Last week Patrick launched a brilliant and scathing critique of the “charge of the RoNs brigade.” He argued that times have changed: The socio-economic conditions we are currently experiencing (and seem likely to face in the future) are different from those that characterised the recent past.
Patrick put it thus:
The RoNS look like a classic case of the general fighting the previous battle, assuming all conditions from that last campaign still hold, but being doomed to fail because he doesn’t see how the world has moved on. In this case it is necessary to believe that road is always the best mode, that sprawl will continue for ever, and that investing aggressively in both will always provide economic growth. The facts on the ground say otherwise.
I concur; times have changed. Two of my earlier posts (here and here) have explored the possibility that changing socio-economic conditions are placing inexorable downwards pressure on the demand for vehicle travel. In the last few days I was reminded of just how much the facts on the ground suggest that that times are changing, when I uncovered this dataset on the MoT website.
First we see that the total vehicle kilometres travelled in private light vehicles has plateaued since around 2005:
Second we find that per capita vehicle ownership peaked in 2007 and has since declined relatively steadily:
And finally, we see that light vehicle travel per capita is down 5% since its peak way back in 2005.
These graphs tell a compelling story overall (and for Brownlee’s benefit – I don’t see much “fluctuation”). But political digs aside, what’s interesting for me personally is how closely these wider trends align with my own “transport” experience.
For those of your fortunate enough not to know me, what follows is Stuart’s-life-in-a-nutshell:
- 1981: Born and quickly exiled to a “lack of lifestyle” block
- 1998: Exit comatose state, get licence, 1998 was oh so rad
- 1998-2001: A 1985 Holden Barina was my weapon of choice
- 2001: enrolled in engineering at uni; suddenly paying for a car was not so rad
- 2003: Befriended Julie Anne Genter, gratefully adopt her old bicycle …
The rest was history; my personal “love affair” with cars has been broken for nearly the last decade.
In that time I’ve done my fair share of walking, cycling, car-sharing, using Auckland’s (vastly improved) public transport, sharing rides, and paying for home delivery. Some might read that and feel stressed – they prefer a go-anywhere, all-the-time personal vehicle. For those people’s benefit I’ve rarely felt limited by not owning my own car, indeed on occasion I’ve just gone out and hired them to go on holiday. And from not owning a car I am now significantly healthier and wealthier than many people my age. From where I now sit personal car ownership seems to be more of a hindrance than an enabler of fulfillment .
Of course, it’s extremely dangerous to view the world around oneself solely through the lens of one’s own personal experience; I would never suggest that my transport preferences are “typical” of the average New Zealander. But while my transport preferences are relatively “extreme”, I want to emphasise that they have not always been so. Moreover, the direction my personal transport preferences have headed seems to be somewhat in step a few other people.
For example, if you analyse the MOT’s data then you find that since 2005 NZ’s population has increased 316,000, whereas the light vehicle fleet has increased by only 142,000. So while our average vehicle ownership is 677 per 1,000 people, the people being added at the “margin” effectively have a vehicle ownership rate of only 449 per 1,000 people. That’s a -34% difference in vehicle ownership rates for people being added at the margin compared to the base population.
The times they are a-changin’.
How much of this is also “driven” by the current economic circumstances? If people actually have secure jobs for example, will they not start buying an extra Pajero as they know they might be able to afford the diesel, rather than say being on the economic scrapheap, where even the Unitec ad encased bus becomes a luxury!
My gut feeling is “some” but not “much”. If you look at those figures, the slow down in the growth in demand for vehicle travel occurred around 2005-2007, which is well before the GFC hit and subsequent “Great Recession”.
But there is an interesting graph in the MoT dataset that shows the average age of cars increasingly steadily. That may be because cars are better quality now than they were before and subsequently last longer, or it may be because people cannot afford to upgrade their vehicles.
In the event of the latter, eventually that car will die – placing further downward pressure on vehicle ownership.
When my wife and I started living together other we each had our own cars, We were living pretty close to town at that point and my car was in a secure car park but hers was on the street. One day someone smashed a window on it and we decided pretty quickly to get rid of it and ever since have been a one car household. When we moved one of our requirements was that we were close to a train station so didn’t have to rely on driving. Since we got rid of her old car about 4 years ago, I could probably count on one hand the number of times when a second car would have been useful.
Yes that seems to be a more common experience than my own personal situation: Households downgrading from 3 cars to 2 cars or 2 cars to 1 car.
This is almost exactly what happened to me Matt, theft included, that second car does end up becoming a liability eh?
SOV might one day be a dirty word. Is it commuting or guilt trip?
SOVs can sod off. Yes the guilt trip certainly has some role in it – when people tell me they commute by car but could just as easily use public transport or walk/cycle then I flip them a slightly filthy look followed by a wry grin, as if to suggest “you’re letting the team down let’s have a chat.”
Call me self-centred but I think it’s time that we collectively accepted that the degree to which people drive is excessive, and that we need to challenge that so as to create space for new social norms to emerge. Ones that are less vehicle centric.
I dunno stu, I just want there to be good options for people to have the choice. Not so interested in guilting or nagging people to change. I’m really confident that offered a viable alternative more than enough people are not so dumb to not change. In some ways an attitude of compulsion can create resistance.
But personally one on one which is what you are saying this so works, I just point out what it is costing them and what they are missing out on….. i have got a lot of family and friends to change their default setting from ‘always drive’ to ‘how shall we travel?’. And its not hard as service improves but also because it is increasingly the fashion.
I tells ya; we’ed better get on with those improvements cause a wall of transit riders is going to hit….
Someone commented here that they did a study that found their was more inelasticity around returning to driving once transit had been tried than from driving to transit…. would like to see that on post here….anyone?
Yes I do not take the guilt trip business very far – because it’s not the way to make people feel positive about change, hence my focus on the “wry grin”. But I do think it’s worth us asking questions of people’s underlying assumptions, e.g. when an employer offers “free” parking. So it’s more of a “question trip” than a “guilt” trip – more of a social prod to encourage people to think things through, rather than passively accepting the status quo.
Completely agree that in the long run people generally make pretty good choices given the options and incentives that are put in front of them, i.e. we both believe in the value of economics
Hi Patrick,
I think that might have been me. I was playing round with trying to autocorrelate fuel prices with driving. My initial analyses looked a bit weird, I realised I was violating a few of the assumptions for that type of analysis, but it certainly seemed that in periods when the fuel price dropped, there was not an increase in driving. When I get some of that mythical ‘spare time’, I’ll try and polish it up, and perhaps post it here for some sort of peer review…
Look forward to seeing the results James, good work.
I’m sure that the gov is not unhappy with the way our over valued exchange rate is cushioning us from rising full prices, as well as allowing things to still appear not that bad for longer…. helping make their reckless accelerated highway building programme from being quite so self-evidently daft.
Just mean that we could face a more sudden price event were the exchange rate to drop as imported crude continues to rise….. ah well, so it goes.
Good to work on those alternatives now.
Is it excessive, though? Really? Auckland is not a city that is conducive to undertaking after-hours community activities courtesy of public transport. So either we say that people are excessively engaged in activities outside the hours when public transport is convenient to use, or we say that Auckland is excessively geared towards supporting a particular, very narrow type of activities and everyone else can either watch their non-work lives whither and die or they can drive.
I’ve previously given the example of my partner and myself, two-car household, where it’s simply not practical to use public transport for our conflicting social activities. Ellerslie-Castor Bay is bollocks by public transport at any hour, never mind trying to come home at 10 or 11 at night, and Ellerslie-Onehunga is only practical on Friday and Saturday nights when the trains run late (but also very infrequently). Should we give up activities from which we derive enjoyment just because we have to drive if we wish to avoid prolonged waits and/or prolonged trips (I worked out that getting from Castor Bay to Ellerslie on a weekday evening will take an hour or more, vs a less-than-20-minute drive).
Good question – yes it is, but mainly because of the way that we price 1) roads and 2) parking. To be more specific, there is “excessive” (in an economic sense) amounts of driving at peak times to destinations where land is scarce but parking is provided free.
Off-peak trips to remote destinations not so excessive – as you were soldier!
This is a clear discontinuity with the previous pattern. I am willing to bet one of my households now-less-driven cars that this is not a temporary ‘cup of tea’ on the relentless march to infinity car ownership and kilometres driven in NZ.
It is completely consistent with all OCED countries figures, as indeed was the previous pattern. This is zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, and it’s amazing to watch as all these different countries fall to the same pattern. Amazing. And that makes its continuation all the more predictable; it is indeed a new normal.
Come on MoT look at your own figures, face the front now. Time to stop thinking and investing like it’s still the auto-age, ‘cos it ain’t. Tomorrow does not look like today, and certainly not like 1965.
Of course the old pattern will persist, this is a change in direction not a wiping out of the past so the inattentive won’t see it till it hits them hard. But MoT, NZTA, and even politicians are paid to understand this stuff. This is what change looks like, revolutions are usually all but invisible till they’ve happened.
I will go further, be optimistic and say to all you doomers and cornucopians alike; This is in fact transition. Transition to a lower energy intensive economy, it is just a little start, but let’s hope it is all this gentle, because normally big epochal changes come with crisis and conflict as societies cling to the old ways that on longer work, especially as vested interests fight hard to maintain their position……
Here’s Gregor, always with an eye on the pattern: http://gregor.us/policy/the-demise-of-the-car/
These trends also highlight the limits of linear extrapolations of trends based on historical data, but that’s a post for another day …
yus!
Via Atlantic cities: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/cities/americans-desire-more-transit-options/5248
I don’t suppose you know if the MoT has stats going back further? It would be interesting to see what/if the plateaus were like during other periods of economic hardship.
That would be good. Although the point I try and make above is that the plateau started well before the current economic hardship. In fact that mid-2000s were a time of relatively gangbuster growth; to me that suggests it’s not related to our current economic malaise – the plateau preceded it entirely.
As a corollary – I’ve seen a bit of media about how tough the driving tests are now, and the expense that comes with them (it’s not just the test cost!). And I can’t helping thinking that most New Zealanders still have little to no choice but to drive (for a reasonable percentage of trips). When I lived in Auckland I was in Glenfield and I went to band practice in New Lynn – there was simply no way to get home at 10.00/10.30pm on a Monday or Wednesday night other than by car. Here in Palmerston North if you’re at Massey and you want to study late at the library, then tough – last bus to anywhere other than the CBD leaves at 6.10. We insist on forcing people to take increasingly expensive and time consuming vehicle tests without providing any other options. It is hardly the freedom of choice that many would associate NZ with.
Very good points – this post was stimulated in part by the article in last weeks Herald on the difficulties people now face in passing their driving test. Which I think is a good thing overall, but as you said we’d be silly not to think through what the ramifications are for other modes if we make driving harder.
Two pieces of historical perspective:
First, remembered from somewhere; will dig up figures later on: NZ had a relatively low rate of car ownership for an OECD country up until the late 1980s, when imports were deregulated (and costly domestic production shut down). Car ownership skyrocketed (in per capita terms) from that point on and is now at the upper end of the OECD.
Second, the oil shocks of the 1970s were met with a set of heavy-handed regulations (e.g. carless days) and massive investments in energy independence (Think Big – which, if you recall, included the electrification of the central portion of the NIMT). A lot of these decisions looked ridiculous (or economically ruinous) in retrospect, after the price of oil came down in the early 1980s.
So I can understand, on a psychological level, why Boomer politicians are making the decisions they are about road-building at the moment. (And it’s not just Brownlee and Joyce… remember that the massive investment in motorways was started in the mid-2000s under Boomers Michael Cullen and Annette King.) The experiences of the 1970s oil shocks have given them a sense that high oil prices will, inevitably, recede and make conservation measures seem ridiculous. (They won’t.) And the post-deregulation auto ownership boom indicates that cheap cars became common only relatively late in life for the Boomers – and who would want to give up a belatedly-arriving pleasure so soon?
So their choices are understandable, but given that we’re going to have to live in the world they’re building for far longer, they’re not fair or sensible.
I concur; very useful to have that historical perspective. This post was not intended as a critique of particular political decisions (either past or present) but a rallying cry on the fact that the world seems to be changing and that we collectively need to revisit our assumptions.
Digging around further on the MoT site, thought this graph was very telling as well. New regos almost halved between 2005 and 2009:
http://www.transport.govt.nz/ourwork/TMIF/PublishingImages/SeriesImages/TV005_series1_image1.PNG
Stu, I’m not sure your last point holds, as the marginal changes just show the 2 lines (population over time and total cars over time) have different gradients? (e.g. if car ownership was static but pop went up by 100K, that doesn’t mean none of the new population own a car, or that we’re heading for zero cars).
Agree 100% with overall point though. I’m interested in what’s happening in the USA, as you’d think it would be resistant to trends on the basis of car ownership being so tied up with their identity. But:
• Bruce Springsteen walks 12 blocks to his interview at Rolling Stone (“There was traffic”).
• Graphs here: http://advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/DOT-Miles-Driven.php
• The auto industry is getting desperate: http://www.autoblog.com/2012/07/17/how-to-cure-driving-apathy-among-americas-youth-lego/
Yes you’re strictly correct – there’s no way to conclude that the changes in purchasing behaviour are happening at the margin. It may be that the new people are buying cars at high rates but the existing population is dropping them even faster. But the point is that the change in average vehicle ownership rates underplays the degree to which our collective vehicle purchasing behaviour has changed.
For the record, from what I know of NZ’s new immigrants they tend to be less wedded to cars than the base population, so my intuition/experience suggests that the marginal resident is making different decisions from the average resident.
On a bike ride this morning it did occur to me that what makes the marginal difference likely much greater than the overall figures is that there is a significant percentage of the population who can’t/won’t change as they’re rural, or already at (what they see as) the practical limit of ownership, or already carless. So yes you’re right- the swing is much greater than the overall numbers indicate.
Yes that is an interesting point – the urban population (which is generally willing and somewhat able to use alternative transport modes) is growing at the expense of the rural population (which is generally unable and/or unwilling to use alternative transport modes).
Given ongoing urbanisation and population ageing you would then expect vehicle ownership to continue to decline, all other factors being equal.
Except for the rise of the lifestyle block.
I am on a lifestyle block for air quality reasons (although with idiot neighbours burning off with disregard for others that is often taken away from me).
And it does necessitate car use. I’m quite partial to public transport and cycling, and even have a cycling blog, but it’s a bit of a lie, since I am on a lifestyle block and 19 times out of 20 I leave the place in a car, and not on a bike or on foot.
Improve urban air quality and I can give up the charade of living in the country.
Lifestyle blocks are really exurban sprawl.
Matt, I suspect that the lifestyle block has peaked and is now falling, e.g. residential property prices in rural Franklin (where I used to live) and Rodney seem to be tanking relative to the central city areas. Agree that air quality is an area Auckland could do better.
PN – nice summary and points. One minor point that interested me – did the big skyrocket in ownership come in the early or late 1990s? I recall the last tariffs came off imported cars in 1998; the year is burnt into my memory, as a family member bought a 15-year-old vehicle in 1997 at a price which looked completely ridiculous twelve months later.
Was at Uni, car repairs would have broken the bank. Sold it. That was 2005 I recall.
Since then I have cycled, walked, borrowed cars (thanks mum) but never owned one. Lived in Ireland for 4 years – cycled or used public transport. Now living in Korea – walk to work.
A car would be nice for long distance stuff and I avoid taxis in NZ (expensive – I would not want to pay $5-10 for a ride every day one way in Hamilton).
When ever I get back to NZ to live, I am buying a 50 cc scooter to use for my transportation. I don’t want a car and don’t see the need for one.
But the question is this, what happens when you have children, you can put one on a bike, but two or three or four?
I frequently saw parents cycling with two or more children in the Netherlands … http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3472/5775662125_3fb431368d_z.jpg
But when they get bigger yes I can see some struggles on Parnell Rise! Seriously though, make the little blighters cycle themselves around.
Share your experience Stu. Since I got rid of my car after my early student years, I have sometimes flirted with the idea of getting one again, but 15 years later, it still hasn’t happened, and I still mostly walk and cycle – even after moving from a transport environment much friendlier to that situation to old-school Auckland. Admittedly, for the last 3 years I have occasional access to my girlfriend’s car, but isn’t that how it should be? Not against cars, but for less cars, used more efficiently.
Me too.
I have to say that New Zealand is a wonderful place to drive when you’re holiday. But that’s only 10% of the year, so the rest of the year my need for a car is much less.
Here here, your quite correct.
Hey Max, where’s that promised cycleway update guest post? I wanna read it…..
Just tossing in some of that high-quality personal anecdotal evidence, I’ve observed something quite disturbing: the Southern Motorway northbound through Penrose is flowing freely, and has been all week. I came through there at 11:30 this morning at 100km/h. I’ve been fairly vocal in supporting the planned lane addition past the Ellerslie train station because traffic on this stretch has been very durably bad, as anyone who’s familiar with the area knows. What I’m seeing now, though, suggests we’ve hit a tipping point of some sort.
It’s disturbing because the change in traffic volume is so stark and so sudden. Even two months ago things were “normal”. The ramp signals entering from the SE Highway aren’t on today, and they’re nearly always on. It speaks to a very significant drop, and that points to a big hit to economic activity. University holidays ended on Monday, so it’s not an absence of students. People simply aren’t travelling during the working day.
Interesting. Latest NZTA traffic data report suggests 0.7% growth in Auckland compared to same month last year: http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/state-highway-traffic-growth/docs/shtg-201208.pdf
But I see numbers on harbour bridge were up 4%, so maybe there’s a divergence in growth across the region? VPT obviously helped improved flow to the north, one would expect.
I wonder what the population growth north of the Bridge looks like. We know the NBW is struggling to cope with demand, and if the population on the Shore is growing but the RTN can’t carry them they’ll resort to driving. Given that Penrose is a nice choke-point for many of the less-affluent suburbs’ residents to pass through if they’re driving towards the city, I can’t helping wondering if we’re seeing the very real effects of the persistent petrol prices; which, incidentally, are far from uniform. Petrol is $2.199 in many areas, but out in New Lynn it’s only $2.119. Clearly Gull are holding their prices down and neighbouring outlets are having to match.
With electric motors on bikes getting cheaper and lighter, taking kids on bikes in Auckland will become more viable. In reality though, if you have kids in Auckland, you currently definately need one car – Saturday sport or emergency trips to doctors arent really viable without them. A realistic outcome for most Aucklanders would be to become low-car, rather than no-car.
Generally agree, although:
1. Sport is only one day per week so car-share becomes viable
2. Taxis are good for emergency trips to doctors …
But these are still car-based solutions nonetheless, so agree with the sentiment.
Taxis are fine if you have the available money. The nature of the beast, though, is that people living day-to-day will have other pressing needs that will militate against keeping money aside for an urgent taxi ride. Plus, a taxi there and back will often cost you more than a full tank of petrol. And if you’re doing it a lot taxis rapidly become much more expensive than a car.
A car is going to cost you at least four five grand a year in operating and ownership costs, before factoring in depreciation on the purchase. That buys a lot of taxi fares. You could take a long return trip twice a week and stil be better off. Also cityhop car sharing is only $15 an hour. You could use it six or seven hours a week and still be better off.
If people living day to day manage to pay rego, warrants, insurance, petrol, servicing and maintenance, I’m sure they could manage a taxi fare or two.
Sorry but that’s bollocks. A car with third-party insurance will cost you less than a grand per year in fixed costs. You can get an oil-and-filter change for less than $50. I have NFI where you’re getting $4-5k from, but it’s crap. My car doesn’t cost me anywhere near that much, and I’ve got comprehensive cover. If you’re using $100 of petrol a week, sure, but if the car sits there most of the time it’s not even close. Mine certainly isn’t.
As for depreciation, a) nobody actually accounts for it, given that almost nobody can do anything about knowing its cost, and b) eventually it stops mattering because the car has reached about its lowest point. Which, in a country with an ageing vehicle fleet, is an important point. You cannot take US figures and transplant them into NZ, because they have significant incentives to buy new vehicles while NZ does not. If you’re in a position where you’re worrying about being able to afford to run a car, you’re not buying anywhere near new enough to have much value to lose.
That’s based on my own car budget from last year for my $1500 mitsubishi wonder. I figure it cost me $4500 per annum, It’s comprised of $1300 for insurance, warrants, registration and servicing, plus a nominal $500 repairs and tyres (mine cost more because it was a heap of junk) and $50 a week on petrol.
Glad I got rid of it!
Bullshit you can do nothing about knowing the cost of depreciation, it’s easy. For example: buy a car for ten grand, sell it five years later for two grand. Depreciation is eight grand over five years, or $1600 a year.
Not sure what the reference to US figures is about. If you want NZ figures the AA has plenty on the cost of vehicle ownership.
I rent my car-park for $35 per week, so a car would cost me $2,000 per year before I’d even bought it, insured it, and maintained it. And that’s before rolling out the drive … although I accept that not everyone lives somewhere that parking has a direct value.
Same with me, renting my spare room with the one car park I’ve got adds about $50 or $60 to the price I get. So for me keeping the car would have meant $175 a month to lease another spot in a building nearby. Of course most people can park in their driveway or lawn, or use ratepayer subsidized roadside parking.
What I meant by “do nothing about knowing” was that it’s useless to you. Sure you know it’s money you’re losing but it has zero cash value to you. This is not the US, where you can deduct that depreciation at tax time. Here you wear it and that’s the end of it, and eventually the car reaches a non-zero value where it won’t lose any more value.
I spoke of the US because that’s where depreciation as a huge portion of the cost of owning a vehicle really bites. Here in NZ, where the average age of the vehicle fleet is 12 years, depreciation on the average vehicle is a handful of dollars per year. It’s an irrelevance to the average vehicle owner. My “market value” insurance on my 1996 Primera has shifted in insured value by fewer than $500 over the last three years. You want depreciation? That’s depreciation: non-existent.
If you’re using the car on a regular basis for commuting, your situation is different. But if you’ve got it to get you and your kids to appointments the cost is much, much lower.
Matt,
If you buy a $10k car that depreciates in value by 10% per year then that means the car effectively costs you $1k per year. Depreciation of an asset is a cost, and people should consider it as such (whether they do or not is a matter of economic literacy.
To say that the depreciation is not a cost because it has no “cash value” is incorrect. Value = value = value; whether it’s cash or bananas or brand power. Arguing that depreciation is not a cost is analogous to saying that if a house appreciates in value people are not actually wealthier because they do not receive that appreciation in cash.
I agree that some people may have the perception that once a car is bought then that cost is sunk, but that’s generally not true – and I think that with online platforms like TradeMe people are becoming more and more aware of the inherent value in surplus goods, and hence putting more effort into moving assets on when they are not sufficiently valuable to them, i.e. so as to avoid unnecessary depreciation.
Stu, I get that, but it is effectively a sunk cost since that depreciation is of no utility to you – you can’t get cash for it, you can’t deduct it from your taxes, and if you need to own a car all you can do is wear it. Also, as I have pointed out, the average vehicle in NZ has reached its maximum market depreciation. If we’re talking about market effects, which we must since the tax effects are irrelevant (and the IRD says cars depreciate to zero after five years for tax purposes), then we must observe that the market reaches an effective zero-depreciation point at around 10-12 years of life. Which, with an average age of 12 years, means the average vehicle cannot depreciate further and thus depreciation is irrelevant.
Taxis are *not* good for emergency trips to the Doctor! Having just been in this situation this week, see how you go on the availability (and cost!) of a taxi with a car seat for a little person. Or you could get an ambo for $65 (no carseat required), but then how are you going to get home!
Taxis *are* good for emergency trips to the Doctor; I’ve done it several times there and back – and in the middle of the night too. 0800 300 3000.
P.s. It’s hard to drive when you have cut your thumb open with a bread knife!
Most people would be fine Stu…
but your point remains.
Thanks Phil; yes I am a fainter.
A fainter and he rides a girl’s bike. I’m starting to get worried about you Stu.
Peter M you should have been worried about me well before now.
As the parent of two children, I would like to respond to a few of these points:
- Sports happen more than once a week. There are practices for a start (perhaps conveniently located at school, mostly not) plus the games themselves are often on a week day, also not at school. As for the weekend, I would challenge anyone to get from Takapuna to Huapai in 30 minutes on a Saturday morning by walking, cycling or public transport (and I wouldn’t want to pay the taxi fare!) No it wasn’t like that every week but it was often a rush to get from one game to another in a car let alone by other means. Yes, we could have carpooled one kid with another family, but that would mean missing one or other of our kids’ games and being the evil, middle class, gas guzzling parents that we are, we like to attend as many of our kids’ things as possible.
- having recently waited for 45 minutes for taxi to turn up (that we had rung up for) to take us home from a night out at the movies ( the busses had stopped running), I would certainly not want to trust one to be there when my sick kid needed it. When your kid is sick (which is usually in the early hours of the morning) you want to see a medical professional ASAP. Plus I believe that taxis charge you extra if you, how can I put this politely, soil them. Which is what kids are usually doing when they are sick at the early hours of the morning. Not to mention making sure they have a car seat (if you have ever tried to fit a baby seat, you will understand why you would not want try doing this in a strange car when you are stressed about a sick child).
Hi SPT, everyone’s experience is valid, if unique. My only suggestion is that:
1. I suspect that in the future car-share may become a viable cost-effective alternative to owning your own car. Even if it helps you go from 3 to 2 cars, or 2 to 1, as opposed to being completely car-free
2. I’ve generally had good experiences with taxis, and would not write them off on the basis of one bad experience. Maybe try a different company next time?
I’m not well-placed to comment on episodes with sick children and car seats, but your point seems very valid.
Maybe I am just unlucky, but that wasn’t my only experience with a taxi taking forever to arrive (and none of these were in the back of beyond either).
As for cars, we recently went from two cars to one (due to the premature death of car #2). It has mostly worked OK, although my other half hates the bus system with a vengence (I constantly get texts about buses being late or not turning up at all). Personally, I would prefer to stay with one car but if our employment situation/location changes, a second car may again be required. Obviously, if all you have to worry about is getting yourself around, being carless is a lot simpler. I was carless and cycled to work for quite some time back in the day. Once you have to factor in the transport of several other people, well things get a little more complicated
Interesting post and a fascinating transition to a less car-centric society. No doubt this is unsettling to the boomers, yet the transition will make us a wealthier and healthier country. The poorest sectors of society (think far-flung suburbs remote from good public transport, and rural remote areas) have high rates of car ownership per household – a recipe for poverty, up there with smoking, pokies and other addictions. I happen to know three families in Switzerland very well. Two of these households don’t own a car. Both households are involved in politics, and one of them is a state governor no less – a position analogous to the premier of, say, South Australia, presiding over a state with a population of around a million people. He doesn’t even have a government car – walks to the office, takes the train around the canton. Our new trains, bus network and the CRL will make this kind of lifestyle possible in Auckland and potentially help to lift our poorest groups out of the poverty trap by making car ownership unessential, and certainly make it possible to get by with one car per household instead of 3 or 4.
Yes the transition will be good for us – health plus wealth lies at the end of the non-automobile dependent rainbow.
I suspect that one per household is the intermediary step towards one car per community. Call me a naieve/optimistic socialist hippy if you will, but I suspect that one car per urban community is the level of resource efficiency that we will eventually need to achieve to stay with the planet’s capacity.
But – baby steps! And one car less is one less car!
I had a very similar experience Stu although I was born a little later and got my license younger. I’ve never owned a car and I mainly cycle places. But I share a car with somebody who lives close to me. They pretty much get first dibs on using the car, because they own it, but I cover some of the maintenance/registration costs as compensation for my frequent use. It’s a great solution, gives us both flexibility but also means that we don’t have to pay for two vehicles. Of course, we can’t all live next to somebody who shares their car with us – which is why I think a car share scheme could be very successful for people living in the CBD and inner suburbs like me.
I think you are right Stu that, from an environmental perspective (CLIMATE CHANGE), driving most places simply isn’t a good choice to make. And while I don’t think guilt necessarily works as a way to change behaviour, I do think that people are very, very sensitive to social cues.
I realize that this is an extreme example but can you imagine what the world would be like if the suffragettes (and those who supported them) had said, “Oh, I don’t like to make people feel uncomfortable about not supporting women’s rights.”
So I don’t think it’s necessarily productive (or right) to make people feel bad about driving from Ellerslie to Glenfield – that’s the kind of trip I often make by car, simply because the other options are so bad. But sometimes, I do think it is worth gently questioning people about whether rather than driving say 2 km into work every day, maybe they could try cycling or walking instead.
Yes Lucy, I think efficient resource sharing is something that our generation will have to get used to again. You are aware that there is already a car-share scheme in Auckland: CityHop (www.cityhop.co.nz)?
I think that from an environmental perspective driving SOV driving is a disaster. We simply won’t get on top of climate change unless we accept that fact. I also agree that it’s social cues rather than guilt that I work on – I will not judge anyone’s decisions but I will question the logic, just in case it’s flakey (usually it’s not).
Gentle questioning, candid prodding, and voila! The world is a better place …
PN’s comment that “NZ had a relatively low rate of car ownership for an OECD country up until the late 1980s, when imports were deregulated (and costly domestic production shut down). Car ownership skyrocketed (in per capita terms) from that point on and is now at the upper end of the OECD.” is definitely incorrect. NZ has always been amongst the highest per capita motorvehicle owners in the world. In the 1920s this was something that was bragged about because it was a sign that we were a waelthier and more progressive nation than Australia and right up there with the USA. Despite the introduction of hefty tarriffs and import licensing we stayed in the top five through to the end of the 1980s. Speaking as probably the oldest commenter on this site, its important to know that in the old days the only people who could afford to own cars were those who knew how to earn a good living or knew how to use a socket set. While we didn’t import a lot of new cars we kept them on the road a decade longer than was normal in Britain or America and we also had a very high number of motorcycles in our motorvehicle fleet compared with Aus and USA.
The flood of used imports after the scrapping of import licensing at the end of the 1980s resulted in rapid drop in motorcycle registration from more than 1000,000 to less than 20,000 and a rapid displacement of very old cars from the vehicle fleet. Those factors resulted in imports of 100,000+ per year increasing the total number of registered motor vehicles by approx 40,000 per year, which is about 2% growth per annum. I think thats roughly double the population growth rate during during the 1990s, which is very low compared with the 1950s and 1960s and very high compared with the Muldoon years. AFAIK Germany is the only OECD nation where car ownership rates have caught up with NZ.
From memory, the Muldoon years saw a drop in vkt per registered vehicle and per capita while there was still an increase in vehicles per capita. Thats very different from what Stu has identified for the last decade, which supports his contention that we are witnessing a change driven by non-economic factors.
I am willing to be corrected! Speaking from vague memories of statistics is always a dangerous affair.
Long-term data on the size of the NZ vehicle fleet is not readily available – NZTA’s series goes back to 2000: http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/newzealandvehiclefleetstatistics/
However, data on annual registration of cars since 1926 shows a sharp increase in registrations (and in used-car imports, which would tend to lower prices) starting in 1989. http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/motor-vehicle-registration-statistics/docs/2011.pdf
That’s probably what I was thinking of.
Speaking of the past, I remember my dad telling me a while back that his ambition as a teenager was to own a Trekka… he settled for a 250cc motorcycle. (Oddly enough, practically the same model I bought a few years ago.)
Matt @ 2:43 – interesting to note. I saw a pump price of $2.119 in Mount Albert last night.
You have it even luckier if you live out on the southern shores of Lake Rotorua where I was at the start of the week – $2.019 at Caltex. Bizarrely, a two-minute drive into Rotorua will see you paying almost twenty centre more per litre – that’s a huge differential which makes you wonder how they keep it so low on the city limits.
Of course I filled up at the Caltex, took another six cent per litre discount courtesy of the AA, and then reflected that this was probably the last time I will ever pay less than two dollars a litre for petrol – if it can still be so dear overall when the economy is barely twitching, imagine what recovery will look like.
There’s a Gull at Kingsland which pushes prices down for a fair way along New North Rd, and given how far the impact of the New Lynn Gull seems to spread (the Shell I saw was the one next to the Avondale Racecourse) I’m not surprised prices are depressed in Mt Albert. I, unfortunately, live in Ellerslie and none of the local stations are playing the game. For me it’s worth driving down to the East Tamaki Rd Caltex to get my 6c/L discount on their $2.119 petrol, even with it being a 25km round trip.
FWIW: Pushes prices down right out to Glen Eden as well…
Population and rego stats since 1951 are available here:
http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/Pages/MotorVehicleCrashesinNewZealand2010.aspx
in Section 1 Historical, Section 4 Motorcycle casualties and crashes, and Driver licence and vehicle fleet statistics.
I do have most of NZs historic roading stats in a spreadsheet which I can email to anybody who wants it for research of past trends.
Kevyn – and anyone else – do you know if there is a data set of VKT down to a mesh block or area unit level?
Ha! That’s the kind of data-set I dream about. No is the answer, unfortunately. What did you have in mind TimR?
A version of this for Auckland:
http://htaindex.cnt.org/
Our one car two cricket-playing kids model is about to be tested to destruction this summer with 8:30-12 cricket for the younger and 12:30-6 for the older on grounds all over the greater Auckland region. We have various team mates lined up and buy everyone bottles of wine at the end of the season as thank yous. It wouldn’t work very well if everyone in the teams was trying to do it though… Auckland is just about manageable with one car and two kids engaged in various activity programmes but only just, based on the kindness of (semi)strangers, and on us having reasonable flexibilitty on time because I work at the Uni and my SO is freelance. If it wasn’t for their sport and the enormous weekly grocery haul, we could be car-less, but those requirements make being low-car npt no-car our preference. I’d love to come up with a local car-share, tool-share, mower-share programme, but it always reminds me of student flatshare rotas, and we all know how those worked out…
Hey Stu, still ride a girl’s bike?
Superb comment; yes and loving it is the answer.
I see the latest Q2 GDP stats have been announced and surprised everyone including the Economists whose job it is to know this stuff. .6pc is pretty good for a single quarter.
[Stats did also revise down to 1% the Q1 figures from 1.1% released previously, so the trend is still showing a potential 2.5-3+% growth on a annual basis.
However, the latest TruckOMeter document: at
http://www.anz.co.nz/resources/0/6/0625bb004cac5b1e81fcffe8559e3115/ANZ-Truckometer-20120911.pdf “predicts” Q2 and Q3 of 212 will be flat and Q4 may finally show a pick up.but 2013 risks being in danger of a retread of earlier patterns.
I reckon as I’ve said before that ANZ need to take a big long look at the Truck O Meter and factor in the fact that the love affair with cars being over so that they can’t rely on using light traffic flows to predict the economy like they do.
Heres the guts of the Truck O Meter document above in the ANZ’s own words…
“The ANZ Truckometer is a set of two monthly economic indicators
derived using traffic volume data published by the NZ Transport
Agency. We refine the data into the best possible economic indicators by
selecting roads whose traffic best explains quarterly GDP growth.
The ANZ Heavy Traffic Index uses flows of vehicles weighing more
than 3.5 tonnes on 11 roads, and is contemporaneous with GDP growth.
It increased 1.3 percent in August (sa), continuing its recovery from
the sharp fall seen in June. It suggests steady, if unspectacular, economic
growth through the middle of this year.
The ANZ Light Traffic Index uses light traffic flows (primarily cars) on 9
roads. It gives a six month lead on GDP growth, albeit with more hits and
misses. It jumped 1.8 percent in August (sa), reversing its July fall.
The light traffic index suggests a risk of weak growth in Q2 and Q3, but is
more optimistic about Q4. It has a flat trend, reflecting ongoing pressure
in the consumer sector in particular. ”
So perhaps the love affair is waning even faster than everyone thinks?
Changes in technology are other contributing factors to falling distance and ownership numbers. Better access to “where is the closest…?” and “what is the best way to…?”
mobile internet and navigation have both become cheap and widely available during the period shown.