Comment by jodrellblank
2 months ago
> There is just no way to economically justify bikelanes everywhere
Roads pre-date cars. Cars muscled in and took over, forced humans off the roads onto sidewalks. Now car drivers say it cannot be economically justified for people to move around outside cars? This is "car-brain" thinking. If the cars were banned, people could walk and cycle and wheelchair and skate on the roads their taxes are already paying for. They aren't "car roads", they are just roads - cycles are allowed on them. Car drivers don't want to share, don't want to slow down, keep hitting and killing people, can't control their vehicles safely, so demand cyclists be moved somewhere else - then complain about the cost of doing that! People say cars have taken over, they want somewhere safe from the dangers of cars, car drivers say no it's too expensive to make yourself safe from me commuting through the places you live and work!
It's crazy land. As if the only reason Christchurch exists at all is for cars to drive through.
Can you point to a report that has a cost/beneift analysis of each individual road in Christchurch? Because when Urban3 set out to find out that kind of thing in USA and Canadian cities[2] they found that the dense urban centers ("poor") were the parts of a city with enough tax revenue to cover their infrastructure costs, and the sparse suburbs ("rich") were being subsidised by them. The people in city center apartments, possibly without cars, possibly transit riders, pay for the sprawling suburbs which need long roads and infrastructure serving relatively few houses and businesses, which don't generate enough revenue to pay for those roads, sewers, water pipes, storm drains, electricity supply, etc.
New Zealand $301M is about £139M in UK pounds. Wikipedia has a list of road projects in the UK[1],including:
- Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet. 16 km, £507 million.
- Morpeth and Felton, 12.9Km, £260M. (Morpeth population: 14k)
- M54 to M6 motorway link road, 2.5km, £200M.
- Shrewsbury North West Relief Road, 6km, estimated £120M (population: 77k).
- Arundel bypass, cost £320M (population: 3.5k).
- Newark-upon-Trent bypass, 6.5Km, cost £400-£500M (population: 30k).
Building more roads doesn't reduce traffic. It makes driving easier, quicker, more convenient, which increases the temptation to drive, increases the number of journeys, incentivises and encourages driving, makes traffic worse. Can you point me to a cost/benefit analysis of spending half a billion pounds on one of these road schemes to "reduce traffic" by doing something that doesn't reduce traffic, something that makes traffic worse? Spending 2-10x the cost of rail per km, while moving 1/20th the amount of people compared to rail, polluting more than rail?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_projects_in_the_U...
> Because when Urban3 set out to find out that kind of thing in USA and Canadian cities
The national road agency NZTA in New Zealand is mostly paid for by fuel taxes and car/truck taxes. It is reasonably fair - approximately user-pays. You can find expensive roading upgrades (similar to your examples) but they are mostly paid for by car and truck users.
Local government taxes in New Zealand are dependent on property values, so AFAIK the wealthy generally subsidise the poorer. Low density suburbs are usually high value properties and they pay quite a lot more in taxes. The more rural areas are often in different council areas than Christchurch City Council - I don't think there is cross-subsidy for commuters.