To Jenny Chetwynd
Barry Palmer, Auckland 1061 20th September 2011.
To Jenny Chetwynd
Regional Director Central,
NZ Transport Agency,
PO Box 5084,
Wellington 6145.
Dear Jenny
I, amongst many others, have read your reply of 9th September 2011 to Ken Crispen (sic) and understand the constraints you work under. It was of concern, however, that Ken Crispin had to make a number of requests before he received a reply. Your letter merely confirmed what an increasing number of the public have long known, that you are not representative of land transport, but of road transport. Your terms of reference under Government Policy restrict your activity and I understand this is not your responsibility, but that of the minister whom your organisation reports to. This is copied to him for his attention.
Having established my terms of reference I can now comment on your letter. Many of us now consider your organisation unable to make a considered decision on land transport but a biased decision on roads the only option available to you. As a retired professional engineer of 40 years I would find this situation stifling, frustrating and annoying. It would be an affront to my professionalism. We apparently don’t have transport engineers in New Zealand as the rest of the world does, but roading engineers who can only think one-dimensionally. This is exacerbated by years of successive governments’ policies, an insidious cycle we as a country have been unable to break free of. As a result we are known internationally as myopic lopsided road-dominated country with a powerful road lobby determined to preserve the status quo irrespective of the worrying signs appearing world wide indicating the fallacy of this policy. This mindset has been exhibited in another area of human activity where all the signs of a world economic meltdown were apparent to many, but not the participants, many of whom traded until the last day blindly leaping over the financial precipice. This situation is reoccurring right now. I think this is a good example of the circumstances your land transport organisation is in at the moment.
The minister will be receiving a letter after the rugby world cup expressing in depth our misgivings of this government’s policies of putting all its eggs in the one basket. The government was and is happy to accept the 2006 pronouncements of the IEA that Peak Oil would not occur before 2030, but has studiously avoided any mention of the latest revised findings by the same organisation that Peak Oil has in fact occurred in 2006.
The minister in a letter to another person has acknowledged the continued rise of oil prices, but naively believes that biofuels and electric cars will smoothly effect a transition to alternative fuels. Nowhere have biofuels been produced in sufficient quantities and at tolerable prices and without subsidies to replace fossil fuels. The August issue of Scientific America P40 is the latest of a long line of scientific publications that expose the fallacy of placing faith in biofuels as our economic saviour. The alternative of an electric car will cost over $100,000 initially with a battery set change costing $10,000 every 3 to 4 years. Its range on one charge is a maximum of 160 km. Prices will come down and range increase, but will not come within the purchase capabilities of the ordinary person.
An oil shortage could occur as suddenly as our 2008 world financial meltdown[1]. With New Zealand producing for a limited time only about one third of our consumption we would be paralyzed. The latest IEA recommendation is that we should conserve fossil fuel as vigorously as we can. What are we doing? Building more roads and encouraging more dependency on fossil fuels. We are heading for our own economic precipice and refuse to recognize it. What happened to the hydrogen economy so loudly lauded a short time ago to seamlessly take over our energy requirements? It has disappeared from everyone’s vocabulary and is probably 50 years away. Likewise full scale replacement of fossil fuels is probably 20 to 30 years away when oil deprivation will have long wrought its havoc[2].
A train of 40 wagons replaces 40 trucks and uses 25% of the fuel they consume to achieve the same outcome. Wouldn’t that be a way of conserving fossil fuel? Electrify rail and another 40% energy saving on top of that is the result. We could use our own home grown electricity generation with the potential to go 100% renewable production. We are then independent of oil price and scarcity. And we do not export large amounts of funds overseas. Several Scandinavian countries have achieved this already. Your skewed accounting which alleges trucks are cheaper than rail will no longer be the paramount factor. The minister has apparently suppressed at least four studies favorable to rail that we know about[3].
Hopefully alternative fuels will provide enough energy to drive a vastly reduced truck fleet where it is appropriate to use them[4]. Electrically driven trucks may fill some of the gap left for short runs.
In the light of this much abbreviated statement of the position the country is in, the minister should set up an impartial land transport organisation. Its immediate task would be to balance the development of rail and road as complementary modes and this means preserving all the rail lines existing. He should stop hiding behind the façade that this is Kiwi Rail’s job knowing full well that if he doesn’t provide more funding these lines at risk will have to be closed. Otherwise he will, with everyone having the benefit of hindsight, be known in history as the minister who needlessly paralyzed areas of NZ which would otherwise have been serviced. Many other lines closed and ripped up should be reinstated. This includes the former line north of Gisborne.
As the father of four doctors and an electrical engineer, I have been well-versed in the health dangers of air pollution and noise. I know about the claims of the Euro 5 diesel engine and its ability to cut exhaust by 80 %. The fact that is not stated is that of the 20% left behind the most lethal particle known as the PM 2.5 (µm) remains unfiltered. With its < 2.5 micrometre diameter it evades all attempts to capture it where even the human nose fails and as a result it lodges and accumulates in the alveoli of the lungs[5]. When enough of these rupture emphysema sets in or cancer is a likely alternative. In the bloodstream it leads to heart disease or because it can penetrate the barrier to the brain, damage to this organ ensures. Thousands are experiencing these consequences now, others have prematurity died.
There was a well-known story in my day of a structural engineer having to face an angry crowd of protesters on the safety of the floor to ceiling glass construction in a high-rise building. He turned up to face the crowd on one of the floors well above the ground where he was asked by the group what he was going to do about it. He took off his coat lunged at a window and with a sickening blow hit the glass with kung fu kick. He bounced back onto the floor picked himself up, dusted off, put on his coat and walked out amidst utter silence.
Have you, the ministry senior staff and the minister, got the same confidence in your product? Will you take up residence along an arterial route with forty to eighty noisy polluting trucks passing your door day and night every day or would you prefer one train of up to eighty wagons passing once or twice a day or night through your city but on a more remote route from the residential area, producing less than a quarter of the pollution or if it is electrified then no pollution? If the answer is “No” then I think you have to look hard at what you are doing.
The minister must set up a NZ Transport Agency that truly reflects the whole spectrum of land transport that gives equal status to both modes.
I have attached an amended copy of the letter under your name by your ghostwriter to Ken Crispin better reflecting your organisation’s present activities. Double strike-outs indicate redundant words which in some cases are condescending.
Yours sincerely,
Barry Palmer
Barry Palmer, BE Mech.Eng.
Life Member of the Campaign for Better Transport. Auckland.
[1] See “18 reasons why oil supply could end abruptly” printed separately
[2] See “August Issue of Scientific America P40” as an example of a growing list of papers on validity of
biofuels.
[3] 1) "Land Transport Pricing Study. Environmental externalities. Discussion paper." March 1996. Ministry of Transport.
2) "Promoting sustainability in New Zealand rail system NZTA Study 2009."
3) The Bolland report 2010, to Ministry of Transport.
4) The IPENZ study sent to Ministry of Transport 2006 to show that Rail pays most of its way and road transport does not.
[4] If all arable land was given over to fuel production in the USA then 18% of the fuel requirements there
would be fulfilled. Since non-arable land producing switch grass has a similar statistic and in addition a
satisfactory rapid acting enzyme turning cellulose into ethanol has not been isolated or produced.
[5] See typical article on the dangers of diesel exhaust