The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | Alan Evans

Alan Evans - Apostle Of Our Petroleum Past

Posted by Big Gav on January 10, 2008 - 8:24am in The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: alan evans, nrma, oil prices [list all tags]

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.