More on scooters

Posted: April 23, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Cars & traffic, Public transport | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

WordPress wouldn’t let me upload my planned post last night or early this morning about Melbourne City Councils’ proposals for apartments along tram routes, so I’m trying something more modest. Fortuitously, hot on the heels (top box?) of my post earlier this week about motor scooters, The Age has some related stories today. The first is Surge in motor cycle deaths hits move to slash tolls. The second relates to my invocation of Hanoi as what Melbourne might look like in the future (although as one reader points out, whether Hanoi will look anything like it does now is a good question): A (top gear) trip through Vietnam by scooter .

And there’s also a story on yet another proposal for a fast Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney rail link: Green dream: fast-rail link to Sydney. I’ll definitely want to take a closer look at this one.

Will the streets of Melbourne look more like Hanoi than Manhattan in the future?

Posted: April 21, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Cars & traffic, Cycling, Public transport | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

I’ve believed for some years that motor scooters and motorcycles are likely to become a much more important component of Melbourne’s transport system if the cost of fuel increases dramatically.

Scooters and small motorcycles are extremely popular in cities like Hanoi where, like the probable Melbourne of the future, the cost of transport is very high relative to incomes.

Like cars, scooters offer a very high degree of personal mobility. They also have the advantage that they can ‘thread’ their way through congested traffic, are easy to park and are light on fuel. Read the rest of this entry »

Energy efficiency in transport – some surprises!

Posted: April 1, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Cars & traffic, Energy & GHG, Public transport | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The latest edition of the Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 28 was released last year by the US Department of Energy (Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy).

I’ve derived the accompanying graph from Chapter 2 of the report. There are a couple of points of interest here.

In particular, the data shows that load factors are very important. Although public transport is more energy efficient than cars when it is fully loaded, it has to operate at off-peak times and on secondary routes, when patronage is low. Read the rest of this entry »

Transport disadvantage in the suburbs

Posted: March 22, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Public transport | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

One of the perennial concerns about suburban sprawl is transport disadvantage. But just how significant is the problem? Most importantly, is it a problem that can only be tackled effectively by ‘abolishing’ fringe growth and replacing it with multi unit housing within established suburbs?

Research done by Currie and Sensbergs and Currie and Delbosc on outer suburban Melbourne gives a sense of the dimensions of this issue. The data shows that 94% of outer suburban households have at least one car and 61% have at least two.

Compared to the 1970s, much of the transport disadvantage associated with outer suburban living has been mitigated by higher car ownership and to some extent by social infrastructure levies on developers.

However disadvantage is usually associated with low incomes. Currie and Sensberg found that 18% of lower income households living in the outer suburbs don’t have a car. They make up around 8% of all outer suburban households or about 1.5% of all  households in Melbourne. They are typically older, retired pensioners living alone and unemployed single mothers in rented accommodation. Read the rest of this entry »

More on rail link to airport

Posted: March 13, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Airports & aviation, Infrastructure, Public transport | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

The Age is continuing its campaign for a new rail line to be built from the city centre to Melbourne Airport (I discussed this previously on March 2 – Possible rail link to Melbourne airport). There are also a couple of follow-up letters this morning supporting the idea of a rail link.

In a story yesterday, Airport ‘exploiting’ public on parking fees, The Age reported on a new analysis by the ACCC of airport performance in Australia, noting that parking charges account for 20% of Melbourne Airport’s revenue but just 8% of Sydney Airport’s.

The Age’s reporter, Ari Sharp, said the figures, “could add to calls for a rail link to Melbourne Airport to help overcome the growing problems – and costs – of getting there by car or bus”.

However contrary to The Ages’s apparent inference, the difference in the Sydney and Melbourne figures does not appear to be caused by a rapacious parking operator ripping off travellers who lack an alternative to driving.

What the story didn’t say was that Sydney Airport’s revenue from charges to airlines is $446 million, compared to Melbourne Airport’s comparatively modest $197 million. Parking revenues are much the same ($88m and $95m respectively), hence it’s not at all surprising that parking makes up a much larger proportion of total revenue in Melbourne than Sydney. Read the rest of this entry »

Possible rail link to Melbourne Airport

Posted: March 2, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Airports & aviation, Infrastructure, Public transport | Tags: , , , , | 15 Comments

The Age ran an editorial this week arguing that a rail line should be built from the CBD to Melbourne Airport to deal with growing traffic congestion on the principal radial freeway route.  I have a lot of difficulty seeing how this could ever work financially, much less why it should be a priority compared to other potential transport projects.   I’ve been on both the new Sydney and the new Brisbane airport rail lines and judging by the low patronage I’m not surprised they’ve both been in deep financial difficulty. Read the rest of this entry »

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