Well, no you won’t. That’s NOT the job of any government.

And your ‘maximum efficiency’ had better be matched to ‘effectiveness’ – and an end in mind that prospers most along the way.

(Aside – why is it that pollies always, yes always, offer grunt jobs in construction and engineering – pick and shovel stuff, when most of that work is done by one bloke on his Euclid or Caterpillar? Where’s the rest of the picture? And where are the jobs for women and people who don’t pine to work in vile conditions of heat, cold, muck?)

The time for fluff statements is well-past. You’ve had four years to gather the players for the change you have in mind, otherwise, as has been pointed out, you’ll be ‘consulting’ for three years instead of doing your true part in the revitalisation.

PS You could be seriously radical and talk with SMEs who’d love to ship their products through NZ but find it’s cheaper to sell across the ditch. Show us how you can use the networking capacities of government to solve some of these long-standing issues without transferring rewards for incompetence and over-blown budgets from the taxpayers to inefficient big players.

Thanks.

I DON’T GET IT, MAYBE I AM MAD, PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME.

It would be interesting to see some evidence based research rather than the artifical BS we get from Steven Joyce and Gerri Brownlee.

If you actually live in Auckland you will realise there is a problem with Transport.

It would be nice to see or read a balanced article on the subject rather than emotional BS.

What this shows is that most infrastructure projects are built on overoptimistic predictions and that rail is especially prone to cost underestimation and ridership overestimation.

The explanation the author offers for this is a public choice one where benefits are emphasized and costs and risks de-emphasized by those who stand to benefit, politicians, officials, developers, &c.

Claims regarding the supposed environmental benefits of rail should be viewed with skepticism as well. The anti-planner blog looked at Transportation Energy Data from the U.S. Department of Energy and had the following findings:

1. Transit doesn’t particularly save energy. According to the Department of Energy’s Transportation Energy Data Book, the average car uses about 3,500 BTUs per passenger mile (see page 2-15). By comparison, the average transit vehicle used about 3,440 BTUs per passenger mile. Getting people into cars like the Prius (1,700 BTUs per passenger mile) will do more to save energy and reduce pollution than expanding transit systems.

2. Light rail is even less energy efficient than transit as a whole. Light rail uses, on average, more than 3,600 BTUs per passenger mile. The most energy-efficient form of transit is van pools, followed by publics (shared taxis), heavy rail, and commuter rail. Automated guideways, demand-response, and ferry boats are the least energy efficient.

3. While commuter rail is, on average, more energy efficient than most other transit, the numbers are skewed by New York City’s commuter-rail system. Portland’s commuter-rail line uses nearly 6,000 BTUs per passenger mile, while Salt Lake’s uses well over 5,000. Of course, New York’s numbers also skew averages for heavy rail, bus, and transit as a whole, but not light rail because there is so little light rail in the New York metro area.

4. When taken as a whole, the transit systems for the vast majority of urban areas use far more energy per passenger mile than driving. Only New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, San Francisco-Oakland, and Honolulu use significantly less energy per passenger mile than driving. While Minneapolis-St. Paul’s and Portland’s systems use slightly less energy than driving. Most others use much more: Seattle’s, for example, uses 4,900, Dallas-Ft. Worth’s uses 6,300, and Phoenix’s uses nearly 6,000 BTUs per passenger mile. This does not count the energy costs of constructing rail lines in these cities, which can be huge.

I think they need to seriously look at a good rail link to Whangarei.