 | Australia Pumping Empty: the Looming Peak Oil Crisis | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Friday, 18th April |  |
45 comments on Policies to Develop a Low Emissions Transport Sector in Australia
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
GAIA Host Collective
80% of trips in Europe (not sure about France individually) are still by car.
Trains have never been the primary provider of personal mobility. Before cars, there were horses. But then we had smaller populations and plenty of biofuel that had to be scraped off the streets.
Central planners have not, anywhere, adjusted to post oil needs for:
Actions based on faulty assumptions are high risk.
I do agree that France is far better off than the US. But I think it is mostly because of bicycles and nukes. They are at nearly equal risk in food distribution and farming.
I think you need to read some of Alan from Big Easy's posts regarding French plans.
They are planning a lot of urban rail, and are putting in electric cars in many cities which you can hire by the hour or day.
When you say that 80% of trips are by car, that does not take account of the fact that walking is entirely practical and popular in many European cities, not to mention scooters and such which would be early targets for electrification.
Water transport is also fairly extensively used in Europe, and they have very wide canals capable of taking large freight vessels - an early one, the Canal du Midi, was ordered to be constructed by the entirely derigiste Louis IVX.
Here is a link to some information on the different effects of European planning versus British laissez-faire on water transport.
http://www.waterways.org.uk/Waterways/WaterwaysFreight-1
France is also the premier food producer in Europe, and transport distances are modest.
I will leave the rail and public transport to the much more knowledgeable Alan, but would remark that there is a lot more to France's energy policy than nuclear power.
They are installing 50,000 air heat pumps a year, and plan to install around 5 million residential solar thermal panels in the next few years, and are gearing themselves up to build one of the largest wind power systems in Europe.
I would therefore argue that your comments are not based on sufficient information about facts on the ground in France.
I know people who have lived comfortably in France for 30 years without a car. The metro in Paris suffices for those who live there and a car is an inconvenience.
But I agree that the facts show France is still consuming a large part of its total energy supply as FF. And as far as I'm concerned, nuclear power is a short-term fix and a long-term disaster that is an example of poor planning. But the French are well-positioned, of the oil-importing countries, to be less savaged than the US which seems to suffer from a sort of idiotic leadership, corrupt through and through, constipated and increasingly beset with the debts of an occupying empire in decline...
Trains have never been the primary provider of personal mobility
Factually wrong.
For over a century, the dominant means of inter-city transportation in both the USA and Europe (and I assume Australia as well) was trains. Armies planned around them in their campaigns.
And within New Orleans (and we were not unique) streetcars were the primary means of public transportation (shoe leather #2) for over 3 decades.
We had 222 miles of tracks in a dense urban network. Where I live, there was a choice of three streetcar lines within 3 blocks.
Horses were rare for personal use, even by gold and silver dollar millionaires, and used mainly for commercial hauling.
And even today, public transportation in Warsaw still has about 60% modal share (relayed to me by friend that talked with administration there).
Best Hopes for Understanding Historical Truths,
Alan
Yep, Australia, too. Well - Melbourne, at least. Our rail network in 1929, with frequencies of trains in minutes, peak/non-peak period.
These frequencies were achieved with manual signalling and track changes - a guy with a stick changed the sign, and another guy with a crowbar moved the tracks. They're twice the frequency achieved today. Yes, they ran twice as many trains 79 years ago.
In 1950 - still with the manual signalling and track changes - Melbourne had 1.3 million people, and carried 204 million passengers; that is, there 157 train trips annually per Melburnian. Nowadays we have 3.85 million people with 180 million trips, or 47 train trips per Melburnian annually. That is, trains were taken more than three times as often in 1950 as today, and again that was with "inefficient" manual signalling and track changes.
In Amsterdam and Copenhagen today, of all trips taken, about one-third are by private car, one-third by bike or foot, and one-third by public transport - buses, trains and trams.
So really the mixture of use of modes of transport you have in a city have not much to do with anything inherent in those modes, and all to do with the way you choose to run the things.
If you have a frequent, reliable, quick and pleasant service, people will use it. This is a basic principle understood by any businessperson who didn't go broke in the first six months, but is apparently a great puzzle and surprise to many public transport operators in the West.