STUCK IN TRAFFIC, BLINDED BY BULLDUST
30 July 2008Ross Gittins
Being a denizen of the inner city I don't have much first-hand experience of traffic congestion. I have a terrible intolerance of commuting. I'd rather get walking than wait for a bus and I can't stand driving round car parks in search of a space, which is why I chose to live close to my work (and did so before the inner city became so expensive).
Our politicians profess to be greatly concerned about congestion, but are they ever likely to do much about it? Probably not.
And I confess that, if I were a pollie, I wouldn't either. The best solution to congestion is congestion. That is, ignore it and it will fix itself.
Leaked modelling by the NSW Ministry of Transport is reported to have found that, in all the 30 scenarios modelled, car use is likely to climb beyond the target set for 2016 in the State Plan.
In the base-case scenario - continuing with the present transport plan for Sydney - the number of vehicle kilometres travelled would climb by 11 per cent to 144 million a day by 2016.
Even under the best scenario - in which a CBD parking levy of $50 a day is imposed, motorway tolls are increased to $1 a kilometre and petrol prices rise to $2.26 a litre - car use would still increase by 2 per cent by 2016, we're told.
Oh dear, that does sound bleak. But there are a few points to make. The first is that, though a 2 per cent increase has been portrayed as a failure, limiting the growth over 10 years to just 2 per cent would be no mean feat.
After all, during the 27 years to 2004, car travel more than doubled in all capital cities. So I'd count a 2 per cent increase over 10 years as a near miss.
The more important thing to say, however, is that whenever you hear the word "modelling", your bulldust detector should go into overdrive. In the debate about the Rudd Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme, I've been amused to see the Opposition and various business groups clamouring to see "the Treasury modelling". How can we know what the scheme involves before we see the modelling, they ask.
A better question would be, what makes you think seeing the modelling results will make you any the wiser? To me, demanding to see modelling is akin to crying, "con me, baby, con me". Blind me with science.
The simple truth is that human behaviour is extraordinarily hard to predict. And the modellers' use of computers and sets of fancy equations doesn't change that fact. Don't forget the sterling efforts of those modellers who predicted how many motorists would use the Cross City and Lane Cove tunnels.
The truth is that modelling gives the unwary a false sense of certainty about the future. That's particularly true of the way politicians use modelling, quoting cut-down versions of the results as though they've been written on tablets of stone by the hand of God, without ever mentioning the reams of qualifications that go with them.
Before you take much notice of any modelling results, you have to know all about the many hidden assumptions that have been made to produce them, and which particular variables are doing most to drive them. In the case of economic models, you have to decide whether you agree with the particular economic theory on which they're based.
So you'll forgive me if I don't believe that doing all those nasty things to discourage car use would have only a limited effect. Since we've never tried those measures before, how could the modellers know how we'd react?
What we do know from recent experience - including the Cross City and Lane Cove debacles - is that motorists are quite sensitive to price changes. We can see this also in the way the rise in petrol prices has seen people flocking back to public transport - to the point where we're already close to the target for 2016 set in the State Plan.
And I'll be amazed if, by 2016, the price of petrol is anything like as low as $2.26 a litre. Indeed, I'd say that, just two years into the forecast period, the modelling has already been confounded by reality.
The rise in petrol prices has, of course, been brought about by forces over which our politicians have no control, but about which they've been terribly regretful and apologetic. So one thing I do believe is that it will take them a mighty long time to summon the courage to introduce congestion charges.
Traffic congestion occurs because so many of us want to live in big cities, travel to and from work or school at much the same time, and do so by private car.
So far, governments' main attempt to reduce congestion has been by increasing the supply of motorways and tunnels. It's been a dismal failure. Any reduction in travel times has quickly disappeared as more people seize the opportunity to drive their cars to work. What this suggests is that there's a certain level of congestion discomfort people are prepared to accept in return for being able to drive rather than use public transport.
If so, there's nothing governments can do to reduce congestion by increasing the supply of good roads. And there's probably a natural ceiling on the degree of discomfort people will accept before switching back to public transport.
It's true that governments could reduce the demand for road use by making it more expensive, but this would be highly controversial. Congestion rations our use of roads in peak hours on the basis of first in, first served. Congestion charges ration road use by price rather than queue.
When people oppose the use of prices, what they're saying is that they prefer to disguise the cost of congestion, paying for it in time behind the wheel, not cash. If I were a pollie, I'd accept that preference.
But I'd also bet on the continuing rise in the price of petrol, limiting future car use and the congestion problem. I'd give up on motorways and put all my money and effort into improving and expanding public transport.
© 2008 Copyright John Fairfax Holdings Limited
The Sydney Morning Herald
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