In this first solutions interview in TKP 26/50, Simon Kingham calls for cost-benefit analysis that includes health benefits of more cycling & walking, along with fewer accidents & less pollution
A suggestion for you to follow up Bernard. Last night's Climate Declaration talk was by Paul Winton, of 1point5 https://1point5.org.nz/
The talk covered what he says is a major error in Climate Commissions calculations on how much we need to reduce gross emissions, and followed this up with an assessment of how we could achieve a 70% plus reduction in transport emissions, including by showing a model where you can try out the effect of different measures on transport emissions for Auckland and Melbourne. https://transport2030.org/auckland
New Zealand has changed a lot in my lifetime. One of the biggest negative effects is our over dependence on a car culture. Simon is right to focus on the impact on health, both physical and mental, and effect of emissions on climate. Our prosperity is not just about housing. It’s also about community. It’s meeting and talking to people as you walk and cycle. One of the factors not included in the cost/benefit analysis is the long term costs of building car centric suburbia. I have been fortunate enough to cycle in most of Western Europe. I have seen the changes taking place. New Zealand has a long way to go. Building motorways at 100 million dollars per kilometre is such a waste when, as Simon points out, when can get far better outcomes by building infrastructure for active transport.
Great conversation thanks Bernard. I agree 100% with your suggested cost / benefit criteria.
We need to remember Simeon Brown is just the organ grinders monkey and there's an extremely well funded cartel in the background. If the wave of outrage can be maintained, sympathetic political parties will pick up the policies and generate support. Keep it coming.
Fascinating chat; thank you. So often do we hear numbers bandied about as rationales for policy without any attempt to delve beneath the surface of them. I will remember that cost/benefit argument and the oh-so-superficial conflation of "time saving" and "productivity."
Great convo! I’m also interested to hear more about what proportion of current account deficit is coming from imports of cars/trucks and vehicle fuel. It seems to me we could be so much more resilient in many ways if we gave more people choice to live without a car and strengthened multimodal transport networks
I did some research recently. For a recent 12 month period $11 billion on fossil fuels and $8 billion on cars. That’s a significant proportion of our import costs.
The savings in health benefits to cycling, walking are immediate. Recently able to get back to walking & result is recalibrating brain to positive in 30 minutes.
Is Simon Kingham still seconded to the Ministry of Transport? If so, there is still hope for NZ. If not, we are in serious trouble, when a public servants is indirectly fired by a minister.
And this leads to a more positive change required. The CEOs of government departments and SOEs need to be on longer term contracts and have other opportunities to withstand so the vagaries of maverick ministers. It is one of the checks and balances we have lost over the years.
Unfortunately no, he's no longer a Chief Science Advisor to MOT - unsure whether this was due to resigning or his contract not being renewed, but the coalition clearly weren't accepting any advice from him in those post-election months. Same happened in some other ministries, probably because reckons and cherry-picked data are all the evidence needed these days.
What an excellent expose! So logical and rational! We don’t hear very much so lucidly presented, certainly not from this present government - more please!!
The Transport Outcomes Framework mentioned can still be found on the MOT website, including the document listing indicators etc. When it came out, it genuinely gave me hope - I used it as a base for submissions, and for my work at council. Now... who knows??
Thanks for another excellent interview. The employment of chief science advisors in government departments was an important development that had a big impact in some agencies that will hopefully survive all the cost cutting. I would like to suggest you interview Susan Krumdieck who wrote an excellent book (Transition Engineering: building a sustainable future) that debunks much of the magical thinking we’re being subjected to by government and vested interests on energy. The book considered energy return on energy input and proposes evidence based engineering solutions. Her thinking covers housing and transport among other things so is relevant to today’s interview and your mahi.
A great interview, highlighting a lot of key points about better policy advice on these matters. I find this area pretty frustrating, since I carried out (with Prof Michael Keall and others) a detailed cost-benefit examination of investing in cycling and walking a few years ago, based not on a simulation but actual data comparing NZ cities that did invest in cycling and walking versus some control cities that did not. We published the results in 2015 in an international peer reviewed journal, the J of Epidemiology and Community Health. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2015-205466
It was clear that the investment did pay off. The benefit/cost ratio was around ten to one.
Of course, CBA is not an exact science -- I know that, as an economist. Valuing death and injury is difficult. And we were careful in our study to use conservative values for the savings in carbon emissions. We should probably have tripled those values, in hindsight, but that would have encouraged criticism that we had inflated the benefits from active travel. So we were cautious. But even so, it was blindingly clear that walking and cycling investments gave high returns.
What is sad is that this sort of evidence appears to be being ignored by the current crop of Ministers such as the Minister of Transport, and possibly the sort of senior advisers they choose to listen to. We should be investing more, not less , in good evidence, and taking a broad view of the goals we are shooting for.
Ralph Chapman, Professor (Adjunct), VUW- te Herenga Waka
Thank you for an informative interview. One can't help but wonder whether Simeon Brown being a young man with a young family and who would therefore be very concerned about the future for his children and those of us all, has a deep-seated values-based reason for his disregard for the environment. Could someone please ask him whether he believes in human-made climate change. We deserve to know.
Loving Simons commentary in the media at the moment! Source of reason.
A suggestion for you to follow up Bernard. Last night's Climate Declaration talk was by Paul Winton, of 1point5 https://1point5.org.nz/
The talk covered what he says is a major error in Climate Commissions calculations on how much we need to reduce gross emissions, and followed this up with an assessment of how we could achieve a 70% plus reduction in transport emissions, including by showing a model where you can try out the effect of different measures on transport emissions for Auckland and Melbourne. https://transport2030.org/auckland
New Zealand has changed a lot in my lifetime. One of the biggest negative effects is our over dependence on a car culture. Simon is right to focus on the impact on health, both physical and mental, and effect of emissions on climate. Our prosperity is not just about housing. It’s also about community. It’s meeting and talking to people as you walk and cycle. One of the factors not included in the cost/benefit analysis is the long term costs of building car centric suburbia. I have been fortunate enough to cycle in most of Western Europe. I have seen the changes taking place. New Zealand has a long way to go. Building motorways at 100 million dollars per kilometre is such a waste when, as Simon points out, when can get far better outcomes by building infrastructure for active transport.
Great conversation thanks Bernard. I agree 100% with your suggested cost / benefit criteria.
We need to remember Simeon Brown is just the organ grinders monkey and there's an extremely well funded cartel in the background. If the wave of outrage can be maintained, sympathetic political parties will pick up the policies and generate support. Keep it coming.
"Time savings and productivity are not the same [thing]....I am not sure the minister quite understands..." Gold.
Loving this sane, rational and deliberate exposition of how policy could be made - more please and send this far and wide if you possibly can!
Fascinating chat; thank you. So often do we hear numbers bandied about as rationales for policy without any attempt to delve beneath the surface of them. I will remember that cost/benefit argument and the oh-so-superficial conflation of "time saving" and "productivity."
Great convo! I’m also interested to hear more about what proportion of current account deficit is coming from imports of cars/trucks and vehicle fuel. It seems to me we could be so much more resilient in many ways if we gave more people choice to live without a car and strengthened multimodal transport networks
I did some research recently. For a recent 12 month period $11 billion on fossil fuels and $8 billion on cars. That’s a significant proportion of our import costs.
So, use less cars and fuel, then less need to export environmentally toxic meat&dairy. Seems so simple!
This was great listening thankyou
What clear analysis in this interview. Thank you.
The savings in health benefits to cycling, walking are immediate. Recently able to get back to walking & result is recalibrating brain to positive in 30 minutes.
Another great interview, Bernard!
Is Simon Kingham still seconded to the Ministry of Transport? If so, there is still hope for NZ. If not, we are in serious trouble, when a public servants is indirectly fired by a minister.
And this leads to a more positive change required. The CEOs of government departments and SOEs need to be on longer term contracts and have other opportunities to withstand so the vagaries of maverick ministers. It is one of the checks and balances we have lost over the years.
Unfortunately no, he's no longer a Chief Science Advisor to MOT - unsure whether this was due to resigning or his contract not being renewed, but the coalition clearly weren't accepting any advice from him in those post-election months. Same happened in some other ministries, probably because reckons and cherry-picked data are all the evidence needed these days.
What an excellent expose! So logical and rational! We don’t hear very much so lucidly presented, certainly not from this present government - more please!!
The Transport Outcomes Framework mentioned can still be found on the MOT website, including the document listing indicators etc. When it came out, it genuinely gave me hope - I used it as a base for submissions, and for my work at council. Now... who knows??
https://transportnz-uat.cwp.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Paper/Transport-outcomes-framework.pdf
Hi Bernard
Thanks for another excellent interview. The employment of chief science advisors in government departments was an important development that had a big impact in some agencies that will hopefully survive all the cost cutting. I would like to suggest you interview Susan Krumdieck who wrote an excellent book (Transition Engineering: building a sustainable future) that debunks much of the magical thinking we’re being subjected to by government and vested interests on energy. The book considered energy return on energy input and proposes evidence based engineering solutions. Her thinking covers housing and transport among other things so is relevant to today’s interview and your mahi.
Thx Bernard and Simon
A great interview, highlighting a lot of key points about better policy advice on these matters. I find this area pretty frustrating, since I carried out (with Prof Michael Keall and others) a detailed cost-benefit examination of investing in cycling and walking a few years ago, based not on a simulation but actual data comparing NZ cities that did invest in cycling and walking versus some control cities that did not. We published the results in 2015 in an international peer reviewed journal, the J of Epidemiology and Community Health. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2015-205466
It was clear that the investment did pay off. The benefit/cost ratio was around ten to one.
Of course, CBA is not an exact science -- I know that, as an economist. Valuing death and injury is difficult. And we were careful in our study to use conservative values for the savings in carbon emissions. We should probably have tripled those values, in hindsight, but that would have encouraged criticism that we had inflated the benefits from active travel. So we were cautious. But even so, it was blindingly clear that walking and cycling investments gave high returns.
What is sad is that this sort of evidence appears to be being ignored by the current crop of Ministers such as the Minister of Transport, and possibly the sort of senior advisers they choose to listen to. We should be investing more, not less , in good evidence, and taking a broad view of the goals we are shooting for.
Ralph Chapman, Professor (Adjunct), VUW- te Herenga Waka
Thank you for an informative interview. One can't help but wonder whether Simeon Brown being a young man with a young family and who would therefore be very concerned about the future for his children and those of us all, has a deep-seated values-based reason for his disregard for the environment. Could someone please ask him whether he believes in human-made climate change. We deserve to know.
If you're interested in our cost-benefit study of walking and cycling, here it is: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/962
Ralph Chapman