Alan Evans - Apostle Of Our Petroleum Past

The NRMA and its president Alan Evans are getting plenty of press as a result of high oil prices.

Unfortunately he is taking advantage of this opportunity to stick his head in the sand and demand a return to the cheap oil past, rather than trying to understand what this means for Australian motorists in future.

Last week, Mr Evans was unrealistically demanding that oil companies must absorb petrol price hikes rather than passing them onto motorists. While this sort of thing gets plenty of media attention, it isn't ever going to actually happen - and if it occurred on a regular basis, it would eventually result in oil and petrol shortages as the oil companies decide to sell their product elsewhere.

This week, Mr Evans is complaining about cycle lanes - apparently the small amounts of money devoted to slowly building out a decent cycle network are unjustifiable in his book, and the state government should instead be trying to turn these into an additional car lane on thoroughfares like Epping Road, ignoring the fact that another car lane would simply add further to peak hour congestion, and would costs orders of magnitude more than the cycle lanes. What next - get rid of the bus lanes and train tracks as well ?


TAXPAYERS are pouring millions of dollars into lining motorways with cycleways that are barely used - and are building a new bicycle lane the NRMA says will effectively cost $300,000 for every cyclist that uses it. Despite pleas from Sydney's Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, for bicycles to reclaim the streets, the motoring organisation says residents are sticking to four wheels.

In a submission to the Roads and Traffic Authority it accuses the Government of wasting millions on cyclists at the expense of motorists, who are forced to battle worsening congestion as lanes are removed from busy roads.

The cycling lane on the M2 attracted just 130 cyclists a day. The Iemma Government is building a cycleway alongside choked Epping Road, despite as few as 25 cyclists using that corridor each day
At $7.6 million for the Epping Road cycleway, the NRMA says that would amount to spending $300,000 per cyclist on a lane that is unlikely to attract many more riders, based on the experiences of the M2 motorway.

The NRMA wants the Epping Road cycleway to be scrapped to allow lanes to be widened for trucks and cars.

The Westlink M7 cycleway added $60 million to the cost of that project, a legacy of the former roads minister Carl Scully.

The Government has paid $25 million to Connector Motorways, which owns the Lane Cove Tunnel, to delay narrowing Epping Road from three lanes to one in each direction, leaving room for a bus lane and cycleway. The intention of narrowing the road is to funnel motorists into the tunnel. ...

Cr Moore has accused the Government of being anti-bicycle and pro-car, and has flagged a plan for a cheap bicycle rental system in the city.

But the president of the NRMA, Alan Evans, questioned the value of cycling lanes, and said Sydney motorists would suffer when the Epping Road-Lane Cove Tunnel roadworks were completed. "When you have high traffic volumes of more than 35,000 vehicles per day, this is not a sensible use of resources," Mr Evans said. "Cyclists appear to be the only winners on Epping Road, at the expense of thousands of motorists."

A spokesman for the RTA said the cycleway would attract many more cyclists than those now using Epping Road. He said the NRMA's figure was not a true reflection of how popular the new cycleway would be once completed. "If you give cyclists a dedicated facility instead of riding in normal traffic, they will use it," the spokesman said.

They're funny chaps, the NRMA, RACV and so on. They don't represent their members very well.

The best way to reduce congestion is to support public transport. For example, we recently paid $2.5 billion for 46km of roads called "EastLink". That's $55 million/km. By comparison, over in Perth they paid $12 million/km for their most recent train line expansion - that was for rolling stock, stations, tunnels and everything. So $2.5 billion could have got us 192km of rail lines. We actually only have 400km of them in Melbourne, so 192km would be a 48% increase.

Now, our 400km of railways provide us with 8% of all trips. So 592km at the same rate of use would give us 12% of all trips. So the 81% of journeys now undertaken by car could change to 77%. That's be a 5% reduction in the number of trips taken by cars, thus a 5% reduction in congestion across all of Melbourne.

Will EastLink give us a 5% reduction in congestion across all Melbourne? Certainly they're not claiming it will.

If you want to reduce road congestion, the most cost-effective means of doing so is with mass transit. Evans should represent his members better, and support public transport.

I have let my Automobile Association membership lapse after 40 years of support. The age of Happy Motoring is about to wind down and the sooner the better.

The NRMA and other pro-car lobby groups are household brand names that rely on automatic year-in year-out renewal of memberships for income. How hard would it be to nail their colours to the planet-killers mast with a few telegenic demo's, some letter writing, & one of two celebrity broadsides (first problem: find a celebrity with a spine). If BP can spend millions on new ads claiming to be progressive on global warming, it must hurt NRMA's brand to be tarred as malignant fossil fools.

If thats too moderate for you, maybe activist cyclists could declare all cars with NRMA membership stickers fair game - it is possible to dent two panels in one pass with end of your handlebar, with a little practice.

I've often wondered if it'd be called criminal vandalism to make up and plant bumper stickers, "doing my bit for global warming!"

I suppose if it isn't under law, they'd quickly change the law to make it so, a bit like how in Luddite days they changed the law to give you a life sentence for destroying a weaving loom...