Category: traffic congestion

Delimiting Electric Bikes

Post author By Roger Taylor
Post date 12/02/2022
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Whilst there is much talk about electric vehicles being the future for many of our transport needs most of the focus is on cars and larger vehicles which will continue to occupy the same road space and tend to promote business as usual. Far greater attention should be given to promoting small electric vehicles that take up less road space, have less material content and imbedded energy, demand less standby electricity and recharging infrastructure and promote behavioural change ie to travel less, less often and over shorter distances.

E-bikes are increasingly considered an ideal transportation mode as cities emerge from quarantine in the US and Europe. They are a growth industry. E-bike sales in Australia in 2020 were 60,000, ten times greater than electric cars (6000). Ridership is widely distributed and very popular amongst older people, including “grey nomads” and others who had ridden earlier. The e-bike is fun to ride. It encourages people to keep fit, ride more often and ride further but less intensively although they still use 70-75% of the energy used when riding a normal bike.

According to Allied Market Research “The global bicycle market was USD 65.43 billion in 2019. The global impact of COVID-19 has been unprecedented and staggering, with bicycles witnessing a positive demand shock across all regions amid the pandemic”. It is also believed sales could treble by 2030 with a CARA of 10.5% from 2030 to 2030. E-bikes have become increasingly flexible, offering a wide range of power and speed options that enables them to be used for a wider range of personal travel needs and become increasingly valuable as a cargo carrier, carrying loads up to 100kg. The Post Office likes them because they can carry heavier loads than electric or normal scooters.

Given such overwhelming benefits it is appropriate that governments at all levels support this trend and reinforce it with other incentives to get people out of their cars and remove restrictions that make it difficult to make the transition.

One of these restrictions is the limitation on the maximum speed supported by the electric motor, currently set at 25 kph and 250 watts. In Australia this limit was based on European standards adopted in 2009 but these have been updated (2017). Latest US standards allow 32 kph with an additional limit of 45 kph and larger power of 750 watts which enable it to be used to carry heavier loads as a cargo carrier. New Zealand has no speed restrictions but has a 300 watt power limit.

The 25 kph limit is outdated and unnecessarily restrictive, particularly for commuter use and longer distance travel and reduces its attractiveness as an alternative to the car. It also creates a significant speed differential between the bike and motorised traffic around it which increases the risk of an accident. The 25 kph limit has also increased the temptation for bike owners to delimit the motor allowing it to maintain power at higher speeds, which increasing numbers of people are doing enabling them to travel illegally and unsafely at excessive speeds, sometimes powered up to 70 kph or more.

A small increase in the powered speed limit to 30-32 kph would eliminate much of this abuse, and it is argued this should be implemented as quickly as possible. Concerns about the impact of higher-powered speeds on shared pedestrian/bicycle paths can be addressed by the imposition of speed limits. A 10 kph limit already exists along South Bank (10 kph) and applies to all bikes, powered or unpowered. A 20 kph limit may be appropriate along many sections of metropolitan shared pedestrian trails, particularly those that are heavily trafficked.

Of greater concern however is the need to improve the safety of the road network itself. This has been widely discussed over many years and there are many actions that can be carried out to achieve this. The costs are very low compared to those spent on major road infrastructure projects and can be carried out system wide very quickly. The return on investment (using a triple bottom line business case) is many times greater than other road projects, and is supported by treasury modelling from NSW and Queensland which is expected to be confirmed in March this year.

Safety is an important issue and highlights the need for bicycle education at schools and a broader road safety campaign to create a bicycle culture that promotes courtesy and respect for others as well as greater understanding of safety issues. The target audience must be the entire community, including all road users – motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike.

Delimiting bikes should be a top priority and should apply to all bikes, powered or unpowered. Many of impediments to cycling can be addressed quickly and cheaply but it requires system change but there is no single solution. Melbourne could easily become the cycling capital – the Copenhagen of the south and achieve this very quickly. It just needs the mindset and commitment by government to make it happen.

Tags electric bikes

bike governance government policy traffic congestion

Cutting speed limits to help reduce greenhouse emissions and pollution, noise, road accidents and encourage walking and cycling

Post author By Roger Taylor
Post date 08/10/2021
No Comments on Cutting speed limits to help reduce greenhouse emissions and pollution, noise, road accidents and encourage walking and cycling

Unlike many of the measures proposed by many nations and the business lobby today which see technology as the answer to reducing greenhouse emission reductions, the focus of this initiative is not on technology but behavioural change designed to get people out of their cars and onto their bikes or simply walk more and limit car use for essential travel. It is a measure that can be implemented with immediate effect at minimal cost. A growing number of cities are doing this in Europe and it has popular support. It is a no brainer and we should be doing it here.

Quoting extensively from the report by Angela Charlton and Jeffrey Schaeffer in The Age 7^th October 2021, the latest city to do this is Paris which already had a 30kph limit on about 60% of the city but will extend this to all of the city with the exception of a few main thoroughfares where a 50kph limit will apply.

Other French cities with a 30 kph limit include Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Toulouse, but it is becoming more common elsewhere in Europe. Brussels imposed a 30kph limit on much of the city earlier this year and about 80% of Berlin’s streets have the same rule. Madrid has had speed curbs on most of the city centre since 2018 with a nationwide rule in Spain this year putting a 30kph limit on all one-way urban roads. Similar restrictions apply in residential Amsterdam and the city is proposing to expand this to larger roads.

It is almost certain this trend will continue at an escalating rate – not just in Europe but elsewhere reinforcing the environmental imperative which was clearly stated at our last forum ie to travel less, less often and more efficiently and to focus on behavioural change as the principal lever for reducing greenhouse emissions. This imperative applies to Australian cities and towns so it is time our politicians showed political courage and implement similar measures. This will require sophisticated strategies for managing the transition but it is critical these be developed as part of a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse emissions and implement it as a matter of urgency. It will require a fundamental change in government mindset however and the abandonment of many of the big build infrastructure projects being pursued by this government and other policies which continue to promote car use and car dependence instead of reducing it.

Some may argue that Australian cities are different – less densely populated and more spread out requiring longer distances to work and essential services, and pin their hopes on electric vehicles. Unfortunately the reliance on technology and EV’s in particular as discussed in an earlier blog is a false hope. It is necessary to include the energy impacts for the entire life of the vehicle – extraction and processing of raw materials, its manufacture etc as well as its use, maintenance and disposal at the end of its life. On this basis the footprint for an EV is no better than a conventional petrol driven car, and this assumes the electric power required for charging the vehicle comes from renewable sources – which in the case of Victoria is not the case and will take many years to achieve.

Whilst there will be opportunities to improve the environmental footprint of these vehicles, this will take time and even if this was achieved the ability to replace the existing fleet and the capacity of the community to afford it by 2030 is highly improbable. This means we have no choice but to change our behaviour. The 1973 OPEC oil crisis demonstrated that dramatic changes can be achieved when communities and nations are confronted with a crisis. Some of these responses will be discussed in our next blog. Private travel is only part of the transport task however and in some ways is the easiest to address. The challenges confronting freight and essential services to achieve zero emissions are much more difficult and more critical.

Tags speed limit

climate change governance government policy traffic congestion

Achieving Zero Transport Emissions. Why Electric Vehicles are not the Answer

Post author By Roger Taylor
Post date 31/05/2021
No Comments on Achieving Zero Transport Emissions. Why Electric Vehicles are not the Answer

We have expressed concern about politicians’ faith in technology to solve our environmental problems. This is shared by many transport professionals who seem convinced that technological developments in the form of electric vehicles will be a large part of the transport “solution”. But the argument is heavily flawed. The best way to compare emissions for electric vehicles is to assess all phases of the life cycle.

This has been reviewed in an article from the Conversation which has allowed us to post on our blog by Md Arif Hasan, PhD, PhD candidate, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and Ralph Brougham Chapman Associate Professor , Director Environmental Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington.

There is a lot of discussion on the benefits of electric cars versus fossil fuel cars in the context of lithium mining. Please can you tell me which one weighs in better on the environmental impact in terms of global warming and why?

Electric vehicles (EVs) seem very attractive at first sight. But when we look more closely, it becomes clear that they have a substantial carbon footprint and some downsides in terms of the extraction of lithium, cobalt and other metals. And they don’t relieve congestion in crowded cities.

In this response to the question, we touch briefly on the lithium issue, but focus mainly on the carbon footprint of electric cars.

The increasing use of lithium-ion batteries as a major power source in electronic devices, including mobile phones, laptops and electric cars has contributed to a 58% increase in lithium mining in the past decade worldwide. There seems little near-term risk of lithium being mined out, but there is an environmental downside.

The mining process requires extensive amounts of water, which can cause aquifer depletion and adversely affect ecosystems in the Atacama Salt Flat, in Chile, the world’s largest lithium extraction site. But researchers have developed methods to recover lithium from water.

Turning to climate change, it matters whether electric cars emit less carbon than conventional vehicles, and how much less.

Emissions reduction potential of EVs

The best comparison is based on a life cycle analysis which tries to consider all the emissions of carbon dioxide during vehicle manufacturing, use and recycling. Life cycle estimates are never entirely comprehensive, and emission estimates vary by country, as circumstances differ.

In New Zealand, 82% of energy for electricity generation came from renewable sources in 2017. With these high renewable electricity levels for electric car recharging, compared with say Australia or China, EVs are better suited to New Zealand. But this is only one part of the story. One should not assume that, overall, electric cars in New Zealand have a close- to-zero carbon footprint or are wholly sustainable.

A life cycle analysis of emissions considers three phases: the manufacturing phase (also known as cradle-to-gate), the use phase (well-to-wheel) and the recycling phase (grave-to-cradle).

The manufacturing phase

In this phase, the main processes are ore mining, material transformation, manufacturing of vehicle components and vehicle assembly. A recent
study of car emissions in China estimates emissions for cars with internal combustion engines in this phase to be about 10.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide (tCO2) per car, compared to emissions for an electric car of about 13 tonnes (including the electric car battery manufacturing).

Emissions from the manufacturing of a lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt- oxide battery alone were estimated to be 3.2 tonnes. If the vehicle life is assumed to be 150,000 kilometres, emissions from the manufacturing phase of an electric car are higher than for fossil-fuelled cars. But for complete life cycle emissions, the study shows that EV emissions are 18%
lower than fossil-fuelled cars.

The use phase

In the use phase, emissions from an electric car are solely due to its upstream emissions, which depend on how much of the electricity comes from fossil or renewable sources. The emissions from a fossil-fuelled car are due to both upstream emissions and tailpipe emissions.

Upstream emissions of EVs essentially depend on the share of zero or low- carbon sources in the country’s electricity generation mix. To understand how the emissions of electric cars vary with a country’s renewable electricity share, consider Australia and New Zealand.

In 2018, Australia’s share of renewables in electricity generation was about 21% (similar to Greece’s at 22%). In contrast, the share of renewables in New Zealand’s electricity generation mix was about 84% (less than France’s at 90%). Using these data and estimates from a 2018 assessment, electric car upstream emissions (for a battery electric vehicle) in Australia can be estimated to be about 170g of CO2 per km while upstream emissions in New Zealand are estimated at about 25g of CO2 per km on average. This shows that using an electric car in New Zealand is likely to be about seven times better in terms of upstream carbon emissions than in Australia.

The above studies show that emissions during the use phase from a fossil- fuelled compact sedan car were about 251g of CO2 per km. Therefore, the use phase emissions from such a car were about 81g of CO2 per km higher than those from a grid-recharged EV in Australia, and much worse than the emissions from an electric car in New Zealand.

The recycling phase

The key processes in the recycling phase are vehicle dismantling, vehicle recycling, battery recycling and material recovery. The estimated emissions in this phase, based on a study in China, are about 1.8 tonnes for a fossil- fuelled car and 2.4 tonnes for an electric car (including battery recycling). This difference is mostly due to the emissions from battery recycling which is 0.7 tonnes.

This illustrates that electric cars are responsible for more emissions than their petrol counterparts in the recycling phase. But it’s important to note the recycled vehicle components can be used in the manufacturing of future vehicles, and batteries recycled through direct cathode recycling can be used in subsequent batteries. This could have significant emissions reduction benefits in the future.

So on the basis of recent studies, fossil-fuelled cars generally emit more than electric cars in all phases of a life cycle. The total life cycle emissions from a fossil-fuelled car and an electric car in Australia were 333g of CO2 per km and 273g of CO2 per km, respectively. That is, using average grid electricity, EVs come out about 18% better in terms of their carbon footprint.

Likewise, electric cars in New Zealand work out a lot better than fossil- fuelled cars in terms of emissions, with life-cycle emissions at about 333 g of CO2 per km for fossil-fuelled cars and 128g of CO2 per km for electric cars. In New Zealand, EVs perform about 62% better than fossil cars in carbon footprint terms.

Tags zero emissions

advocacy public policy sustainability governance freeways governance motorways public transport traffic congestion value for money

Does expanding motorways really reduce congestion?

Post author By Roger Taylor
Post date 26/10/2020
No Comments on Does expanding motorways really reduce congestion?

The short answer to this question is no, and they usually result in increased emissions.

The evidence is presented in the following article by Simon Kingham, professor University of Canterbury NZ which was published in The Conversation Au edition 7th October 2020

Historically, building more and wider roads, including motorways, was seen as a way of reducing congestion. This in turn is supposed to lower emissions.

Fuel efficiency is optimised for driving at around 80kmh and it decreases the faster you go above that. But with speed limits up to 110kmh, people are likely to drive above 80kmh on motorways — and this means building and expanding motorways will actually increase emissions.

Many countries, especially in Europe, are now looking to lower speed limits partly to reduce emissions.

New roads, new drivers

The most significant impact new and expanded motorways have on congestion and emissions is the effect on the distance people travel.

Historically, engineers assumed cars (and more pertinently their drivers) would behave like water. In other words, if you had too much traffic for the road space provided, you would build a new road or expand an existing one and cars would spread themselves across the increased road space.

Unfortunately, this is not what happens. New road capacity attracts new drivers. In the short term, people who had previously been discouraged from using congested roads start to use them.

In the longer term, people move further away from city centres to take advantage of new roads that allow them to travel further faster.

This is partly due to the “travel time budget” — a concept also known as Marchetti’s constant — which suggests people are prepared to spend around an hour a day commuting. Cities tend to grow to a diameter of one-hour travel time.

The concept is supported by evidence that cities have sprawled more as modes of transport have changed. For example, cities were small when we could only walk, but expanded along transport corridors with rail and then sprawled with the advent of cars. This all allows commuters to travel greater distances within the travel time budget.

Building or expanding roads releases latent demand — widely defined as “the increment in new vehicle traffic that would not have occurred without the improvement of the network capacity”.

This concept is not new. The first evidence of it can be found back in the 1930s. Later research in 1962 found that “on urban commuter expressways, peak-hour traffic congestion rises to meet maximum capacity”.

A considerable body of evidence is now available to confirm this. But, despite this indisputable fact, many road-improvement decisions continue to be based on the assumption that extra space will not generate new traffic.

If you build it, they will drive

A significant change occurred in 1994 when a report by the UK Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Appraisal confirmed road building actually generates more traffic.

In New Zealand, this wasn’t acknowledged until the Transport Agency’s 2010 Economic Evaluation Manual, which said:

[…] generated traffic often fills a significant portion (50–90%) of added urban roadway capacity.

Some congestion discourages people from driving (suppresses latent demand), but with no congestion traffic will fill road space over time, particularly in or near urban areas.

Interestingly, the opposite can also work. Where road space is removed, demand can be suppressed and traffic reduces without other neighbouring roads becoming overly congested.

One of the best examples of this is the closure of the Cheonggyecheon Freeway in the middle of Seoul, South Korea.

When the busy road was removed from the city, rather than the traffic moving to and congesting nearby roads, most of the traffic actually disappeared, as Professor Jeff Kenworthy from Curtin University’s Sustainable Policy Institute notes.

This suppression of latent demand works best when good alternative ways of travel are available, including high-quality public transport or separated cycle lanes.

The short answer to the question about road building and expansion is that new roads do little to reduce congestion, and they will usually result in increased emissions.

Tags failure of governance, State Government, Victoria

advocacy public policy sustainability governance governance public transport traffic congestion value for money

Traffic congestion – Is it a problem?

Post author By Roger Taylor
Post date 19/10/2020
No Comments on Traffic congestion – Is it a problem?

Congestion is frequently raised as a huge cost in our cities and it is often promoted in fearful terms like the following : Cities afraid of death by congestion.

The first paragraph reads: “A plan to widen part of Interstate 10 in metropolitan Phoenix from 14 lanes to 24 lanes is the USA’s latest giant superhighway proposal designed to ease the kind of gridlock that some planners say could stunt economic growth.”

Similar messages are being conveyed to government by companies that have a vested interest in promoting similar outcomes in Melbourne. These include Transurban, engineering construction companies, the road lobby and others who have the government’s ear and are defining the transport ‘problem’ in their terms ie in terms of congestion and potential gridlock, and solutions being to build more, larger, and vastly expensive road projects, user pays solutions and public private partnerships promoted with very slick marketing. It also includes finance companies, superannuation funds and others looking for “rent seeking” opportunities.

The current political mindset has been described by Prof Graham Currie “as a negative spiral which focuses on congestion ‘solutions’ in which politicians claim we will solve congestion with big investment. Expectations are raised (despite the fact that congestions can never be solved), congestion gets worse leading to credibility loss , followed by a positive approach which admits congestion can never be solved but will address worst impacts with more big investment thereby lowering expectations and credibility gain because congestion outcomes are as expected”.

But is congestion such a bad problem anyway. Transport analysts such as David Metz in the UK have shown that congestion can have a positive function, that there is no such thing as free flow of traffic (at average 80kph) in a city the size of Melbourne, and that congestion points filter traffic on to narrow city streets preventing terminal gridlock.

This view is supported by Wesley Marshall and Eric Dumbaugh Wesley E. Marshall & Eric Dumbaugh, 2020. “Revisiting the relationship between traffic congestion and the economy: a longitudinal examination of U.S. metropolitan areas“, and their findings that ” current concerns about traffic congestion negatively impacting the economy may not be particularly well founded. “Our findings suggest that a region’s economy is not significantly impacted by traffic congestion.

In fact, the results even suggest a positive association between traffic congestion and economic productivity as well as jobs,”. “Without traffic congestion, there would be less incentive for infill development, living in an location-efficient place, walking, biking, and transit use, ridesharing, innovations in urban freight, etc,” “And if your city doesn’t have any traffic congestion, there is something really wrong.”

If we are to get better transport outcomes in Melbourne we need to change the current political mindset. Instead of thinking about congestion as a cost, we need to persuade government that traffic congestion is an indication that we are not using the transport system efficiently and encourage it to develop policies and strategies to make this happen.

This strategy also avoids the risk of stranded assets as the economy and transport environment change in a post covid world, when social and economic conditions remain depressed and there is greater environmental pressure for change.

Tags failure of governance, State Government, Victoria

advocacy public policy sustainability governance governance public transport traffic congestion value for money

Why Is Melbourne’s Transport System So Costly?

Post author By Roger Taylor
Post date 12/10/2020
No Comments on Why Is Melbourne’s Transport System So Costly?

This has been the subject of extensive research over many years and it is not possible to discuss it in detail in this blog, other than in general terms.

The main reason our transport system is so costly is that it promotes the least efficient modes of travel and transport ie motor vehicles for personal travel and most of the freight task (some of which could be transported more efficiently on rail). This in turn demands more infrastructure to support them and has been supported by city planning and development policies, particularly since WW2.

This problem is compounded when precious funds are wasted on infrastructure we don’t need or would not need if we operated our transport system more efficiently but must still be managed and maintained at considerable cost. Some of this infrastructure takes up valuable city space that could be used for other purposes, such as housing or community facilities including parks or growing food. Transport infrastructure – particularly roads and motorways also contribute to the “heat island” effect by elevating surface temperatures which increase stress, service disruptions and reduce liveability in cities – particularly during heat waves, the frequency and intensity of which is expected to increase in the future.

Melbourne’s transport is also costly because of the way we use it. Our transport fleet needs to be more efficient with a greater focus on fuel economy and operated in a way that minimizes pollution – air, noise and groundwater. We need to minimize impacts on human health; not just from pollution but also from accidents and fatalities. Transport related health impacts manifest themselves in a wide range of diseases: cardiovascular, neurological, respiratory, muscularskeletal diseases, and severe mental health impacts. Many of these the result of physical inactivity more likely to occur in car dependent societies such as Melbourne. There are environmental impacts as well and an imperative to reduce greenhouse emissions.

These costs are under reported and tend to be dismissed as the price we pay for progress but they have a profound impact – not just at a personal level but for the economy and livability of the city as a whole. Reducing them requires good governance in the form of sound policy, strategic intervention, appropriate regulation, and effective administration to make it happen. Some cities do a far better job managing them than Melbourne so there is considerable scope for improvement.

There are also costs which some economists and politicians exaggerate such as congestion and use it to justify major infrastructure works, particularly for building new motorways. This will be the subject of my next blog.

Tags failure of governance, inefficiency, State Government, Victoria