The Wrong Side of my Car

The blog that wants to go obsolete

Decarbonising transport

One of the standard woke concerns today is decarbonizing transport. Get around without putting so much CO₂ into the atmosphere. This has good reasons, cars are big energy users in households, comparable to space heating and hot water *1.

But how? Many solutions are proposed, but most boil down to stop wasting so much energy with driving cars around all the time.

So, here’s my review of the commonly touted options. Could they work in Auckland?

Electric cars

A favourite of the rich and the smug. Now you can signal your virtues without changing your lifestyle.

The big picture has two problems: first, not enough people will be able to afford them soon enough, and second, even if they could the saving is pretty modest — it is estimated that you’re still getting half of the lifetime CO₂ of a petrol car.

And then you still hvae all those other issues:

• still dangerous for people who are not inside a car
• still hugely disrupting for city life. The people running shopping malls know this, and will not allow you to drive inside their malls. Even with a disability card.
• still needs parking and roads, which still rules out most functional urban development.

My guess: it will happen but it won’t matter as much as you’d hope.

Electric bicycles

Right, let’s look at the advantages of e-bikes:

• Relatively affordable. Less crunch on battery production.
• Roughly as convenient and fast as driving a car for many trips.
• Very few negative external effects (like noise and imposed danger)
• Fast enough to work in even the most retarded suburban street grids in Auckland.
• Auckland has a mild climate: hardly any frost, no snow, no ridiculous wind most of the time, no 40°C summer heat.
• Compared to cars and public transport, the infrastructure is cheap.
• Really, this is as close to a silver bullet as you’ll get

So what is the catch for JAFA like me?

• Horrible cultural taboo, among people but especially within transport planning.
• Not getting cyclists killed is not a priority. Did I mention taboos? Here’s another one: decreasing the amount of on-street parking.
• COVID-19 has shown that Auckland is exceptionally resistant against change in this area.

In an environment like this, it is a very blurry line between suggesting someone to try taking up cycling, and outright wishing someone dead. Good intentions or not.

My guess… hard to predict. Since bike lanes are so easy to build and cheap, a lot can change in a few years. But don’t be surprised if that taboo holds out for another decade or so.

A factor working against this is that just like many people buying second hand cars instead of new ones, many people may get left out until there is a solid second hand market for bikes. *2

Plain old bicycles

If you’re looking for an e-bike it is worth looking for plain old bicycles as well. Many areas in Auckland are eminently passable on a pushbike. (not everywhere, here in Birkdale even my e-bike is distinctively struggling with the hills). And since you’re usually slower you probably won’t go as far.

But if that reduced range is OK, you can buy a much cheaper bike, one that doesn’t have an expensive battery that can go flat.

But, same crappy circumstances here in Auckland, so the same low expectations apply.

Public transport

A hipster favourite, public transport proves you can get around without a car. You Just Don’t Get It. Why don’t you just move to the right area?

What they forget is that the right area only occupies the western half of the isthmus, and that there are only so many homes over there, mostly thanks to the magic of Heritage Protection and Single House Zones.

People living elsewhere will often find that to get where they want to go with PT, they should already have gone to their bus stop an hour ago. They’re lucky if they can make it there and back at all before dark.

My guess: we’re just too dumb *3 to build a city where it will work, so it won’t happen at scale. Auckland also lacks regional level transit between major town centres, making it debilitatingly slow for longer distances.

Actually living in a town centre

It is mind bending how something can be this obvious, yet so completely alien over here.

I mean. Duh. If you don’t want to spend money and energy on transporting yourself, then be close to where you want to go for your daily errands.

Unfortunately, our town centres all tend to look like this:

With a lot of empty space above those shops, and not a lot of places to live. And the immediate vicinity is just the standard low density blanket sprawl. (The area around Birkenhead is at least is somewhat more developed, but this remains quite unusual.)

My guess: not going to happen as long as we think of mixed use buildings as some sort of dark overseas sorcery. I probably don’t have a single such building within 5 km of where I live.

Or living in the city

Certainly living in the city rules — everything is so close by that you can walk. The ultimate decarbonation.

And convenience. Let me assure you that walking to shops is a lot more convenient than driving and finding parking.

However… well I could go on forever. Shit post after shit post. These are old, and they just don’t want to go obsolete. If you live in an apartment over there, the city makes it clear at literally every turn that you’re a third rate citizen living in a slum.

Meanwhile the moat of ultra low density zoning around the city centre (especially to the west) ensures that the area where getting around just on foot makes sense will never grow.

My guess: mixed bag. Fancy new areas like Wynyard are doing well. Others are left behind. Very densely populated streets like Hobson Street look exactly the same as 10 years ago, with even small improvements delayed by years.

The thing to watch is Access for Everyone, our plan to bring the city past its 1960’s motoring heritage. I really hope the council has the guts to actually do it.

Now, the things people are actually doing:

Buying even older cars

Yeah, them old dungers on our streets. NZ is unusual among Western countries that it doesn’t have emission testing at all. So you can buy yours for $2,000 or even less. No wonder it is such a subversive option for the poor. Granted, it will be expensive in the long term, but if you don’t have the up-front capital for something better, then what?

Buying utes instead of cars

Once upon a time it was still considered ridiculous to buy utes when a car would do perfectly fine.

But reality has caught up. SUVs and crossovers are old news. It looks like regular cars are starting to attract a hipster tax. A new Corolla starts at $29,990, while a Hilux Double Cab starts… also at $29,990.

The Hilux of course uses much more fuel. And it is much more dangerous to other people *4. The top 10 vehicle sales will tell you how much people care. (hint: not much)

Paris and Tokyo

Climage change is urgent. Certainly. Your government will take it seriously, and sign agreements to do something about it. Starting 5 years from now.

As an individual, it is pretty grating. You’re getting told to do things like not driving so much, but if you try to do so the city will (quite literally) tell you at every turn you’re now a third rate citizen. If you care about climate change, the right thing to do will come with serious degradation of lifestyle.

And you know, this degradation is completely unnecessary. There’s no rational reason to refuse to build bike lanes. Or to refuse even simple things like maintaining footpaths in densely populated city neighbourhoods.

If you like people who do their part, here’s a top tip: stop showing such overt disdain for them.

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