Guest Speaker (Paul de Spa): SPOKES and the state of cycling in Christchurch
From:
Kevyn Miller
Date:
Aug 09 15:08 UTC
Short link
Paul, I don't share your point of view but as an occassional walker I can
certainly appreciate how the dependence on motor taxation has rsulted in a
car-centric roading system. With the probability that revenue from the petrol
tax could plummet in coming years the way it did during the '70s I would
caution against any transport initiatives that assume that the current levels
of subsidies from cars is going to continue. Hence my support for trolley buses
instead of light rail.
I suggest that a future funding will have to revisit the Canterbury Cyclist
Union's 1898 initiative
http://www.petroltax.org.nz/PDF/CycleTrafficBill1898.PDF
A quarter century later the South Island Motoring Union also proposed a vehicle
registration fee as the revenue source for Main Highways along with an excise
duty on tyres and tubes.
Introducing a bicycle registration fee and reintroducing the excise duty on
tyres and tubes will be a simple way of ensuring that any future shift from
driving to cycling cyclists would progressively replace the existing funding
stream with a new sustainable one.
As for your seven questions. For belong in the health budget and justify
including the Ministry of Health in land transport funding decisions, which has
not happened yet.
The correct answer to the first question is either
A)ride sharing using a similar approach to the industrial waste recycling
database but taking advantage of texting to connect passengers with empty seat.
That way car fuel efficiency can be improved from 25 occupant mpg to 100 at
almost no cost. 100 mpg is about what a cyclist will achieve unless the cyclist
is able idententify products that didn't come from our modern carbon intensive
agriculture. There isn't as much potential to reduce carbon emissions by
vehicle downsizing as there was in the 70s because the weight difference
between big and small cars has shrunk.
b) make walking schoolbuses more attractive by installing toll booths 200
metres from the school gates. That indirectly is the best answer to question 4
as well.
The best answer to question 7 is to ban diesel buses. Trolley's and hybrids are
as quite as modern cars.
Before any increase in the percentage of petrol taxes spent on cycling can be
increased we need to adress the problem of 55% of Canterbury's roading revenue
being diverted to other regions. Good arguments exist for diverting 30% to
other South Island regions as we can get economic benefit from doing that but
there is no justification for the 25% that goes to Auckland and/or Wellington.
Get that back where it belongs then we can start talking about more money for
cycling and walking. But I will always insist that the correct order of
priority for spending roading revenue has absolutely go to be:
1) Road maintenance and operations including doubling the funding assistance
ratio for local authorities,
2) Safety engineering, a mere $500m a year extra nationally would halve the
road toll by 2015, 25 years ahead of the proposed Land Transport Strategy.
3) Seismic preparedness, Christchurch is only 150km from the world's highest
risk Great faultlines,
4) Walking and Cycling
5) Public transport
6) Congestion relief (This seems to be the current #1)
To really upset people I really believe that the best answer to question 3 is
to scrap all density limits, single use zoning and restrictions on building
corner shops. Half a century of centralising our schools, shops, and factories
is half the reason we drive everywhere instaed of walking and cycling. The
traffic generated by that half of the reason is the other half of the reason,
more or less.
.