Sky Cabs for Auckland

Why do our cities look like they do? With such efficient and fast transport systems? Well there are many reasons. One of these is that some men had a dream. A dream where all the tram lines across America would be ripped up. They could be ripped up as they wouldn’t be needed anymore. Everyone would be using the internal combustion powered machines of these men, and sending their money to these men. To hear more about this conspiracy theory (including court victories) click here and look half way down the page for the heading "Why does the auto/oil/sprawl/highway cartel oppose the “Global Warming Bill”?".

My town of Auckland suffers from the “everything is so spread out so you need a car - everyone has a car so lets build everything spread out” circle of death. There is not the population density to make trains work for the entire city so everyone has a car.

So then what is my transport dream? I rather like the SkyCabs proposal. It is the baby of an Auckland architect Hugh Chapman. The idea is to have 4 tonne (when full) driverless cabs each side of a beam zooming across Auckland. Each cab would seat eight people. It would be designed as a super light system so the beams could be slender.

To me it is a solution that makes sense with our current technology. Sure Monorails have been up and running for a hundred years and Magnetic Levitation trains are the real state of the art transport system, but it still seems to be better than motorway designs thought up in Hitler’s Germany.

Having a beam supported by columns every 30 metres or so seems so much easier that building or widening new roads. You just have to prune some trees and make sure you don’t hit any watermains, gaslines, power cables or telecom cables when you place the piers in the footpaths. These are things you have to do to widen roads anyway. You wouldn’t have to keep maintaining such a big wide flat loadbearing area like roads require either. For the next 18 months I will be involved in a $NZ 14 million bus lane project, so I should know.
I have just designed a motorway bridge, it has eight parallel beams per span to take four lanes, the SkyCab design would only require one beam per span, and that beam would only need to be one fifth the strength of one of my eight beams. So the SkyCab system does seem so much cheaper.

I reckon a SkyCab network across Auckland spanning a couple hundred kilometres could be built cheaply, much much cheaper than any motorway or rail proposal. The question is how to get one built. There is a plan for a 600m test track to show everyone that it would work. There is enough feeling amongst Aucklanders that something needs to be done about the transport system, and enough of the feeling amongst the rest of New Zealand that “I don’t want to live in Auckland because of its traffic problems”. Winning the hearts and minds of the public will be the easy thing, to convince the powers that be to try something different from the tried and tested status quo could turn into a monumental struggle.

Market Based Environmental Protection

In Brian Easton’s draft from his new book (he’s posting it on the internet for everyone to look at), he spends time talking about a Market Based system of Environmental Protection. The system would involve everyone’s rights becoming defined. An example given is if a group wants to build a new Airport. If the Airport is more economically valuable it will buy the property from its noise complaining neighbours. If peace and quiet is more valuable, its neighbours will buy the Airport to shut it down. At first read a market based system for environmental protection seems ideology gone wrong. But because Brian Easton is a truly sensible economist who has a heart, I am trying to grapple with the suggestion.

One example of market based environmental protection is the idea of selling water rights to users of the Waitaki River in New Zealand’s South Island. If recreational fishermen get part of the allocation I will be happy. Also wanting their share is Meridian for a hydro electric power scheme and farmers wanting irrigation water. With a system of water rights, to use so many litres or percentage of total water in a year, then if one user \tries to pollute the water, downstream water users could block the polluter.

New Zealand's chief environmental legislation is the Resource Management Act (RMA). It is similar to laws in other countries such as the US National Environmental Policy Act in that it requires an Assessment of Environmental Effects. Its a good idea to make people look at an action's effects before they do it, just a shame that lawyers become the judges rather than someone who understands the physical / biological side of what is going on. The way the RMA works within a market model is if developers know who is going to object to their proposal, they can go to potential objectors and pay them money equivalent to the objectors resource rights. Then the Resource Consent Application will run so much smoother. Thus buying off objectors becomes a sign of health in a market based environmental protection system.

To me a market based system of environmental protection is totally different from what New Zealand’s right wing political parties want. These parties sound like they want a reduction in peoples rights, rather than a market based system that gives everyone defined rights which they can then exercise to stop plans they object to. As to whether or not a market based system would produce environmental results that I am happy about, I do not know. And hence whether it is just something okay in theory but dismal in practice is also a big unknown.