parking

Wellington is an extreme case in terms of provision of car parks, with the highest number of parking spaces per job, according to figures collated by Kerry Wood. We outrank Christchurch and Auckland, and well known US cities, Phoenic, Denver, and Detroit.

Wellington City Council “free” weekend car parks cost a lot in foregone revenue, in fact four times more than the inner city public transport weekend fare, and about half the total weekend bus revenue take. Free parking contributes to vehicle pollution and traffic snarl ups as cars search for parking spaces, and may actually diminish retail sales. In a time of diminishing resources, a subsidy for free parking isn’t the best plan.

Creative solutions

Improving Wellington’s transport network can happen with some creative solutions. Our transport network includes every bus, car, skateboard or pair of feet that people use to get around, each with different requirements, whether in use or not.

Wellington’s compact size means space is at a premium downtown.What goes unnoticed are the ways in which we prioritise and even sponsor car use above every alternative. Private cars are the part of that network that take up the most space and energy, for the least return.

Instead, providing some real alternatives, such as zero inner city public transport fares combined with safer cycling after the removal of some parking, enhances the village atmosphere that we all seek.

Paul Bruce concluded that the closure of the Mt Victoria tunnel for safety upgrades should be seen as an opportunity to promote our public transport system. “Greater Wellington provides a free connecting bus service on the Kapiti Coast to connect with train services, and has found this to be a great success. What about moving towards zero weekend fares for Wellington city?”

Number of CBD parking spaces in 1996 per 1000 CBD jobs

(figures collated by Kerry Wood)

Wellington	1050
Christchurch	940
Auckland	650
Sourced figures:
Phoenix	910
Denver	730
Detroit	710
Perth	630
Houston	610
Los Angeles	520
Portland	400
Melbourne	340
Brisbane	320
Sydney	220
Copenhagen	220
Zürich	140
London	120
New York	60

Zero fare public transport services

Auckland	Free downtown bus loop, ‘City Circuit’
Christchurch	Free downtown bus loop, ‘The Shuttle’
Invercargill	Free downtown bus & free off peak buses
Adelaide	Free downtown tram route
Sydney	Free downtown city bus loop
Melbourne	Free downtown tram and bus loop
Chapel Hill , USA	Free area-wide bus services
Hasselt , Belgium	Free area-wide bus services

Links

Economic benefits of people-friendly streets

Parking lots to parks – designing livable cities by Lester R Brown

Paved with gold – the real value of street design – by CABE, UK

Economic value of walkability – Victoria Transport Policy Institute [PDF, 233KB]

Bachels, M, Newman, P and Kenworthy, J (1999). Indicators of urban transport efficiency in New Zealand’s main cities. Perth: Murdoch University, ISBN 0 86905 669 7

Newman, P and Kenworthy, J (1999). Sustainability and cities — overcoming automobile dependence. ISBN 1 55963 660 2.

The High Cost of Free Parking, Donald Shoup estimates that off-street parking subsidies in the United States are worth at least $127 billion a year.

For more information

Contact Regional Councillor Paul Bruce
paul.bruce@greens.org.nz
phone: 04 9728699 cellphone:021 02719370

From www.wellingtongreens.org.nz

Free transit promotes social inclusion

Let us reclaim human interaction - get rid of the anti-social private auto

Further evidence of the positive effects of free public transport can be gleaned from the Belgian city of Hasselt. Not only did use of Hasselt’s bus system explode once zero fare were introduced (from 331,551 in the old situation to an astonishing 3.2 million - and this for a city of only 70,000 people), with all the obvious benefits this shift suggests, but also, some rather unexpected advantages were produced as well. For example, following the introduction of zero fares, the number of visits to patients in the city’s hospitals was reported to have “increased enormously” (van Goeverden, 2006: 7). This suggests that individuals and families will take more of a role in terms of caring responsibilities if they can actually access the people who need to be cared for, and this could represent incredible indirect savings for the state in terms of social and health care budgets. Indeed, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has demonstrated statistically that people who socialise and participate in social activities are on average happier and healthier (2000:326-335). Of course you can only do this if you can get around, an evidence from a wide range of sources indicate that many people cannot ‘get around’ (see Church et al, 2000; Graham and Marvin, 2001; Hine and Mitchell, 2003; Knolwes, 2006 New Economics Foundation, 2003; Pooley et al, 2005; Raje, 2007; Reisig and Hobbiss, 2000; Shaw, 2006; Social Exclusion Unit, 2002 and 2003; Urry, 2007).

Bob Jeffrey - Towards a Sustainable Transport Policy