WestConnex – the general arguments against

The State Government has committed to a massive road proposal from Infrastructure NSW. It involves building 33 km of road, extending and widening both the M5 and the M4 and providing a link between them, via a long tunnel under the inner west of Sydney. Costs are expected to be $16.8 billion over at least a decade. A business case justifying the proposal was due in June, 2013. For such detail as there is and the Government’s positive take on the proposal (before the case is developed) go to http://engage.haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/westconnexand take a look at the promotional video released by Infrastructure NSW at video-summary-of-westconnex. For a lighter moment, have a look at the WasteConnex video.

Why does WCPS oppose WestConnex?

The Society has two major sets of concerns about the Westconnex proposal

1. The proposals for the M5East section will have very serious implications for Bexley North (more traffic) and Wolli Creek (moved, possibly concreted) and its bushland (hundreds of trees and associated plants and animals destroyed). See  details of the impact on the Wolli Creek Valley.
2. But while the Society’s local energy may stem from this impact and our suggested alternatives concentrate on the southern (M5E) section of WestConnex that affect us, we are more broadly focused on the continuation of the huge investment imbalance between rail and road that has been evident in NSW since the Second World War. The Government paper acknowledges “the WestConnex scheme will be, by a large margin, the most expensive motorway development for Sydney to date.”  We support targeted investment in public transport alternatives that would have greater and more sustainable benefit to inner west, south-west and western Sydney residents at a fraction of the cost of WestConnex.

Will WestConnex solve traffic congestion?

Congestion and resulting economic inefficiency is the Govt’s key rationale for building the WestConnex project, but what if new roads won’t solve congestion and there are other, more cost-effective, ways of tackling that issue?

Consider two prospective scenarios:

1. The old assumptions continue to hold true (demand for car travel is unresponsive to petrol price increases; there will still be an ample supply of petrol).

• NSW has tried for decades to build its way out of road congestion. It hasn’t worked. While sat in a car in a moving parking lot in peak hour, the obvious answer may seem to be to create more road space to speed things up, but it isn’t.
• WestConnex would no doubt initially improve travel times again, because it creates more road space. But that would in turn attract more drivers to the road – this is the well-known induced traffic effect – and build to congestion levels again over time. We all know this ourselves from a range of observable experiences: the initial M5E was congested within two years of opening; Los Angeles has little public transport and 20-lane highways that are congested.

On this scenario, congestion would be back in the medium term, but the money for public transport alternatives would have been spent.

1. New knowledge corrects the old assumptions:

• There will not be ample petrol in future. The passing of the peak in global oil production from all sources (known as peak oil) will limit fuel availability. This will push up petrol prices, making car travel more expensive and demand for public transport greater;
• Inevitable carbon pricing and a prospective world economic recovery that worsens the excess of demand over supply for oil, will also push up petrol prices, as well as tunnel construction costs;
• We now know that people do respond to increased petrol prices – public transport patronage is going up across Australia and a common travel measure (vehicle kilometres travelled per person) has been in decline for nine years, predating even the global financial crisis. For a more detailed look at the data view this video from EcoTransit Sydney.

The NSW Government paper makes no mention of any of these points. We believe that under this scenario the medium-term outcome will be that traffic drops and WestConnex becomes a very expensive white elephant.

read more:

http://www.wollicreek.org.au/wolli_valley/issues/more-on-westconnex-the-...

May be the tunnels could be used as under-water canals for gondolas...

Japan’s Mazda Motors is planning to make all its car models electric-based, including petrol hybrids, by the early 2030s, according to Japan's Kyodo news agency.

It is reportedly aimed at catching up with the other producers who have already switched to new strategies to retain sales in the key markets as emission regulations tighten globally.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/business/403439-mazda-join-electric-strategy/

Less than a decade ago, four separate carmakers were employing tens of thousands of Australians to build cars. Now there are none.

Australia no longer makes cars because it couldn’t sell them. Foreign trade barriers and a chronically overpriced Australian dollar killed exports, while at home a rising abundance of imported brands, many backed by their own governments, steadily swamped the local offering.

The death blow was the Abbott government’s 2014 decision to terminate public subsidies. With the last vestige of government protection gone, market obstacles became insurmountable.

Manufacturing – making things – is an important marker of success for every country, every society. So should we have kept some sort of car-making industry going here? I think so, but certainly not in the form we got used to.

Petrol and diesel motor vehicles have dominated the lives of everyone born in the 20th century. Now we are having to face consequences. Hobart-based economist Rana Roy has been looking at these consequences, and has found a steadily mounting global crisis in the making.

A public policy economist, born in India and educated in Australia and the UK, Roy is a champion of civil society everywhere. He is a generalist in an increasingly specialised world, a builder of bridges between silos of learning and government and business.

In recent years, supported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Health Organisation, he has been examining the causes and economic cost of air pollution, and with Norwegian Nils Axel Braathen has recently completed a report for the OECD.

Roy and Braathen have found strong evidence that road transport is now the leading cause of deaths related to air pollution in both Europe and the US, and heading in the same direction in emerging economies in Asia, Africa and South America.

read more:

http://southwind.com.au/2017/10/24/we-have-to-talk-about-road-transport/

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 Chinese EV may be the new Tesla killerBYD sold the most electric cars worldwide in the first half of 2022, industry data shows

 

Chinese auto producer BYD sold more than 641,000 electric vehicles in the first six months of the year, making the company the world’s top EV maker in terms of sales, Chinese media reports, citing industry data.

The results are better than Elon Musk’s Tesla, which delivered 564,000 electric cars during the same period. The figure marks a 315% year-on-year increase in sales for the Chinese EV maker.

Last month, BYD announced plans to supply batteries to Tesla “very soon.” According to the company’s latest annual report, rechargeable batteries and photovoltaic cells made up 7.29% of BYD’s revenue pool in 2021, dwarfed by the more than 50% share taken up by auto and related products.

 

BYD was a battery manufacturer first, now BYD is in Cuba with electric buses........ amd other chinese electric vehicle companies are in Africa and Russia.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/business/558369-chinese-ev-outsells-tesla/

 

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Australia's electric vehicle (EV) uptake is lagging, but tax experts say they have a "silver bullet solution" that would both drive sales and help increase the supply of cheaper second-hand EVs.

Key points:

• Business fleets account for 40 per cent of light vehicle sales, but almost none of these are EVs
• Federal taxation laws act as a disincentive, experts say
• Changing this could rapidly drive EV uptake and provide consumers with a supply of cheaper, second-hand EVs

 

The Commonwealth-funded, climate-focused research centre RACE for 2030 has released a report recommending tax reforms similar to those in Europe to encourage fleet managers to buy EVs, rather than internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs).

Prepared by tax experts from Monash and Griffith universities, the report describes a woeful situation: business fleets (which include both government and company vehicles) account for 40 per cent of light vehicle sales, but almost none of these are EVs.

Of the more than 600,000 passenger vehicles and light SUVs sold to business fleets in 2020, only 488 were EVs.

A major reason for this was federal taxation laws, said Anna Mortimer, a tax expert at Griffith University and co-author of the report.

But this failure was also an opportunity, she added.

Fleet managers are responsible for huge numbers of vehicle purchases. Providing tax incentives to buy EVs would rapidly drive up the total EV uptake.

"Business fleets are the silver bullet solution to EV uptake."

Can tax reform make EVs as cheap as ICEVs?

Last week, the federal government made EVs (priced below a luxury car threshold) exempt from fringe benefits tax (FBT) and import tariffs.

These reforms were welcome, but not enough, Dr Mortimer said.

To illustrate the price gap between EVs and the equivalent ICEVs, the report uses the example of a Hyundai Kona EV, which was $28,900 more expensive than the ICEV version.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-07-06/electric-vehicle-uptake-tax-reform-race-for-2030-report/101210180

 

 

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