Pragmatus J

PUBLIC HOME OWNERSHIP

2022-03-30T10:46:00.000+10:00

PUBLIC HOME OWNERSHIP SYSTEMS

A TOOL FOR BOOSTING AFFORDABLE ACCOMMODATION

In Australia, when we talk about public housing we are usually talking about government owned public rental housing systems that provide low cost rental accommodation for low income earners (and public servants who live in remote areas). However, in places like Singapore, public housing can also mean systems that help people on limited incomes buy a home of their own instead of renting.

Done well, Public Home Ownership (PHO) schemes have a number of attractions:

Users get the security, freedom to modify and control over decisions about pets etc. that comes with owning a home.
Governments don’t have to have the huge amount of money tied up in the system. (PHO users buy the houses from the government. These payments can then be used to acquire more accommodation that, in turn, will be sold to new public home owners and…..)
The housing affordability problems caused by private housing being used as an investment can be avoided by insisting that houses bought under PHO schemes can only be sold to the PHO at prices that reflect general inflation rates, not the crazy things happening in the private home market.)

DETAILS:

The following sets out for details for one proposal that might be used in Australia. This proposal involves the setting up of government owned public home ownership corporations (PHO Corps.) A PHO Corp may:

Build or otherwise acquire and modify basic, low cost housing.
Sell these homes to people who do not own a home. Price will be based on the cost of acquiring and modifying the home. (NOT the private home market.) Government subsidies may be used to reduce the cost to new home owners.
Help the home buyer buy the house and obtain loans.
Buy back the home when the owner wants to sell. (The buy back price will be based on something like general inflation, not the private home market. (This is a critical part of the policy because it stops the PHO system being distorted by those seeking capital gains.) The buy back price may take account of the cost of some modifications. (However, gold plating the taps won’t count.)
Allow an owner to rent all or part the house. (Helps stop housing space being wasted)
Offer a maintenance service to reduce the risk of owners being overwhelmed by the cost of large maintenance jobs.

Other important principles:

An adult can only own one house if they are part of the PHO system. They cannot apply for public home ownership if they already own a home and must sell one of the houses within X months if they acquire a second home. (NOTE: Each adult in a house will be treated as completely independent in terms of this clause – Among other things this rule provides some protection if partnerships break up.)
Those who have waited longest will get first choice when a house becomes available.
Houses do not need to be the same design, size or price and, unlike current public housing systems may be spread around a community.

NOTE 1: See other public home ownership systems for details of the Singapore and similar systems.

NOTE 2: Regional first home buyers scheme promised by Labor if it wins federal election.

“Kinstead.)

2106 AFFORDABLE HOME OWNERSHIP CRISIS

2021-07-05T19:35:00.002+10:00

Too many Australians are struggling to find secure, affordable accommodation in places where they need/want to live. This can be true for those seeking to own a house of their own as well as those seeking rental accommodation.

This post looks at the causes for this crisis and ways of improving the situation with particular emphasis on the Nth coast of NSW:

Contributing factors include:

A shortage of affordable accommodation in the places where it is needed.
Unoccupied accommodation that is where accommodation is needed but owners choose not to sell, rent or consider splitting a house that is larger than the occupiers need.
The Covid experience demonstrated that working at home can actually work while reducing the time and emissions associated with commutes. Problem is that this allows people to move to regions where they would prefer to live. However:

Some of these regions haven’t got the capacity to accommodate all of these newcomers.
The losers will be low income people who will struggle to compete with well paid newcomers for accommodation.
Communities may also suffer because low income service workers such as teachers, health workers and police will no longer be able to afford to live there.

This post focuses on affordable HOUSE ownership.

It does not consider apartment based accommodation.

It was concluded that:

Home ownership is declining because more and more people cannot afford to buy a home of their own. This is particularly true for younger Australians.
The combination of unusually low Reserve Bank interest rates and lack of bank home loan regulation is causing housing price hyperinflation. Banks and sellers are better off while mug buyers are lumbered with bigger loans.

These low interest rates may also be setting the country up for a GFC type crash when home loan interest rates go back to normal.
Average house size has grown dramatically with average m2 per occupant tripling since 1950 to 87m2, the highest in the world. (Average block size has remained about the same. This suggests that gardens and back yards have shrunk or disappeared entirely.)
The mix of new housing seems to be driven by developers trying to maximise their profits by building large, prestige houses in prestige estates.

The quest for developer profits may not providing the mix of accommodation communities need
Housing has become a very attractive investment because current tax laws strongly favour investing in a “big family home.”

Suggested Action:

Federal government:

Slowly tighten up housing lending and loan repayment rules to slow housing inflation and protect borrowers from the effect of rising interest rates.
Cancel or wind back concessions that encourage investment in large, expensive homes.
Support innovation and changes to Australian housing standards.

Local/state governments:

Establish what accommodation mix communities need to handle current/projected population mix.

Do what is necessary to get the mix and quantity of accommodation required to meet these needs. This may involve councils:

Taking a direct role in filling shortages of lower cost housing. (Finance by a special tax on rezoning profits?) AND/OR
Insisting that developers have to put their resources into producing the required accommodation mix with priority going to meeting low cost housing needs. (This doesn’t mean that each development must have the same mix.)

Keep in mind that some of these needs may be met by splitting existing large houses, allowing temporary accommodation in some free spaces etc. Not just building new affordable accommodation.

Identify and change rules that make it hard or impossible for owners/developers to do things with land or buildings they own that could provide more affordable accommodation in the short or long term.

Consider changing and/or discarding the current developer centric strategies.

DETAILS: AFFORDABLE HOME OWNERSHIP:

(NOTE: NSW defines Affordable housing as: “Housing that is appropriate for the needs of a range of very low to moderate income households and priced so that these households are also able to meet other basic living costs such as food, clothing, transport, medical care and education. As a rule of thumb, housing is usually considered affordable if it costs less than 30% of gross household income”)

This post looks at affordable home ownership. A later post may look at secure, affordable rental accommodation:

Home ownership is attractive for a number of reasons:

It provides cheap accommodation once the loan is repaid. Particularly attractive for people who end up living on the pension.
It gives people a feeling of security. It is difficult to move people out of a house that they own.
The house can be modified by the owner.
Its value moves up and down with the market. Can be important if you need to move for some reason and want to have enough money to buy a house at the place you move to. (However, if you move a lot it may be a lot simpler to simply rent and maybe keep an owned house as a rental property to protect from market fluctuations.)

How things have changed:

When we built our first house in the 1960’s there was a realistic expectation that the vast majority of Australians would end up with the security of owning their own home. (It was also easy to find places with affordable renting.)

Fast forward to 2021 and the percentage of people for whom owning their own house was a realistic expectation had dropped significantly. For example, the parliamentary report: “Declining H ome O wnership R ates in Australia” concluded that:

Based on current trends, an increasing number of Australians are unlikely to become home owners.
Declining home ownership rates are likely to exacerbate existing pressures on the private rental sector, with a disproportionate impact on lower income households.
Policy makers can choose to either:

Accept lower home ownership rates, and put in place the necessary legislative and policy changes to address the broader and social economic implications of such changes OR
Seek to slow the decline through a range of other strategies. Given that the declining home ownership situation has developed over many decades, and is embedded in Australia’s economic and social structures, reversing the decline would not be a straightforward exercise.”

The report also provided data on the decline in the percentage of houses that were fully owned: “Outright home ownership has declined from 42.8 per cent of households in 1995–96 to 30.4 per cent of households in 2015–16. For those households nearing or in retirement (household reference person aged 55 years and over), ownership without a mortgage has fallen from 77.0 per cent in 1995–96 to 62.0 per cent in 2015–16. This, and lower rates of home ownership amongst younger households, has implications for Australia’s retirement income system in the future.”

So what has changed since the 1960’s?

Housing size has increased dramatically: Over the past 60 years Australian homes have more than doubled in size, going from an average of around 100 square metres in 1950 to about 240 square metres today. At the same time, the average number of people living in each household has declin ed to 2.8. This means that the average floor area per person has tripled from 30 square metres to 87 square metres. (The largest in the world, even higher than Canada and the United States.)

(NOTE: At the same time, average housing block size has actually shrunk. We used to talk about houses being on “¼ acre blocks.” (1012 m2) Now, googling “standard house block size Australia” got: “The most common block size is 640-660 square metres, and 34.5% of blocks are between 520 and 740 square metres. The median is 540-560 square metres. 180-200 is the most common smaller block size, and there is a small spike in block sizes of 1000-1020 square metres, which includes the quarter-acre block.22 May 2016” )

To put these house sizes in context it is worth asking: “What is a reasonable minimum house size?” Rough calculations gave the following minimums for fully self contained, cramped, 3m wide units that are designed to suit wheelchairs:

Couple: 21m2=10.5m2 per person.
Family with 2 kids using single kid’s beds: 33m2=8.3m2 per person.
Family with 4 kids using double bunks for the kids=5.5m2 per person)

A lot of space could be added to these cramped units before they reached 87m2 per person.

(NOTE: I spent most of primary school living happily with my parents and sister in a garage that was divided into 2 rooms – Interestingly, my mother later described this period as the best time of her life. Not sure why but I suspect what she liked was having the family together at the evening instead of hiding in their caves in a larger house. Have also spent quite a bit of time living in mining/construction plant dongas ranging from 6m2 up.)

Borrowing has become a lot easier.

When we built our first house the Commonwealth Bank would only loan up to the amount that could be repaid by 25% of the male partners income. Couples can now borrow much more. Some of this may help buy a bigger better house. However, I suspect that, in many cases, all the bigger loan does is allow people to bid more for a house they would have got for less when loans were more limited. (Seller and banks win. Mug buyer ends up with a bigger loan to repay.)

Suggested Action: Federal Government to slowly tighten up lending rules.
Home loan interest rates have dropped dramatically: The result is that home buyers are borrowing more to buy higher priced houses. (The underlying problem is that the Reserve Bank has been setting very low interest rates in an attempt to stimulate the economy.)

Potential problem with this is that we could have a GFC style crisis when home loan interest rates rise again.

Suggested Action: Federal Government:

Understands that RB interest rate settings are a crude tool that can be OK for solving one problem while causing problems in other areas such as the housing market
Insists that the interest rate used in lending rule calculations takes account of long term interest rate expectations. (This will reduce the amount that can be borrowed and reduce the risk of a GFC.)
Reduces the risk of a GFC style crisis by limiting the rate at which loan repayments can rise. (Link to general inflation or minimum wage growth?)

Developers have become more influential: Over time it has become more and more common for developers to insert themselves between the original acreage landowner and the final house/housing block customer. As part of the deal councils now insist that developers become responsible for providing services and sealed roads before selling the land.

Perception is that developers can make more money selling prestigious large homes built in prestigious developments instead of building affordable housing. Can contribute to the shortage of affordable housing.

Suggested Action: Local/state Governments:

Establish what accommodation mix is needed to handle current/projected population mix and needs.
Do what is necessary to get the mix and quantity of accommodation required to meet these needs. This might involve councils:

Taking a direct role in filling shortages of lower cost housing. (Finance by a special tax on rezoning profits?) AND/OR
Insisting that developers have to put their resources into producing the required accommodation mix with priority going to meeting low cost housing needs. (This doesn’t mean that each development must have the same mix.)

Keep in mind that some of these needs may be met by splitting existing large houses, allowing temporary accommodation in some free spaces etc. Not just building new accommodation.

Other Action: Local/state Governments:

Review what rules there are that make it hard or impossible for owners to do things on land or buildings they own that could provide more affordable accommodation in the short or long term.
Make it easy to break a freehold block into smaller freehold blocks and/or move block boundaries.
Allow walls to be the boundary for freehold blocks. (We do it with fences so why not walls?)

(NOTE: Freehold boundary flexibility helps avoid the costs and irritations associated with strata titles.)

Housing has become a very attractive investment: Current Tax laws strongly favour investing in a big “family home” instead of a smaller family home plus other more productive investments such as rental properties. (No capital gains tax for the family home.)

There is no social justice logic in systems that tax the rental properties that house the poor more harshly than the mansions that house the rich.

Suggested Action: Local, State and Federal Governments:

Remove incentives for investing in more expensive than needed family homes.
Provide incentives for the splitting up of oversized family homes and selling/renting part of the house. (NOTE: Could be attractive to empty nesters and others who want the cash benefits of downsizing without having to move away from where they have lived for years.)

FURTHER READING:

COVID-19 has made a tree change more alluring – but that may not last

Housing again at forefront of Australia's economic growth, making banks happy

Home prices are climbing alright, but not for the reason you might think

House prices in Australia are soaring, but not because there aren't enough homes

Broadly, we have enough homes. The 2016 census found we had 12 per cent more dwellings than households, up from 10 per cent in 2001.

If there really weren’t enough homes for people who wanted them, it would be more than property prices soaring; it would be rents. Instead, overall rents have been barely moving – growing even more slowly than wages – for half a decade.

Best tiny houses

So you want to live in a tiny house?

Earthquake-resistant tiny prefab boasts voice-controlled technology

Singapore- and China-based design studio Nestron has revealed a 14.5 square meter tiny home dubbed Cube One. The prefabricated single room home is ready to move-in from delivery and boasts a series of smart and sustainable technologies for a relatively cheap price tag of $30,000 (without land.) (Included this as an example of a tiny home, not a recommendation. - Many tiny houses have small footprints by doing things like use loft beds. Won’t work for people needing wheel chairs or wheelie walkers.

Tiny homes are adorable and cool, but how does the reality of living in one compare with the image?

One tiny house devotee has said the lifestyle requires planning and organisation to avoid the homes becoming messy quickly.
Another said the lifestyle provided peace of mind as he can drive his home, which is built on a truck, away from a fire threat.
The Australian Tiny House Association says the homes offer an answer to the urgent homelessness issue that senior women are facing

What’s the big driver for Co-op housing? We ask…and find many answers

“The desire for people to be connected to their community and share resources is driving the “mainstreaming” of co-operative living around Australia, according to industry representatives.”

Cooperative housing: a key model for sustainable housing in Europe (Cooperative housing is more important in Europe than Australia.)

The following e-mail is a sample of some of the questions that might be asked about needs for affordable housing.

Email to a Northern Sydney beach Greens Branch:

“I am particularly interested in affordable housing but know little about the Northern Beaches area. A few dumb questions that might clarify our thinking.

How many people who grew up in the NB area will be able to afford to live there as adults?
How many people who work in the NB area have to commute long distances to find affordable accommodation? Does this make it harder to find good employees?
Do older residents who want to downsize have to move outside the NB area because they cannot divide up the house they live in to allow partial sell-off or find affordable/more appropriate accommodation in the area if they sell.
Lack of aged care services or accommodation in the NB area?
To what extent do council regulations block potential solutions to the above problems? For example:
- Smaller buildings?
- The splitting up of larger buildings into smaller, more affordable accommodation?
- Adding granny flats or whatever that can be sold/rented to people who need affordable accommodation.
- Placing tiny houses or whatever in people's yards?
- The number of unrelated people who can share a house?

To what extent do these problems affect nearby council areas?

Where are the unoccupied dwellings in A ustralian cities?

N etherlands unveils a 94-square-meter, two-bedroom home home 3D printed with concrete, and it wants to use the technology to house its growing population

As part of a program exploring how the country can create the homes it needs. It was 3D printed at a nearby factory.

What role can local government play in delivering affordable housing?

Interesting one about the importance of retaining low income service workers. Advocates developer levy which is used to build affordable housing.

NOTE: What you need to keep teachers may need to be bigger/better than what you need to keep base restaurant workers.

Runaway land prices undermine housing utility

“Australia’s runaway land prices are akin to a national emergency. An increase of $4 trillion in just the next five years is highly likely.

Why isn’t housing affordability the most pressing policy issue?

Land price inflation of $600 billion this year will equate to 30 times the size of total banking profits. But our politicians barely raise a sweat over it. One could joke that the only time we hear of a land price crisis is when a wealthy campaign contributor wants their land rezoned.

Political intervention in the land and housing market via the use of first home buyers grants or stamp duty discounts have only seen first home buyer mortgages increase. Too much time has been spent on improving buyer deposits to “get into the game”, rather than confronting the land price spiral.

With every increase in mortgage or rental payments, there is less to spend into the local economy. This has a detrimental effect on small business resilience and jobs.”

CORONOVIRUS -WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM TAIWAN

2020-07-27T21:41:00.000+10:00

Tim Colebatch wrote an interesting article “There is an A lternative to Lockdowns” for Inside Story. The article compares the performance of various countries in their handling of the corona virus pandemic. Tim’s assessment is that the outstanding performer has been Taiwan. It has been the world’s most successful country in fighting the virus. In a land with almost as many people as Australia, only six people have died, and 426 have been infected. This has been achieved without the economic and social collateral damage that has been a feature of the Australian approach.

This post looks at what Tim has reported and asks whether Australia should change the way it is dealing with the epidemic.

Details:

From Tim Colebatch: The Taiwanese success “wasn’t by lockdowns. Large gatherings are banned, but Taiwan has remained open for business: you can go to work, school or university, go shopping, go to a restaurant with your friends. But you will have to wear a face mask in public, obey social distancing rules, and constantly have your temperature checked and your hands sprayed. If you’re ordered to self-quarantine, the government will phone you frequently to check that you don’t leave home.”

Tim also gave the following background on the Taiwanese response: “Taiwan had been a victim of the SARS epidemic in 2002–03, when seventy-three Taiwanese died partly because China denied it crucial information. This time it was first off the mark.

On 31 December, the same day that China finally notified the WHO of an outbreak of respiratory disease in Wuhan, Taiwan imposed health checks on everyone arriving from Wuhan. These were gradually widened, and after China allowed a team of Taiwanese doctors to visit Wuhan in mid January, their grim report led Taiwan to embark on its strategy of test, trace and quarantine.

Back in January, when Chinese scouts started buying up Australia’s supplies of medical equipment, Taiwan banned the export of face masks — and got its industries to produce them, as they are now doing at the rate of some millions a day, along with other essential medical supplies and protective equipment. It moves fast when it needs to.

Those ordered to self-quarantine receive a daily allowance of roughly A$45, and are brought food and other necessities by their village leader. It helps that medical care is cheap and widespread, and that Taiwan is a Confucian society where people tend to obey government orders (unlike Italy, say).

Australia has also been a world leader in dealing with the virus and it is difficult to be making comparisons between a very small densely populated island with a very different economy to Australia. However, it is worth noting that, in the case of Australia, that the collateral economic damage is very significant: N e w data suggests that 780,000 people had lost their jobs by April 4, just days after the current COVID-19 business and social restrictions were introduced on March 30. Those restrictions shut thousands of services venues such as pubs, clubs, gyms, cinemas, beauty salons and many other businesses, while Australians were required to stay at home unless shopping for essentials, receiving medical care, exercising, going to work or an educational facility. In addition, total wages were down by 6.7 per cent over the three-week period, again with a 5.1 per cent decrease in pay packets during the week ending April 4. Even worse, the Grattan Institution is now saying (19 April 2020) “Our estimate is that between a sixth and a quarter of Australia’s workforce is likely to be out of work because of the COVID-19 shutdown and social distancing.”

In addition, COVID lockdowns have human costs as well as benefits. Think, for example of domestic violence, suicide rates and unemployment and lockdown driven depression. The following shows the impact of Australian government decisions on a variety of businesses.

Most of these potential job losses arise directly or indirectly because of problems conforming with distancing rules with most of the rest coming from restrictions on travel.

It is certainly worth asking whether Australia could avoid most of the collateral damage caused by its coronovirus control policies by adapting some of Taiwan’s approach. However, we certainly need a better understanding of what is really making a difference in Taiwan and understand things like how important the quality and re-usability of face masks are. (Do they have to be health worker standard or could washable be sufficient to make a real difference?)

At the same time we should be looking closely at specific jobs and ask ourselves what could be done to avoid the need for these job losses.

2007 SHORT NARROW TRACK VEHICLES

2020-07-27T21:29:00.001+10:00

In 2016 56% of Greater Brisbane travel to work was in a driver only vehicle. This suggests that short, narrow track (SNT) vehicles designed to carry only one or two people have the potential to reduce commute parking space requirements, congestion and transport energy consumption. (Short means short enough to angle park in a road that requires parallel parking for normal cars. Narrow means one passenger wide vehicles narrow enough to safely travel two abreast in a normal traffic lane.)

This post looks at what the maximum size of an SNT vehicle could be while still satisfying the above requirements. It also attempts to quantify some of the potential benefits. It was concluded that:

The maximum size would be about 1.1×2.4m. This should be long enough to carry at least two adults with the passenger(s) behind the driver.
1.1m width is more than the width required to fit one person. This suggests that minimum width would be determined by stability considerations. (Electric SNT’s should have low centres of gravity because the batteries would be under the floor and motors at wheel level. Some SNT proposals have also had tilting cabins.
In the short term, when only a few SNT’s would be on the road, SNT vehicles will deliver dramatic reductions in parking space and garaging requirements and small increases in road capacity. In the longer term, road capacity would be increased as more and more SNT’s actually travel two abreast in a single lane. (More than doubled if all wide cars were replaced by SNT’s.)

DETAILS:

Summary of calculation results:

Calculations that were made for this post aimed at determining maximum dimensions for SNT vehicles. The answer was that a SNT vehicle should be no more than 2.4m long and 1.1m wide in order to meet the above requirements. A vehicle this size should be able carry the equivalent of at least two people with the passenger sitting behind the driver.

It was also estimated that:

3.5 SNTs ( 2.4×1.1m) will fit angle parked into a standard parallel parking place
Short vehicles will give a small increase in road capacity because the distance taken up by car and safe spacing are reduced. (Assuming safe car spacing in metres is same as for larger vehicles.)
Narrow vehicles won’t make much difference in road capacity until enough narrow track cars and motor bikes are available to make riding two abreast common. (Capacity would be doubled by the time 100% of vehicles are travelling two abreast.)
The single 4.0×7.6m garage that comes with our unit would fit 5x(2.4×1.1m) SNT’s with room for door opening. Rearranging the garages that go with our block of units would allow even more SNT’s to be garaged. (Think of the area required to manoeuvre a wide car into and out of garages.)

CALCULATIONS:

Data:

Standard Brisbane bus width=2.590m

Standard Qld traffic lane width ranges from 3.0 to 3.5m depending on expected traffic mix and speeds.

D imensions of a standard Australian parking space as defined in AS2890= 2.4 m wide by 5.4 m long.

CALCULATIONS:

How wide can a narrow track car be for 3m wide lane?:

Lane width less bus width=400mm= distance between buses travelling on the same side of adjacent lanes.

Max width narrow track that can drive two abreast in a single 3 m lane with 400mm separation=1.5-0.4=1.1m. (Assumes same spacing requirement as that for buses. (Should actually be less than this since cars are much shorter and easier to manoeuvre than buses.) NOTE: Doesn’t have to be 1.1mwide to fit one person across. Stability issues may actually decide min width. Keep in mind that an e-car would have batteries under the floor and motors at wheel level. (Some narrow track proposals also have tilting cabins to help stability. Modern accident avoidance tech should also allow narrow track cars to drive more safely two abreast.)

How LONG can a narrow track short car be and still angle park on a normal road that uses parallel parking for normal sized cars?

A short car could be up to 2.4 m long and still fit across an Australian standard parallel parking space. (2.4×5.4m).

How SHORT can a SNT car be? (A Vespa scooter that is 1.725m long has room for a pillion passenger.).

How many narrow track cars could angle park in a standard parallel car space?

3.6 x 1.1 m wide vehicles (with an extra 40mm width ea. for opening doors on one side) would fit in a 5.4m long parking space. More could be fitted if the SNT was narrower and/or passenger could get out and shut the door before car is parked. (A 0.8m wide SNT could fit 4.5 SNT’s in a 5.4 m long space.

How much will SHORTER vehicles increase road capacity?

Consider replacing a long car (4.8 m long) with a 2.4m long short car: If the long car is travelling safely with a 3 car length space (14.4m) the car will require a road length of 19.2 m per car.

I we assume that a 2.4 m long car will need the same safe length IN METRES as the long car, the short car will take up a road length of 16.8m. (This gives a 12.5% increase in road capacity per large car replaced by a 2.4 m long short car.)

If the traffic is going so slow that one large car length is safe spacing, replacing the large car with a 2.4m long short car the result in a 25% increase in road capacity. Keep in mind that short cars could be shorter than 2.4m. 2.4m is simply the max size for angle parking in a standard parallel parking space.

How wide would a dedicated SNT/motor cycle lane be?

A dedicated SNT/motor cycle lane provides a low cost option for increasing road capacity. It is assumed that this lane would need to be 1.5m, half the width of a 3.0m standard lane. In some situations a 1.5m wide track may be able to follow routes where there is not enough room for standard 3.0 m lanes.

Garaging:

Garaging cars takes up a lot of space and adds to the cost of accommodation. For example, our garage in the two story apartment building where we live takes up about 30m2 of which about 10 m2 is used as a storage area. If all the garage+storage space was used to fit extra units, the number of apartments could be increased by 40%. It is worth noting that According to The Urban Development Institute of Australia’s 2018 State of the Land Report and other sources, the cost of land for buildings was $746 /m2 with buildings $1271/m2 = $2017 for land +buildings. This is a bit dicey for garages but it would be very easy for garage price to be more than the cost of a standard car garaged in high cost land areas.

COMMENT:

People like using wide cars because wide cars provide:

Protection form the weather. (unlike active transport. (Bike, scooter or walk.)
More protection from accidents than bikes, scooters and motor bikes
Leave when you want to leave. (Unlike public transport.)
Usually provide a more direct or faster route to the destination than public transport..
Have at least enough space to carry the weekly shopping.

However, wide cars in particular do come with a number of limitations compared to other transport options:

Require a lot of road, parking and garaging space.
Energy guzzlers.
Driver unable to relax and wind down after work compared with using public transport.
Provide no exercise. (Unlike push bikes and walking.)

Most of the above comments would apply to SNT’s

So what would I want to use when?

If I were still commuting to work in the Brisbane CBD now I would probably want to use an E-bike when the weather was fine. (Use the E option to get to work without getting hot and sweaty and peddle without the E to get my daily exercise on the way home.) I might also have used an e-scooter/high frequency public transport combination if I thought the bike ride was unsafe. A car of one sort would be attractive when the weather was bad. An SNT would be the preferred car because of parking and congestion considerations.

My wife, on the other hand worked on the other side of Brisbane. For this location, a car of some sort was the clear transport choice because it was too far to ride a bike and the public transport route involved going all the way into the CBD before going back out to where she worked. Some days she may have wanted something bigger than an SNT to carry stuff for the job.

Some people want to get rid of cars and survive using public and active transport. Fine for some people who live, work and recreate in the right places. However, many make journeys that make a car of some sort is the logical source.

We should be looking for ways of reducing the damage done by transport to people, the environment, communities and property. However, my take is that some form of car is a logical part of the mix. SNT cars driven by renewable energy offer one way of reducing the damage done by transport while retaining most of the advantages of current model cars.

WHERE HAS ALL THE HOUSING MONEY GONE?

2019-12-10T09:45:00.000+10:00

Productivity has grown enormously since I started work. In addition, participation of women in the workforce has also risen dramatically. In theory, these changes should have resulted in families being much better off financially assuming a reasonable share of the benefits of both these changes were shared with families.

Problem is that too many families with both parents working claim to be struggling financially as well as being stressed by the pressures associated from having both parents working long hours. Which begs the question: What has happened to all the extra money generated by the increases in productivity and working hours per family?

This post asks “where has all the money gone?” with particular reference to affordable accommodation.

DETAILS:

Over the 33 yr period productivity rose by a total of about 60% while wages only grew by 25%. In the 5 yrs since 2013 wages were stagnant while productivity grew by about 8%. Keep in mind that the wages of senior management grew faster than average wages.

The potential benefits of increased productivity and working hours include:

Improved real wages.
Reduced working hours.
Lower prices.
Increased competitiveness
Increased production/sales.
Increased profits, some of which may be reinvested, and some that will go to dividends.
Business able to increase profits by laying off some unlucky employees.
Improved results for businesses and people who sell directly or indirectly to the workers or others whose purchasing power increases as the result of income rises.
Improved result for banks and other businesses that directly supply goods and services to business.
Improved results for banks and other businesses that indirectly supply the business. (Ex: Overseas banks that lend to the bank that lends money to the business, etc.)
Improved results for businesses who sell goods and services to employees, shareholders etc. whose income has increased

It is worth asking: How are all these benefits shared? (There is no guarantee that working families will gain much after all the other beneficiaries have got their bit.)

Families that claim to be struggling may feel this way because of the inflated expectations helped along by things like an advertising industry that works at creating “needs,” general competition for status etc.. However, again and again it is the rising cost of accommodation in real terms that is blamed for their feeling of struggling and dissatisfaction.

HOUSING:

Australians have traditionally aspired to home ownership. Problem is that home ownership is continuing to fall as the great Australian dream gets more distant for many:

Home ownership has fallen from 70 per cent of households in 1998 to 66 per cent last year, according to detailed analysis from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It is the lowest proportion of home ownership in Australia since the ABS started the data series in 1994.

However, while home ownership is on the slide, the proportion of households still in debt has risen sharply. Two decades ago, 40 per cent of households had paid off their mortgage. Last year that figure had fallen to 30 per cent.

Those renting, as a proportion of all households, rose from 27 per cent to 32 per cent over the period of the study, while the proportion of public housing tenants halved from 6 per cent to 3 per cent of the population.

The ABS study also found the average weekly housing costs for all Australian households was $311 per week. However, it varies significantly for different tenure types:

$53 for owners without a mortgage
$484 for owners with a mortgage
$366 for renters. (Keep in mind that average renters would be living in lower valued accommodation compared to average home owners. Also keep in mind that, for people who move around, renting may be more practical than buying a new home every time they move.)

Some people might want to claim that accommodation costs more now because people want more elaborate homes. This may be true to some extent but the Davidson experience doesn’t support this. (We had two properties we owned for 26 and 33 yrs without doing any upgrades. The compound rate of return for the capital gain of these properties ranged from 8.7 to 10%, well above the inflation rate and well above wages growth.

Buying a home has really become more expensive. The 33 yr house cost us about 6 times the annual basic wage and we sold it for 28 times the annual basic wage!. So what has gone on?

When my wife and I built the 26 yr house in the sixties the cost of land + building was about 6 times the annual basic. The cost of the land it was built on was only 14% of the total cost. The cost was low because the banks were reluctant to loan more than what they thought the family could afford.

For example, my recollection is that the Commonwealth Bank would lend no more than the amount that could be paid back by 25% of the male partners income. (Women get pregnant don’t you know!) This may seem outrageous by modern standards but my take is that this loan restriction kept the price of houses under control. There is not much point to building and trying to sell houses that people cannot get a loan for.

It seems reasonable to assume that the actual cost of building the equivalent of the houses we purchased would be lower now because of increases in productivity. This suggests that it is the price of land, not the price of houses that is making houses less affordable. (The people who bought our 33 yr house pulled it down and built another one. The increase in the real dollar price was all about land value.)

The above reasoning suggests that some of the actions that governments take in response to the housing affordability problem actually drive prices up because they increase the price that buyers can afford to pay. (Think grants to new home buyers.)

In addition to “able to pay” there is the issue of “willing to pay”. (Some people choose to buy houses for less than they are able to pay because they believe they have better things to do with their money or want to be less exposed to risks associated to changes in their circumstances.) Our economy may perform a lot better if people were spending less buying houses and more on other goods and services.

Some government concessions also encourages people to increase what they are willing to pay. For example, capital gains tax does not have to be paid when the “family home” is sold. Makes buying a more expensive family home a more attractive capital gain investment. Actions that push up “willing to pay” have a similar effect on house prices as actions that push up able to pay.

Some government policies help to drive up rents by not treating rental properties the same as owner occupied properties. There is this touching idea that charging rental properties more won’t be passed on to renters.

So where does the extra money from house sales go? Alternatives include:

Banks make more money because they lend more money.
Foreign banks make more money because Australian banks get some of the money they lend overseas.
Australian and foreign bank shareholders make more money. Not all of this will be spent in Australia.
Money from sales will go to state governments, real state agents the sellers of the house etc. Not all of this money will be spent in Australia.
Renters and house buyers may have more money to spend on things that improve their lives.

In theory, housing affordability could be improved by fixing some of the problems identified above. However, these fixes are politically fraught given that about 70% of accommodation is owner occupied and some renters will also be home owners at the same time.

It may be politically easier to attack the problem by doing things that increase the supply of low cost accommodation without reducing home owners wealth. Possibilities include:

Increasing the supply of public housing.
Removing local government rules and developer covenants that discourage low cost housing, smaller housing blocks.
Mandating the minimum amount of low coast accommodation in council areas.
Allowing houses and land to be divided into a number of separate units to suit changing family size and market demand..
Insisting new houses be designed so they are easy to divide up later when family size has reduced.

Additional ideas?

Housing is not the only situation where well meaning ideas by governments and others fritters away the expected benefits of of increased productivity and working wives. For example, one of the outcomes of introducing compulsory superannuation was a boost to share prices because supper companies need good short term results to compete for new customers. Investing in Australian infrastructure might make it harder to compete in the short term.

What other areas are frittering away the benefits of longer family working hours and increased productivity?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH NEWSTART?

2019-07-20T13:29:00.000+10:00

WHAT IS WRONG WITH NEWSTART?

JULY 8, 2019 JOHN DAVIDSON 7 COMMENTS EDIT

The Newstart system for supporting the unemployed comes with a number of important problems including not providing enough support during a time of need and other problems with the system that discourage saving, accepting jobs and/or trying to start a business.

This post looks at some of these problems, the underlying reasons that contribute to these problems and incremental ways of improving the current system. Other posts in this series will look at more radical solutions including the use of approaches based on a Universal Basic Income (UBI), Universal Basic Loans (UBL), Welfare as a Loan, and/or Reverse Taxation.

This post concluded that there is currently too much emphasis on making sure people don’t get more than they need and not enough emphasis on being fair and providing adequate help during people’s unemployment crisis. The situation is not helped by governments who want to blame the unemployed for unemployment.

It also is worth noting that the shortage of work that causes unemployment also creates opportunities. It may make more sense for some Newstart funds to be used to encourage people with jobs to take a break to do things like gain qualifications, try and start a new business and/or participate in volunteer projects. The vacancies created could help people who really need a job right now.

NOTES:

Except where noted:

- Figures used applied at March 2018.
- Details apply to a single person.
- The minimum weekly wage is based on a 38 hr week. ($695/week)

Welfare as a Loan is mentioned in a number places below. The basic idea is to replace welfare as a gift with a HECs style loan that starts being repaid when the crisis requiring help has passed. Welfare as a loan will be discussed in more detail in a later post.

DETAILS:

At the time of writing (March 2018) Newstart paid a single person $273 per week. This allowance starts to be clawed back when other income averages $52 per week for the previous fortnight and disappears when other income reaches $527 per week. (The tax free threshold is $349 per week )

The payments may start immediately for some applicants but may be delayed if the applicant has more than $5500 in fluid assets or if “the applicant or their partner have finished seasonal, contract or intermittent work within 6 months of submitting the claim.”

Two people who have been determined to be “partnered” get $27 per week less each compared to people who are “unpartnered” if their earnings are the same. However, if their earnings are different they mayactually benefit because their earnings are averaged.

NOTES:

The above is an overview. Actual payments may depend on assets, children, carer status etc. and will change with time. Important to check the Newstart page if Newstart could affect you or your friends. In some cases there will be exemptions and waivers that apply if you are experiencing hardship or other exemptions apply.
Keep in mind that many of those who have been unemployed for over one year will still be actively seeking work but find it hard to get jobs because they have the wrong skills, wrong age, poor health, live in the wrong place etc.

Problems With Newstart

Problems found included:

Payments are too low: Even John Howard agrees that Newstart allowances are too low for a person caught up in an unemployment crisis. The unindexed single persons payment of $273 per week is only 39% of the minimum weekly wage. The Newstart allowance has been frozen for over 8 years

Suggested action:

- Increase the weekly payment and index it to the minimum wage.

Defining Partners: A couple who are defined as partners by Centerlink get lower Newstart payments than singles but, under some circumstances, may benefit from having their income averaged for clawback calculations. Part of the problem these days, is that “partners” can range from a married couple that shares all assets and income to “partners” whose emotional and financial commitment is much harder to define. (In an article “Judging politics by Centrelink’s Rules” Mike Belcombe in The Saturday Paper of April 28 to 4 May 4, 2018 had this to say on Centrelink’s partnering rules: “You don’t have to be married to be considered part of a couple. You can be in a defacto relationship or “multiple relationship” to be deemed defacto. You don’t even have to physically live with you partner….five main factors are considered. These are…..the financial aspects of your relationship; the nature of your household; social aspects of your relationship; if you have a sexual relationship; nature of your commitment to each other.” And, it goes on to says: “We can decide you’re a member of a couple even if all these factors aren’t part of your relationship.”

Comment: When it comes to welfare calculations the government wants to treat “partners” as a single economic unit. By contrast, when it comes to taxation, they want to largely tax the partners as separateindividuals to increase the tax take from PAYE taxpayers and others who can’t do things to average the partners earnings.

Suggested action:

- The fairest outcome would be to allow couples who are married or in an equivalent “registered relationship” to have their incomes averaged for both tax and welfare purposes. Ideally, thegain/pain due to income averaging should be shared equallybetween the partners. In addition, for a period after a partnership beaks up Centrelink should be able to claim back from the richer partner some or all of any Newstart allowance paid to the poorer partner. Or
- Partners could be treated as though they are independent singleswhen determining what Newstart allowance they should get.(Partners who don’t really need the Newstart allowance willprobably get sick of having to prove they are seeking a job or being required work for the dole.) Making the allowance a loan would provide an additional incentive for a dependant partner not to seek the Newstart allowance.

Clawback: Unemployment payments are reduced if a single recipientearns more than a very small amount. For Newstart, the benefit for a single person would be reduced by 50 cents for every dollar earned above $52 per week (averaged over 2 weeks) and 60cents for every dollar earned above $127 per week. The Newstart allowance drops to zero when other income reaches $527 per week. (March 2018) Toput this in context, someone receiving the current minimum wage could earn $52 in less than 3 hrs. and the marginal tax rate for someone earning over $180,000p.a. is 47% including medicare. My understanding is that someone whose other income varies from fortnight to fortnight will, all else being equal, receive less on average than someone whose other income remains the same from fortnight to fortnight.

Part of the problem here is that the minimum wage is so low that there should never be much difference between the base Newstart allowance and the minimum wage. As a result clawback is always going to be high unless the base Newstart is too low or Newstart payments are going to continue well past the minimum weekly wage.If we have to choose it is better to have a high base Newstart and put up with heavy clawback.

Clawback also discourages people from trying to make some money from small business activities. Comments from friends on part pension suggest that the clawback system struggles to cope withexpenses and income that may vary substantially from week to week.(Confusing Centerlink rules and harassment were the main reason these friends decided not to proceed with the small business.)

Suggested actions:

- Increase the other income that can be earned before Newstart cuts out.
- Consider starting Newstart with a few thousand dollars limit on other income before clawback starts. (Encourages people new to Newstart to look for temporary work.)
- Increase the Newstart allowance.
- Adjust clawback so that Newstart payments drop to zero whenother earnings reach at least the minimum wage.
- Increase the minimum wage.
- Adjust the system so that people whose other income varies are not disadvantaged compared with someone who gets a steady other income. (If required.)

Delays before unemployment payments start include:

- Liquid Asset Waiting period: “Liquid assets are any funds readily available to you or your partner. This includes money your employer owes you.” If liquid assets exceed $5500 a single person will have to wait one extra week for every $500 increase in liquid assets until the max waiting period of 13 weeks is reached when liquid assets reach $11,500. (By contrast, a single person who doesn’t own a home and has fixed assets below$456,770 can still get Newstart. ($456,770 is enough to pay thebasic Newstart allowance of $273 per week for 32 years!)
  
  Someone who who has just lost their job may be facing financial stress from having to move to lower cost accommodation, not knowing where to get additional help and problems with loan repayments.
  
  Suggested Actions:
  - Substantially increase the liquid asset levels that are required to increase waiting periods.
  - Subtract outstanding debts when calculating the liquid asset figure used to set waiting periods.
  - Don’t distinguish between fixed and fluid assets when determining eligibility for Newstart waiting period. (But, for fixed assets, consider offering Newstart loans) secured by the fixed assets as an alternative to Newstart.
- U nemployment Non Payment Perio d rules say:“If you choose to leave your job or lose your job because of misconduct, we may not pay you for 8 weeks, or 12 weeks if you got relocation assistance from your provider.” The problem here is that these rules can act as a disincentive to take jobs Newstart receivers don’t know much about. (Newstart receivers fear they will be stuck with a rotten jobs in rotten places with rotten bosses and not have the funds to live through 8 weeks with no income.) There have certainly been stories about some Newstart receivers who never stay in any job for very long. From an incentive to work point of view it may be smarter to tolerate some resignations before tightening the rules. (There is some discretion available in cases of resignations but Newstart receivers may not always trust the system to be fair.)
  
  Suggested actions:
  - Only apply a non-payment period if people resign from a job before they have worked say 2 months?
  - Tolerate a certain number of resignations before starting non-payment periods.
  - Keep a record of employers who generate a lot of resignations, look for common reasons and cancel the unemployment non payment rules for work done for these problem employers/jobs/locations.
- Seasonal Work Exclusion Waiting Period rules say: “If you or your partner have finished doing seasonal, contract or casual work in the 6 months before you claim, you may need to wait for a period of time before you can receive your payment. The seasonalwork exclusion period will depend on how much you earned from your work and how long you were working for. The duration is based on how long it would take an average wage earner to earn the same amount as a person engaged in contract, seasonal or casual work.”
  
  This rule is trying deal with a situation where the amount of work, income and expenses can vary substantially over the year for both businesses and individual workers.
  
  In some cases it is not reasonable for the worker or business owner to expect Newstart during the times when they are not earning because their total income over the year is well above the minimum annual wage.
  
  In other cases, such as fruit picking, the pay rate or hours of work they get over a year may be much less.
  
  “Fruits of their labour” Q WEEKEND June 9, 2018 included some data for Pacific Islander fruit pickers working in Qld. Key figures for a 6 month picking season ($22/hr with 30 hr per week guarantee, average spending $8000) . If an Australian got these conditions working for 26 weeks and was unable to get work outside the 26 weeks:
  - Income = $17,160
  - Lost Newstart=$7098 (Doesn’t include waiting period losses)
  - Amount remaining after spending and lost Newstart=$2062before waiting period Newstart losses.
  Newstart now has a Seasonal work incentives trial that will allow some workers who have been on Newstart for at least 3 months to earn $5000 before Newstart reductions start. This could reduce the Newstart loss above by $2068 and boost the amount remaining to $4130.
  
  Keep in mind that it will be difficult for a fruit picker to continue chasing a permanent job while working as a fruit picker. Also keep in mind that it may take time after returning from the picking job to find low cost accommodation.
  
  It would be very easy for a picker to end up out of pocket or otherwise disadvantaged compared with someone who stayed in the city to chase work and short term casual jobs.
  
  NOTE: As far as I could see someone who loses a permanent job is not subjected to the seasonal work exclusion period. Hardly passes the fairness test.
  
  Suggested Actions:
  - No waiting time for those who have averaged less that minimum weekly award wage for less than 38 hr week.
  - Treat people who have lost a permanent job the same as those who have finished 6 months (or year?) of irregular work.
  - Make any waiting time dependant on earnings for last 6 months.
  - People who face financial crisis during waiting period should have access to loans.

Training and further education: The current system encourages people to take short training courses. In some cases it may make more sense to provide income support for longer courses that may make real differences to people’s employability and potentialcontribution to society. This may include supporting people who leave a job to improve their qualifications.

Suggested Action: Start seeing our chronic high unemployment levels as an opportunity to increase Australia’s education and skill levels without creating labour shortages or increasing Newstart costs.

NOTE: Also an opportunity to use surplus labour to volunteer or try to start a business.

Mutual Obligations: These complex obligations set out what a Newstart recipient has to do to convince the Newstart system that they are making a reasonable effort to find a new job. It is a bit hard to work out the extent to which these requirements and the associated financial punishments actually help people on Newstart get an appropriate job that uses their skills and aptitudes.

It is worth noting that “Is ha rassing the u nemployed j ustified?” foundthat: “For financial years 06/07 to 10/11 only 14 to 19% of the unemployed had been unemployed for over one year and 50 to 58%had been unemployed for less than 13 weeks.” This suggests that the vast majority of the unemployed are actively seeking work and would find the government’s vilification and harassment a distraction.It is also worth asking whether all of the employers that people who are being forced to accept work from pay award wages and have adequate safety programs. The following links highlight the result of harsh punishments on some schemes targeted at Aborigines.

Aboriginal people say CDP pushing people into further poverty

Work for the Dole CDP scheme a costly failure that’s harming people:

Suggested Actions:

Delay the start of most mutual obligations for people who haven’t been a problem before. For the first 3 months encourage these people to concentrate on getting work that uses their skills and aptitudesand/or bringing qualifications up to date.
Reduce financial penalties or, better still, offer incentives to conforming.
Check that employers pay award wages and have appropriate safety programs before insisting people accept jobs.

DISCUSSION:

We have Newstart because, as a society, we have decided to deal with our chronic shortage of work by encouraging most of the workforce to work the same or longer hours than they have traditionally worked while others are forced into the pools of unemployed or under employed.

We also have Newstart because our economic and financial systems are doing a poor job of facilitating the exchange between those that have something to sell and those who want the product and are willing to work or trade to get the product.

Newstart is a not very effective band aid that has to deal with societies inability to share the available work and the failings of our economic and financial systems.

To make matters worse Newstart has to operate in a difficult environment that is getting more and more difficult. For example:

Both government and opposition want to blame the unemployed for unemployment and put too much emphasis on minimising the cost ofunemployment welfare and not enough on making people more employable.
We have reached a point where less than half of all working Australians have a permanent full-time job with leave entitlements. This combined with the growth of jobs that may be paid less than the minimum award rate increase the number of people who will be paid less than the Newstart cut-off from time to time but not all the time.
The minimum award wage for a 38 hr week is not all that far above what it costs for basic living requirements. (This means that clawback has to be savage unless the government is willing to pay some Newstart to people earning more than the basic wage.)

The focus of this post has been on the Newstart welfare system. However, while welfare helps reduce the pain of unemployment it does nothing about fixing the basic problems:

Chronic high levels of unemployment driven by a chronic shortage of work.
Failure to share the available work.

It is worth noting that “Is ha rassing the u nemployed j ustified?” foundthat: “For financial years 06/07 to 10/11 only 14 to 19% of the unemployed had been unemployed for over one year and 50 to 58% had been unemployed for less than 13 weeks.” DO A CHURN CALCULATION

Relevant Links:

ABC News 7 June 2018: Full time work hits new low as casual work takes over

Men are dropping out of workforce while women charge in

Workers’ compensation doesn’t cover gig workers – here’s a way to protect them

Managing Transport Demand To Boost Capacity

2018-03-03T17:31:00.001+10:00

Most of us would like to be able to travel when, where and how we want to and for the transport system to be managed in such a way that there will always be enough capacity to allow us all these choices. The problem with this “capacity management” approach is that a lot of money would have to be spent providing capacity that is only used for a very limited time of the day. Without this extra spending we still have to continue putting up with congested roads and overloaded public transport during peak hours.

Required capacity could be reduced by managing the “when”, “how” and “where” choices. This post looks at some “demand management”strategies that might be used to reduce peak capacity requirements These strategies offer rapid, low cost ways of getting more from the transport infrastructure we already have. It was concluded that a rapid, low cost doubling of capacity is not an impossible dream.

DETAILS:

Australian mega-cities are all suffering from transport system capacity problems. For too many people, peak hour travel involves very slow driving along congested roads or standing up for long periods in overloaded public transport. Worse still, the overloaded system contributes to long delays if there is an accident or other disruptions to the transport system.

In the past we have tended to respond to increases in peak demand by increasing system capacity to meet this demand. This approach may be OK while there are low cost options available to meet new requirements. It is no longer OK if we have got to a point where further increases in capacity will require things like bulldozing buildings to widen roads, adding extra train tracks, digging tunnels and other expensive, brute force options.

Even the old “divert more people to public transport” can reach a point where increasing public transport capacity becomes a lot more expensive than just buying a few more trains and buses. For example, in Sydney, some experts are suggesting that “Sydney trains could be fixed by halving car registration and cutting tolls.”

There is a limit to the capacity of train lines and stations. Building extra train lines and higher capacity stations is never going to be cheap, particularly if the infrastructure can only be installed underground or up in the air. CBD bus stations don’t come cheap either.

A key part of the problem is that both fixed and mobile transport infrastructure capacity requirements depends on peak demand, not average demand. Fig 1 is a graph of trips vs time of day is based on travel to and from the Brisbane CBD. Similar patterns would apply in other large cities.

Fig 1: Trips vs Time of Day – Brisbane CBD

The graph highlights the extent to which the narrowness of the morning peak contributes to the capacity needed to allow us to travel when we want to. This post looks at two specific strategies for reducing peak demand:“flattening the peaks” and “reducing daily commutes.” In both cases it is assumed, for convenience, that the distribution of travel time and commute method would stay the same. (This does not mean that changing these distributions should not be part of a broader plan for improving transport capacity.)

FLATTENING THE PEAKS

If you look at fig 1 morning public transport flow into the CBD the peak occurs at about 8 AM with about 50,000 trips into the CBD happening at peak time. In theory, this peak could be reduced by 25% by changing the time when trips occur so that, at no time, the number of trips exceeds 37,500. Some rough estimates based on fig 1 suggest that, to meet this limit, some, but not all public transport commuters who currently travel earlier than the peak would have travel 6 mins earlier than they do now. Those who currently travel later than the peak may also have to travel 6 mins later than they do now.

To halve the peak to 25,000 trips the changes to travel time would have to be 18 mins earlier or later.

Similar rough estimates could be made from fig 1 on what changes in travel time would have to be made to reduce peak car travel into the CBD. For the morning car curve a 25% reduction in peak would need start time to be moved by about 9 mins.

It is assumed that time spent at work will not be affected much by the above changes. This means that afternoon peaks will also be reduced if the morning peak is reduced. (They are already lower than the morning peaks.)

NOTE: It is emphasized that the above figures are based on a particular set of figures and may be different for different for other dates and locations. In addition, on some routes, what may need to be controlled is arrivals at some congestion point some way out from the CBD rather than arrivals at the CBD.

How could these changes be achieved?

One of the simpler ways of flattening the peaks would be to change workplace start time distribution to the extent that this is practical. Changing start times does not require significant expenditure into complex controls and could be initiated by convincing some, but not all, employers to change their start time policies.

It should be kept in mind during discussions that there will be different limits on what changes individual employers and employees are willing or able to accept:

The nature of some businesses means that they will need to continue starting at a specific time. (Think a morning coffee shop.)
Some businesses will be able to change their start times but will want all their employees to change by the same amount. (Think of many factories.)
Some businesses will want members of an individual team to start at the same time but would have little problem with different teams deciding to start at different times.
Some businesses could accept considerable variation in the start times of many of their employees as long as they put in the hours required to get the job done.
Some employees would be able to do part of their work before or after travelling to/from the workplace. (Think: Planning the day, writing reports, checking emails and making phone calls)
Some employees will have limits on what changes would be acceptable for personal reasons. (Think: Can’t leave home before they get the kids off to school.)
Some people will live where they can get to work without contributing to congestion or public transport overload. (Think: People living within walking or e-scooter riding distance from work or those who use routes that are not congested.)
Some people would choose to travel outside of peak hours if they were able to choose flexi-time.

In some cases it may be practical for individual employers to control individual start times to match the overall start time distribution target. In other cases, achieving the overall distribution target will require co-operation between employers to get the overall mix right.

The above figures suggest that, right now, we could get significant improvements without anyone being forced to change starting time by more than 15 minutes.

The system may have to become more sophisticated and authoritarian as pressure on transport capacity rises. Even then, the cost of these changes should be negligible and there will be cost savings due to reduced public transport fleet size, better public transport fleet utilization and the deferral of expenditure on transport infrastructure.

It should be remembered that what is important is the managing of peak hour commutes along routes that suffer from congestion or overloaded public transport systems rather that when people actually start work.

How hard to get started?

There is no reason why individual employers and employees could not start doing something now to start improving transport capacity. Steps might include:

Government decides transport demand management is worth pursueing and:

Decides what work centers and overloaded routes and services to start with.
Collects demand data and travel time data vs time of day for these routes.
Converts this data into forms that will allow commuters to see whether moving their travel time.
Consult employers and unions about potential attractions and problems.

Employers identify employees who:

Have jobs that would not be affected by changes in start times.
Travel along routes that are affected by peak hour overload.
Who have no strong personal reasons for not changing start times.

Employers identify current practice that might need to change to make changing start times more attractive. (Ex: A "Meetings must start and finish between..." rule is needed so that early starters are not kept at work after their normal leave time and late starters miss out on the start to a meeting.)
Start voluntarily moving start times for employees and employers who want to give it a go.

REDUCING COMMUTES

Reducing weekly commutes and/or average commute distances will help reduce transport emissions and other environmental damage.

Part of the problem with transport in mega cities is that most city workers belong to a group that all work the same old 5 day Monday to Friday commute roster. Both the rosters described below address this problem

5 Day, Monday to Friday COMMUTE Roster
This approach would suit people who need to work Monday to Friday AND do not need to commute 5 days per week because they can do part of their work at or near to home. (Most people whose job involves frequent dealing with other people” could do this from home using phones, emails and Skype equivalents.)

A 5 day commute roster might involve:

Workforce is split into A and B commute crews.
Crew A may commute during peak travel times Mon, Wed and Fri.
Crew B may commute during peak travel times Tues and Thurs.
Workers who are not rostered for the days peak commute would either work at home and/or commute outside of peak commute times if they really do need to come into work on that day.

In theory the crews might swap rosters every second week. However, for people dealing with outsiders there are attractions in having the same commute roster each week to avoid confusion.

Moving someone to a 5 day commute roster that averages 2.5 commutes per week would halve their weekly peak hour commutes, commute emissions, commute travel distance and travel time. In addition, employers may save money because less work space would be required.

NOTE: 5 day commute rosters don't have to average 2.5 commutes per week. Any roster that averages more than zero days per week working at or close to home will produce some benefits.

How Hard to Get Started?

Commute rosters are very easy to set up because an employer could start a trial with only one employee working one day per week and then adding extra employees and increased number of days later on.
Governments could help by:

Campaigns to encourage employers to try some working at home as part of the work mix.
Information that will help working at home boost both employee and employer satisfaction with the experience.
Monitor the distribution of working at home days across the week with the aim of maximizing the contribution this distribution makes to transport. (A day with very few people working at home will have higher peak loading.

7 Day WORK Rosters

7 day work rosters provide a way of reducing the daily commutes of people whose job can only be done at the workplace. People who are part of one of these rosters will be split into at least two crews with half the workers on the roster being at work on any one day.

Moving someone to a 7 day roster would halve their Monday to Friday peak hour commutes and reduce commute emissions and travel distance by 30%. It may also save employers money because less space and equipment may be required because the number of people at the workplace on any one day might be reduced. In addition, changing to a 7 day roster could boost production by 40% if the workers kept to the same working hours per day or double if the workers worked the same weekly hours.

There is nothing radical about this 7 day rosters proposal. Many industries work 7 days per week and use multiple crews to cover the 7 days. Some of these rosters are toxic to the workers and their families while others are quite attractive. For example, a number of mines that I worked at in Central Qld had each crew working 4 days on 4 days off. (12 hr shifts.) This was a very popular roster. The mines that had this particular roster had very stable workforces with good morale. The roster gave the workers more days off per week than Mon to Fri while avoiding the long periods away from home that were a feature of some of the more toxic rosters.

Weekend days off is an issue when comparing different 7 day rosters. A 4 on 4 off roster gives, over a 7 week cycle, two full weekends off plus two other weekends where the crew members had either Sat or Sun off. Other rosters could give different patterns of weekend time off. For example a 7 on, 7 off roster could be arranged so that the crews always had Sat or Sun off every weekend.

Simply splitting the original single crew into A and B crews does have a number of disadvantages:

There is no overlap when both crews are at work (Bad for work communication.)
The only time the crews will have time off together is when they are on holidays or on strike. (Not good if family members are in different crews and not good for communities.)

The above problems with two crew systems can be reduced by setting up a 4 crew system where:

A and B crew alternate.
C and D crew alternate with C crew starting at least one day after A. This overlapping means that there is at least indirect communication between all crews and that a person working A or B crew will also share time off with C and D. (Gives a better chance of family members sharing time off and better communication within the community.)

The family and community problems will also be reduced if different employers use different rosters or simply start roster cycles on different days. This will increase the number of people who share some rostered days off.

To reduce confusion it is important that, for all employers “A” crew describes crews that are rostered on and off on the same days.

Small businesses and teams may decide being part of a roster is attractive while choosing to all work in the same crew.

My personal preference would be 4 on 4 off with 4 crews and with C crew lagging 2 days behind A crew. Other workers may have different priorities. We can play for hours developing rosters that have particular attractions.

It would not take long to move at least some people and employers to 7 day rosters. Costs and benefits would depend on what, if any, increases in wages are involved and the potential savings and increased sales for employers.

How Hard to Get Started?

There are already a wide range of businesses that have people working at weekends. Some of these businesses will use casual workers to cover the weekend, some will use overtime and some will already use rosters of some sort.

Getting more people and businesses to switch from working Monday to Friday to a 7 day roster could be challenging. Some people would find the rosters described above attractive because of longer breaks and time off when there are fewer people at beaches etc. Others may be put off by needing to work longer days to maintain their weekly working hours and/or because it may reduce the time they have with some friends and family.

Moving to 7 day rosters may be attractive to businesses that need to boost production. However, in some cases the nature of the business may mean that moving to a 7 day roster will require employing a second crew. (In other cases the man-hours per unit of production will remain the same. In this case the number of workers at work on any one day would actually drop and the number of employees will only rise if production is increased.)
There may be some cases where it is possible for a small number of people who like the idea of working a 7 day roster to switch. Think about people who need to be at work to do their job, can do their job alone or with a very small number of other people and who don't need to work all the time with people working Monday to Friday. The move to 7 day rosters is most likely to happen where a business needs extra production or 7 day per week coverage and/or there are workers who like the idea and can move to a 7 day roster without reducing efficiency.
Governments can help by talking about the potential benefits of 7 day rosters to transport and quality of life and publishing interviews of people who are already on 7 day rosters

CONCLUSION:

Australian mega cities have already reached a point where the transport system cannot cope with the expectation that the system must have the capacity for people to travel when they want to, how they want to and where they want to.

This post demonstrates that some forms of transport demand management have the potential to dramatically increase the capacity of the existing system without spending a lot of money or having to wait for years for any significant benefits to be felt. In some cases there will be genuine reasons why specific employers or employees should not be expected to do some of the things suggested but the transport crisis has reached a point where there must be a very good reason why start times should not be adjusted to reduce peak transport demand or serious consideration be given to other strategies that will reduce peak demand.

Perhaps employers should be asked what they are going to do to reduce the number of their employees and contractors who contribute to peak demand.

Transport Questions for Mega Cities

2018-01-19T13:06:00.000+10:00

Found this interesting article where some experts argue that Sydney train problems could be fixed by halving car registration and removing tolls. It reverses the normal mantra in favour of active and public transport. My take is that the article is asking the wrong questions. The key question that should be asked is “Why do we continue to allow Australia's mega cities to grow instead of creating new, properly planned cities?” This post looks at other questions that might be asked if we want to make the transport systems of Australian mega cities more workable.

DETAILS:

The transport systems of mega cities like Sydney are becoming more and more onerous as population and area grows. Commute time is growing and growing. It is a particular problem for people who do the service jobs in places like the CBD. For these people the gentrification of inner city ex working class areas means that low paid service workers have to travel a long way to find accommodation that they can afford. (Years ago the SMH commented that teachers and police who work in the CBD have to go over 40 km out from the CBD to find affordable housing.) Part of the problem here is that we have lost the moziac of high and low income residential areas and replaced it with something that drives low income people to the fringes of the mega city. (In the past places like Balmain provided places where low income workers could live close to where they worked in the CBD areas.

Transport systems have to have enough fixed and mobile capacity to cope with peak hour traffic. The following graph is for travel to the Brisbane CBD but the general pattern would be true for any of the big cities in Australia.

SOME QUESTIONS:

The above problems inspired the following list of questions:

Do all these people really need to travel during peak hours?
Can some of these people work at or near home for at least one day a week?
Could some of these people work in satellite offices closer to home and/or places where they travel against the main flow of traffic during peak hours?
How do we create places where service workers can live close to places like the CBD?
How many people would be interested in staying close to work for one or more nights a week? (Including dongas for couples?)
Should we move to a 7 day roster with only half the workforce going to work on any one day?
Should we ration travel into the CBD? (Rationed by time slot?)
Should we ration the number of jobs available in the CBD?
Why do we allow people to travel in family sized cars with no passengers during peak hours? (For Greater Brisbane on Tues 9/8/11 82.5% of car commutes were driver only with 64.5% of commutes using cars.)
Why aren't we developing standards for "commute cars" designed to carry one or two people? (Think of cars one passenger wide that are narrow enough to travel two abreast in a lane and short enough to angle park in a normal street.)

Some of you may want to add to the list or comment on some of the possibilities.

Could The World Carry 11 Billion People?

2018-01-09T22:43:00.002+10:00

If we are going to talk about 11 billion people as the carrying capacity of the earth it is worth bandying around a few figures:
For example, if the 11b all lived in Aus, we are talking about a population density of 1430 people per km2 or a bit higher than the current density for Bangladesh ( 1113).
1430 people per km2 allows 699 m2 per person.
Tried to find out how much land it takes to support a person but the answers were all over the place, ranging upwards from 8 m2 per person . However, it seems more likely that, given the shortage of land and the need to seriously conserve water, fertilizers etc. the answer is likley to be some form of mini factory farming with the farm and accommodation close together to allow intense recycling of water and nutrients.
In this context this article on how NASA-inspired “speed breeding” boosted wheat production threefold.

Developed by scientists at the University of Sydney, the University of Queensland (UQ) and the John Innes Centre, the technique builds on research trialled by NASA more than a decade ago as a way of producing food during space missions. It sees the crops raised here on Earth inside a glasshouse, under continuous low-cost LEDs that emit light at specific wavelengths to boost photosynthesis.

“The far-red spectrum is important for triggering the reproductive growth and also light intensity for healthy robust plants,” study co-author and UQ Senior Research Fellow Lee Hickey tells New Atlas.

Our planet is expected to host an extra two billion people by 2050, but the amount…
Using its carefully crafted lighting setup, the team was able to grow six generations of wheat, chickpea and barley plants and four of canola plants in a single year, as opposed to two or three in the glasshouse or a single generation in the field. It says it also works for peanuts, amaranth and lentils, and expects it to work for sunflower, pepper and radish.

“In the glasshouse we currently use high pressure sodium vapor lamps and these are quite expensive in terms of the electricity demand,” says Hickey. “In our paper we demonstrate that wheat and barley populations can be grown at a density of about 900 plants per square meter, thus in combination with LED light systems, this presents an exciting opportunity to scale up the operation for industry use.”

There is a vision involving other types of plants and vertical farms to further boost production per m2. Then there are recycling systems that incorporate fish tanks, edible insect farms etc. 11 billion people in Aus sounds a bit conservative unless you share my love for wild places and plenty of room for people and the environment to thrive together.

The Case For 3 Member Electorates

2017-02-11T21:12:00.000+10:00

Queensland’s parliamentary system is based on single member electorates. All you can really say in praise of this system is that it reliably provides all Qld voters with a local member. There is no guarantee that the winner of the two part preferred (2PP) vote will form government nor that the parliament will function as a check and balance against government excesses.

This post looks at how a parliamentary system based on 3 member electorates could overcome most of the shortcomings of the current system.

1.0: FEATURES OF A GOOD ELECTORAL SYSTEM:

Table 1.1 lists desirable features of a good electoral system:

TABLE 1.1: FEATURES OF A GOOD ELECTORAL SYSTEM FOR QUEENSLAND

All voters who live in Qld have at least one local member.

Government is awarded to the winner of the two party* preferred (2PP) vote.

Who forms government is decided by the voters, not post election negotiations.

The opposition is not reduced to a point where they will struggle to provide a viable alternative or effective opposition.

All voters are important, not just the voters in marginal seats.

Results do not depend on the location of electorate boundaries or differences in the percentage of voters for particular parties from electorate to electorate.

Does not make it too difficult for independents or small parties to win some seats.

Provides no incentive to vote strategically.

One of the members in every electorate is a member of the government.

Provides some check and balance on government decisions.

The government cannot be blocked from raising the money needed to do its job properly.

There are mechanisms for dealing with deadlocks.

It is difficult for a vote of no confidence to force an early election.

(*NOTE: In this post the term “party” will include coalitions registered before the election.)

2.0: HOW DOES THE CURRENT QLD SYSTEM RATE?

Qld currently has a single house of government made up of 89 single member electorates. This system reliably provides all voters with a local member and usually satisfies items 2 to 4. The rest are rarely or never satisfied.

(In Appendix A the results of the 2012 Qld election are used to highlight some of the problems with Qld’s current one member electorate system.)

3.0: PROPOSAL FOR A 3 MEMBER ELECTORATE SINGLE HOUSE SYSTEM:

A number of alternatives were looked during the preparation of this post but it was concluded that a single house system based on 3 member electorates had the best chance of meeting most of the desirable features mentioned in Table 1.1.

The following details a specific proposal for 3 member electorates.

TABLE 3.1: KEY FEATURES OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

All electorates will have three members.

The party (or registered coalition) that wins the 2PP vote becomes the government

All electorates will have one government MP and two non-government MP’s.

MP’s will not all have the same number of votes in parliament.

The parliament will not be able to prevent the government getting the money it needs to do its job.

The government would be able to put blocked legislation to a referendum (or some other mechanism for consulting the people.)

An early election in response to a successful no confidence vote can only be called if the governor is convinced that this action is justified.

Table 3.2 sets out the details for one option. Some of items in this list assume that there will be times when the government does not have a working majority.

TABLE 3.2: DETAILS – PROPOSAL FOR A QLD 3 MEMBER ELECTORATE SYSTEM

NO.	ITEM	COMMENTS
1	93 single member electorates will be replaced by 31 three member electorates.	NOTE: Qld has 30 federal electorates.
2	Registered coalitions will be treated as registered parties where relevant.
3	Registered parties can have no more than one registered candidate for each electorate.	Unregistered candidates will be treated as independents for the purpose of the 2PP vote.
4	Voters will be able to allocate preferences.	Compulsory, optional or part compulsory?
5	The first stage of the count will be a state-wide count to determine which party wins the 2PP vote.	The winner will form government. (Basic requirement.)
6	The second stage will be a count for each electorate to determine who the MP’s will be for this electorate and how many votes each member takes to parliament:
6.1	The government candidate cannot be eliminated during this count.	Ensues each electorate has one government member.
6.2	The count will follow normal preference voting procedures until only three candidates remain.	These candidates become the 3 members for the electorate.
6.3	The member with the most votes will take 45% of the electorates votes to parliament with the second and third highest getting 30% and 25% respectively.	This system will always provide a check and balance. No party will end up having enough votes on its own to pass or block legislation.
7	By-elections will be replaced by something similar to what is used in the Senate. (Party selects the replacement.)	By-elections are not practical for 3 member electorates. (Independents may be required to nominate a political heir.)
8	Members will be able to nominate a proxy to cover when they are absent.	Simple swaps won’t work because the number of votes a member has will vary.
	The above election procedures mean that no government will end up with a working majority in it’s own right. The following will help deal with this issue:
9	The parliament would not be able to block the action required to provide the money needed for the government to do its job. This includes raising loans as well as changing taxes and charges.	The relevant legislation would have to be presented to parliament and voted on before the government could decide to overrule the parliamentary vote.
10	The government would have the option of putting legislation voted down by parliament to a referendum (or some other mechanism for consulting the people.)	The relevant legislation would have to presented to parliament and voted on before the government could put the legislation to a referendum. Legislation passed by referendum could not be changed by parliament until after the following election.
11	The speaker will have the option of voting if this vote will affect an outcome.
12	An early election in response to a successful no confidence vote can only be called if the governor is convinced that this action is justified	The combined non-government parties will usually have a majority that, in theory, could be used to pass trivial votes of no confidence.

4.0: DISCUSSION

Unless there is a major change in voting patterns the proposed system would be expected to produce a Qld parliament that had about 31 LNP and 31 Labor members with the remaining 31 places going to a mix of independents and minor party members.

In terms of who forms government what is proposed in Table 3.2 meets all the relevant requirements listed in Table 1.1 except that an incentive to vote strategically for the 2PP vote might become relevant if the top three parties become closer in size. (NOTE: The potential incentive for strategic voting could be removed by allowing the party that came 3^rd during the 2PP count to challenge the winner of the initial 2PP count and to form government if it can beat both the parties that came ahead of it in a 2PP count. )

In terms of who the non-government members are most of the relevant requirements will be met. However:

The result will be influenced by the location of boundaries and the distribution of party supporters. (Both how many members non-government parties get and the votes members take to parliament.)
In some cases there will be an incentive to vote strategically.

In terms of the workability of the parliament what is proposed will allow the parliament to provide a check and balance without making it too hard for the government to go about its business. Keep in mind:

The government cannot be denied the money it needs to do its job.
No party on its own will have enough votes to pass or block legislation.
The referendum option could be used as a last resort to pass or modify legislation when the public supports the government’s position.

Hopefully, both sides of parliament may have enough sense to back down and avoid a referendum when the polls clearly show that they would lose the referendum.)

There are a number of changes to this proposal that might be considered including:

Change item 3 in table 3.2 to allow parties to have more than one registered candidate. This would be OK if the first stage of the vote count was used to bring the number of registered candidates down to one for each registered party. (Only voters who gave their first preference to the relevant party would take part in this count. The preferences of losers would be distributed and the losing candidate would take no further part in the election.)
Change item 6.3 so that the votes that the three members for an electorate will take to parliament will the votes they have when all except the last three candidates have been eliminated. This change will make the number of votes members take to the parliament to reflect more closely the support they received. This change means that there will be times when a government will have a working majority in it own right. (For example, the LNP would have had a working majority in its own right if this change had applied for the 2012 election.) (It might be argued that a party that gets strong support should be able to govern in its own right. Alternatively, the checks and balance could be maintained by capping the percentage of votes a party has in parliament to something under 50%. (All members of the affected party would have their vote reduced by enough to avoid exceeding the cap.)
Votes of no confidence could be eliminated altogether or the current no=confidence rules remain the same as they are now.
Numbers in clauses like 6.3, table 3.2 could be changed.

APPENDIX A: RESULTS OF QLD 2012 STATE ELECTION

The Queensland state 2012 election results highlight some of the problems associated with single member electorates. Table A1.1 provides the key results:

TABLE A1.1: RESULTS OF QLD 2012 ELECTION

PARTY	RESULTS QLD 2012 ELECTION
PARTY	% OF PRIMARY VOTE (@ 2 April 2012)	MEMBERS ELECTED (Actual Result)	% OF MEMBERS
LNP	49.7	78	87.7
ALP	26.7	7	7.9
KAP	11.5	2	2.2
GREENS	7.4	0	0
FAMILY FIRST	1.4	0	0
ONE NATION	0.1	0	0
INDEPENDENTS	3.2	2	2.2
TOTAL	100.0	89	100.0

(Details of the Qld electoral system and the 2012 election results can be found at the Wikapedia and Qld electoral commision websites.)

A good result in the sense that the party that won the 2PP vote was able to form government with a workable majority. A bad result in the sense that the main opposition party (ALP) was expected to struggle to provide an effective opposition or to be seen as a credible alternative at the next election because it only won 8% of the seats. Bad too in that the minor parties only won 2% of the seats despite winning 20% of the primary vote between them.

The disturbing thing is that the outcome could have been quite different even if every voter had voted exactly the same. Consider an extreme example: If the ALP had been able to locate all of its supporters in electorates where the ALP vote was slightly above 50%, the ALP would have won 48 seats and formed government without needing any preferences.

At the other extreme, if the distribution of votes had been identical for all electorates, the LNP would have won all the seats after distribution of preferences. Other changes in the geographical distribution of supporters could have seen minor parties and/or independents holding the balance of power.

Table A1.1 and these examples demonstrate why systems based on single member electorates:

Provide no guarantee that the party that wins the 2PP vote will form government. (There are numerous examples in Australia where the 2PP loser has won government.)
Can result in a hung parliament. In this case, who forms government will be decided by post election negotiations, not the voters.
Can have results distorted by the location of electoral boundaries or geographical distribution of supporters.
Tend to give the parties with high primary votes a disproportionate share of the members.

There are a number of other problems with single member electorates including:

Voters in marginal electorates have far more influence than those in safe electorates.
Not all voters will be represented by a member of the government. This can make it harder for these voters to influence government decisions.
Incumbent members have an advantage over challengers.
Single house systems like the Qld system only act as a check and balance in the event that the government fails to get enough seats to have a majority in its own right.

The only real attraction of single member electorates is that each voter shares “their” member with fewer other voters.

Moggill Rd Congestion Study

2016-08-25T22:18:00.001+10:00

What follows is a study I made some time ago into low cost ways of reducing congestion along Moggill Rd, a key through road that goes through Kenmore Brisbane near where I live. The study is of general interest because many of the identified problems and solutions are applicable for a wide range of urban situations.

DETAILS

Moggill Rd suffers from serious congestion during morning and evening peak travel periods. Doing something about this congestion is attractive because:

It affects a large number of people
There are plenty of smart, very low cost actions that could make a significant contribution.
There is potential for low cost trials of various ideas.
Many of the ideas could be applied in other areas
Any credible solution will reduce car trips and/or emissions.

Disclaimers:

I (John D) am not a transport expert

Approach:

What follows are a few low cost ideas that are examples of what might be done. For simplicity, the examples I used are mainly based on morning congestion for the 5km strip between Kenmore plaza and Coronation Drive as well as travel from Southbank to the Tilbrook (Chapel Hill) bus stop, route 425 near where I live.

General strategies to reduce congestion:

Reduce the need

Work at/close to home.
Commute fewer days per week.

Move the need – avoid congestion by:
- Choose workplace and home location so that travel avoids congestion.
- Replace some weekday workdays with weekend workdays.
- Work part of day at home to avoid peaks.
- Move travel time away from peak.
Change the mode. ( Use bus/train/ferry/bike etc instead of car.)
Use car sharing. (For Moggill electorate, at least 92% of car commutes are driver only.)
Increase road capacity /remove bottlenecks

Comment: Working at home or riding a bike to work every working day has disadvantages. It may make sense to run a “One Day a Week” campaign aimed at encouraging car drivers to use an alternative to car driving commutes one day per week. Reduces commute emissions and contribution to congestion by a useful 20%.

Background Information:

Kenmore Plaza to Indooroopilly Shopping Center :

Western freeway is clogged all the way back to Moggill Rd during morning peak. (Disincentive to use Western Freeway to avoid Moggill Rd congestion.)
Last Western Freeway exit before city end of freeway discharges onto middle of stretch near Ootana Rd. Map (Most of this traffic turns towards Indooroopilly.)
Eight significant traffic streams enter along stretch.
Eleven sets of traffic lights along stretch. This includes 3 pairs with a gap of less than 150 metres between the paired lights. In addition, there are 6 sets of lights over a one km stretch.
Traffic wanting to get from Kenmore onto the Western Freeway going away from city can:

Turn right just after Moggill Rd goes under Freeway. OR
Turn right into Fig Tree Pocket Rd about half way along stretch. (Difficult - no traffic lights to help.)
Avoid the stretch by taking long route using Kenmore + Fig Tree Pocket Rds. (Not sure how congested these roads are.)

See appendices at end of notes for additional background information.

PROPOSAL 1: Feeder Bus Concept

It would make sense to replace many low volume, low frequency bus routes with shorter, high frequency feeder routes that use much smaller buses. The function of these feeder routes would be to move people to nearby transport hubs, railway stations, existing high frequency bus routes and/or shopping centers. The potential benefits of this proposal include:

Encourages more people to switch to public transport by reducing waiting time.
Reduces noise, costs and the difficulty of threading large buses through suburban streets.
Reduces walking distance by making it more more practical for the bus to pick up and set down passengers all along parts of the route. (Instead of bus stop only.)
Makes it more practical to integrate bus and rail travel. (Integration is only practical if all parts of the trip are high frequency.)
Makes it easier to reduce the number of buses travelling between transport hubs.

NOTE: Under some circumstances the feeder bus might operate as a Taxi bus that takes/picks up people where they live. Particularly attractive at night or wet weather.

EXAMPLE – ROUTE 425:

Route 425 runs from the CBD to Kenmore shopping center via the Indooroopilly shopping center.. The main function of the route is to service the area on the Mt Coutha side of Moggill Rd between Burbong and Bielby Rd. Most of this area is too far away from Moggill Rd to conveniently walk to the high frequency routes along Moggill Rd. (For map and timetable see here.) For most of the time there is no need to run 425 buses between Indooroopilly shopping center and the CBD. Other bus routes or the train have excess capacity.

Problems with route 425:

Since moving to Brisbane, I have used car only, car + rail and bus to go to work.

Public transport has the attraction of providing time to plan the day and wind down while travelling to and from work. For me, the problem with the bus is that the service is poor and expensive. For route 425:

Only one 50 seat bus every 30 mins most of day
Drops to one bus an hour ex Queen St after 7.25 PM
No service between 11.25 PM and 8.15 AM.
For 4 pm departure from Queen St bus station the trip takes about 40 mins compared with 45 mins on my mountain bike and 20 mins by car.
According to current G OCARD rates peak hour fare is $4.91per trip compared with about $1.00 to drive an already owned car (5 litres/100km – fuel @ $1.60/litre) to CBD. (That is about $2000/yr for the bus Vs $460/yr for the car assuming free parking.)
Even the off-peak concession fare ($1.97) is about twice the cost of driving the car with no passengers.
Route goes all the way to CBD– even if not many passengers on bus.

NOTE: Part of the problem with fares is that governments have a “user pays” mentality. However, the reality is that the user is not the only one that benefits when a car driver decides to use public transport. Every one using the road will will benefit from reduced congestion when someone switches to public transport. In addition, increased use of public transport may avoid the need for expensive road upgrades.

It is also worth noting that appendix B below points out that the average 50 seat bus carries only 8.5 passengers. Making fares more competitive may actually increase income per bus.

Calculations:

Base: Current System

For most of the weekday the service averages 1x50 seat bus every 30 mins. For this case:

Time for round trip =86 mins

Number of 50 seat buses =2.9 (Average buses running to provide service.)

Seats per hr =100

Time between buses =30 minutes

All the options below are based on 50 seater buses being replaced with 10 seater mini-buses.

It is assumed that there is excess capacity on the high frequency routes that the feeder buses link to.

Option 1.1: Premium Option:

Route 425 stays the same except that it will no longer run between Indooroopilly Shopping Center and the CBD. The timetable suggests that this shorter round trip will take about 42 minutes

If number of buses providing the service remains the same as base:

Number 10 seat buses =2.9

Seats per hr =41

Time between buses =14.6 minutes

If number of seats per hour remains the same as base:

No. 10 seat buses =7.0

Seats per hr =100

Time between buses =6 minutes

Option 1.2: Minimalist option:

As for premium except that when the bus exits Burbong St it returns to Bielby Rd via Moggill Rd instead of going to Indooroopilly shopping center. This will reduce the round trip to about 28 minutes. Direction may reverse during the afternoon so that travel along Moggill Rd will be in the less congested direction.

If number of buses providing the service remains the same as base:

Number 10 seat buses =2.9

Seats per hr =62

Time between buses =9.8 minutes

If number of seats per hour remains the same as base:

No. 10 seat buses =4.7

Seats per hr. =100

Time between buses =6 minutes

Discussion: If anything, these results are conservative because:

Smaller, more nimble buses should take less time that 50 seaters to cover the same part of a route.
No account is taken of savings in walking time if travellers are allowed to hail buses anywhere along route. (Except along Moggill Rd.)
There may be better routes.

PROPOSAL 2: Reducing Traffic Light Delays

We have all suffered avoidable delays at traffic lights when:

We are sitting at a red light even when it would be safe to ignore the red light.
We spend a long time getting through an intersection because it takes a number of light cycles before it is our turn to go through the intersection. (This problem can be reduced by increasing the length of the light cycle.)

Option 2.1: Smarter Traffic Lights

The basic principal here is that traffic light changes would be controlled to take account of what is going in the area at the time. The simplest system might start the light change when traffic has stopped flowing past a green light. (Up to some time limit.) This option will reduce both the above avoidable delays.

More sophisticated versions may make better decisions by taking account of what other lights are doing and traffic conditions further away from the light being controlled.

Option 2.2: “Give Way Lights”

For this option the red light is replaced by a light showing a “give way sign” for intersections where visibility and simplicity makes it is safe to do so. When the give way light is on the rules re entering the intersection would be the same as if there was a normal give way sign at the intersection.

This option avoids time lost sitting at a red light when it is safe to proceed. It may also reduce delays for other traffic that would have to stop to allow the car held up by the traffic to enter.)

NOTES:

It may be safer to continue to have a red light that stops the traffic before the switch to the give way light is made.
“Stop sign lights” may make sense for intersections with poorer visibility.
The principle could be extended to pedestrian crossings.

Option 2.3: Use Super Street Concepts

Super Streets deal with traffic light delays by reducing the need for traffic lights Key features are:

Traffic entering from a side street must turn left. The road is designed so that this left turning traffic merges into the main traffic stream in the same way as it does on freeways.
Traffic that wants to cross an intersection or turn right does this by first turning left then taking a right turn at a designated “U” turn. The “U” turn is designed so that traffic exiting the “U” turn merges with the main traffic stream without having to stop.
If necessary, over or underpasses could be used to avoid the need for pedestrian/bike traffic lights.
The video that goes with the link suggests that large trucks that want to turn right or cross the inersection will go through intersections in the normal way. This avoids for “U” turns large enough to allow large trucks to turn.

The above link reported that one study in the US found that the super street gave a “20 percent overall reduction in travel time compared to similar intersections that use conventional traffic designs," They also found that super street intersections experience an average of 46 percent fewer reported car collisions and 63 percent fewer collisions that result in personal injury."

Useful gains can be made by using only part of the super street concept.

Example: Lights at Russell Tce and Woodville St/Taringa Pde entries to Moggill Rd

These two sets of lights are only 150 m apart. During morning peak hours this closeness causes problems because a red light at Woodville stops traffic flowing at Russell Tce even when it has a green light at Russell Tce. The combination is also a key bottleneck. Traffic flows a lot more freely after it has passed these lights. (NOTE: Taringa and Woodville are opposite each other.)

Stage 1: Allow left turning traffic leaving Russell Tce to merge with main traffic.

All the traffic leaving Russell Tce already turns left. However, traffic lights are used to control this entry. A major source of delays for both Russell Tce and Moggill Rd morning traffic.

An extra traffic lane starts about 75 m before Russell Tce and ends about 100 m after Taringa Pde. The section of this lane between Russell and Taringa is left turn (into Taringa) only.

Suggested action:

Make all traffic in the outer lane of Moggill Rd turn into Russell Tce. This will require new signs, road marking changes and possibly a barrier to make sure this traffic does turn left.
Consider changing the markings on the outer lane between Russell and Taringa to allow traffic to have more room to merge with main traffic stream.

All this action is very low cost.

At the end of stage 1, traffic lights will only stop traffic exiting Russell Tce when they are used to allow pedestrians to cross the road. Traffic lights will only stop traffic moving along Moggill Rd towards the CBD when they are used to allow pedestrians to cross and allow traffic travelling away from the CBD on Moggill Rd to turn right into Russell. None of these are major issues during the morning peak hour.

Stage 2: Install a “U” turn (just before Station Rd?) so that all traffic exiting Taringa Pde can turn left.

Suggested action:

Install “U” and associated road markings and signs.
Modify exit from Taringa to allow traffic to merge into traffic along Moggill.
Change signs and road markings to force all traffic exiting Taringa to turn left.

At the end of stage 2 traffic lights will only stop traffic travelling along Moggill towards the CBD and exiting Taringa when the lights are used to allow pedestrians to cross the road or traffic travelling along Moggill away from the CBD to turn right into Taringa.

Comment: The “U” would be easier to justify if it was part of a plan to turn Burbong Rd and Freeway exit into “left turn only” exits and to remove the need for traffic travelling along Moggill towards the CBD to turn right to enter the freeway.

PROPOSAL 3: Smart Re-routing of Traffic

Example: Reduce delays due to the way traffic from Benson St gets into Toowong Shopping Centre

Moggill Rd becomes High St a bit before High St turns right at the Toowong Shopping Center. Traffic going to the CBD then goes through a traffic light before turning left via another traffic light into Benson St. Benson St turns into Coronation drive shortly afterwards.

The section after High street turns right is a significant bottleneck because there are two traffic lights less 100 metres apart. The problem is accentuated because traffic from Benson St going to the the Toowong shopping center or Sherwood St uses the first set of traffic lights to cross the traffic flowing along High St towards the CBD.

Suggested action:

Stop traffic going from Benson St to the shopping center of Sherwood Rd via High St, at least during peak hours. Traffic from Benson St wanting to go to the shopping center or Sherwood Rd would go instead via Sylvan Rd and Bennett St.

APPENDIX A: COMMUTE TRAVEL, CAR OWNERSHIP and OCCUPATION

MOGGILL ELECTORATE

See: ABS 2011 CENSUS (Also links to more data and other areas)

TRAVEL TO WORK, TOP RESPONSES	MOGGILL	%	QLD	%	AUS	%
Employed people aged 15 years and over
Car, as driver	13,857	58.9	1,248,542	61.2	6,059,972	60.2
Bus	1,425	6.1	67,191	3.3	301,187	3.0
Car, as passenger	1,127	4.8	125,269	6.1	537,638	5.3
Train, car as driver	358	1.5	12,688	0.6	77,819	0.8
Bicycle	324	1.4	21,575	1.1	103,914	1.0
Other		27.3
People who travelled to work by public transport	2,770	11.8	154,773	7.6	1,046,721	10.4
People who travelled to work by car as driver or passenger	15,045	63.9	1,378,983	67.6	6,620,840	65.8

Car, driver only =At least 54.1% (92% of car commutes)

NUMBER OF REGISTERED MOTOR VEHICLES PER PRIVATE DWELLING	MOGGILL	%	QLD	%	AUSTRALIA	%
None	394	2.6	110,842	7.2	665,852	8.6
1 motor vehicle	4,068	27.0	547,575	35.4	2,778,576	35.8
2 motor vehicles	7,039	46.6	575,735	37.2	2,802,468	36.1
3 or more vehicles	3,398	22.5	267,081	17.3	1,279,134	16.5
Number of motor vehicles not stated	195	1.3	46,071	3.0	234,292	3.0

At least 96% of private dwellings had at least one car, 69% had at least two.

OCCUPATION	MOGGILL	%	QLD	%	AUS	%
Employed people aged 15 years and over
Professionals	8,345	35.5	385,581	18.9	2,145,442	21.3
Managers	3,816	16.2	245,606	12.0	1,293,970	12.9
Clerical and Administrative Workers	3,389	14.4	299,326	14.7	1,483,558	14.7
Technicians and Trades Workers	2,158	9.2	304,563	14.9	1,425,146	14.2
Sales Workers	2,084	8.9	199,634	9.8	942,140	9.4
Community and Personal Service Workers	1,878	8.0	202,978	10.0	971,897	9.7
Labourers	1,005	4.3	215,235	10.6	947,608	9.4
Machinery Operators And Drivers	491	2.1	149,322	7.3	659,551	6.6

APPENDIX B: REDUCTION TO BUS SERVICES ANNOUNCED (7 Mar 2013)

(Contains useful data on bus system and loadings)

KEY POINTS:

Number of bus routes to disappear because of low patronage=111 out of 446 (25%) NOTE: The article also said that:

The number of bus routes across south-east Queensland will be slashed from 446 to 335 following a detailed review of services which found more than half carry fewer than seven people. However, elsewhere in the article it was said that: “A total of 29 routes are expected to be axed, 87 changed and 102 "improved". It is not clear to what extent those serviced by disappearing routes will be taken care of by modifications to other routes.
Number of extra high frequency bus routes= up 7 from current 19 (37%)
Over the past three years, patronage had improved just 0.5 per cent despite 22% increase in expenditure.
Average 50 person bus carries only 8.5 passengers (17% loading.)
52 per cent of services carry fewer than seven passengers.
Fares have increased more than 60 per cent in the last four years.
Services with standing passengers - 13,756 (3.1 per cent)
Services with an average load of one or fewer - 27,241 (6.15 per cent)

(Source: Robyn Ironside, The Courier-Mail, March 07, 2013)

This translink media release gave some additional information. Other recommendations included:

A more simplified route number system, reducing duplication
Providing outbound routes heading in a similar direction with a superstop within Brisbane's CBD
Better integration between suburban buses and high-frequency bus or train services
Setting up the Gold Coast network to integrate with light rail.
Address infrastructure constraints (eg. Cultural Centre) by reducing fewer near-empty buses entering the CBD.

Is Harassing the Unemployed Justified

2016-08-25T12:42:00.000+10:00

A key feature of the government’s approach to unemployment is the constant vilifying and harassing of the unemployed. It may be a good strategy for diverting attention from government stuff-ups and appealing to voters darker side but there are no signs that it is reducing real unemployment , creating jobs, preparing people for more productive work or helping to share the available work in a fairer way.

This post asks whether there are smarter, fairer ways of dealing with unemployment. It also presents some useful employment and unemployment welfare system data.

How many dole recipients aren’t trying to find work?

Long term unemployment might be used as a rough guide to the upper limit on how many unemployed people aren’t trying to get work. For financial years 06/07 to 10/11 only 14 to 19% of the unemployed had been unemployed for over one year with 50 to 58% being unemployed for less 13 weeks*. This suggests that thevast majority of the unemployed are actively seeking work and would find the government’s vilification and harassment a distraction. Keep in mind that many of those who have been unemployed for over one year will still be actively seeking workbut finding it hard to get jobs because they have the wrong skills, poor health, live in the wrong place etc.

(*NOTE: See the data set at the end of this post for links to quoted data.)

Is there really is a work shortage?

Hassling the unemployed might make a bit of sense if there was a surplus of jobs that the unemployed could do. However, the facts strongly suggest that there is a real and significant shortage of work and that this has been the norm for a long time. For example, in June 2014 there was a total of 783,000 people unemployed compared with job vacancies of 146.100. (Over 5 unemployed people per job vacancy.)

In addition, many people with a job want to work longer hours. August 2010 data indicated that total hours worked would have increased by 3.0% if all people with jobs had been able to work the hours they wanted to. This adds to the real shortage of work.

Conclusion: There is a real and significant shortage of work. Worse still, this shortage has lasted for over 30 years and shows no signs of ending in the foreseeable future. Implications:

The vilification of people on the dole is based on a work ethic that says that people on the dole are bludging on those who have work. However, the ethics should change while there is a shortage of work. The ethical thing for someone who is happy to live on the dole is to not to compete for jobs against people who really need the work.
The really unethical people during a work shortage are the “work hogs” whose long hours help reduce the number of people their employer needs to employ. Ditto employers that insist on work rosters that lock in long working hours. Ditto also employers that pressure people to work longer hours by moving employees from hourly wages to salaries. (If you are on a salary when there is a shortage of work you work long hours in the hope that you won’t be the one who loses your job.)
Work shortages create opportunities to provide work for people who really need a job by supporting others who are willing to leave their jobs and live on the dole while they attempt to start a business, get more education or pursue some other dream. With luck, the result may be a new job creating business, a better educated person or perhaps a stunning book of poetry.

What about unfilled vacancies?

It is inevitable that some vacancies will be difficult to fill even if a lot of unemployed people could do the job. There is nothing in the current rules that says unemployed people have to apply for a particular job. Many vacancies won’t attract applicants because of issues such as location, the nature of the work, employer reputation or simply a failure of the employer to notify potential applicants of the vacancy.

Some government rules make it harder to fill these problem vacancies. For example:

Waiting periods. These are the delay between when the dole is applied for and when the payments start. They can vary from one week upwards depending on circumstances. For example, a single person will have to wait an extra week for every $460 of fluid assets held compared with someone with no fluid assets. Maximum of 13 weeks wait . (NOTE: There are some provisions for exemptions and hardship payments.)

Waiting periods may make the unemployed be more cautious about applying for a job. They are spooked by the risk of being trapped in what turns out to be a rotten job in a rotten place until they can save enough to survive the waiting period.

Claw back

Claw back is the amount the dole is reduced when the recipient obtains other income. The claw back is very punitive. For example, the payments to a single person will be reduced by 60 cents for every extra dollar earned above $125 per week. In some cases income tax will have to paid as well. Someone who moves from the dole to earning the minimum hourly wage ($16.87/hr) will have no more than $6.75/hr left to pay the extra costs of going to work.

What claw back and waiting really mean is that an unemployed person who goes fruit picking can easily end up out of pocket because of the cost of travel, accommodation costs etc.

Micro business:

Small business often means that expenses and income are erratic even if the annual income is fairly steady. Friends of mine who have micro business’s to boost the pension find that Center-link hasn’t got a clue about what these types of business are like and how to deal with variable expenses and income. Some of these friends have decided that it is not worth the hassle and shut the business down.

SO WHAT MIGHT WE DO?

Accept that there is a real and significant shortage of work.
Start talking about work hogs, the employers that encourage people to be work hogs and the importance of sharing the available work.
Levy the employers that allow/force people to be work hogs. (Using the levy to pay the cost of our unemployment system. Seems fair to me.)
Stop vilifying the unemployed and get rid of policies that are all about punishing the unemployed for government and business failure.
Set priorities.
- Get at least one breadwinner employed for families with dependant children.
- Get the young employed.
- Then worry about people who are close to retirement.
- Those who don’t really need the income (or who would be happy on the dole) and could get the social benefits of working by volunteering, trying to start a new business or…
Accept that people who are happy to be unemployed are an asset at times when there is a shortage of work. (These people may make significant contributions to society as unpaid volunteers, micro business developers etc.)
By all means encourage unemployed people to volunteer for community etc. work. (However, don’t use these unpaid volunteers as a replacement for paid employees.)
Understand why some jobs are hard to fill and try and do something about it.
Understand what it is like to be on the minimum wage
Make the waiting rules much less harsh. People need to be encouraged to save when they are working instead of being punished for it. A person who starts unemployment with savings has a much better chance of staying employable than someone who hasn’t.
Find some way of making the claw back less extreme. This might mean continueing the dole for a while after someone reaches the minimum wage or ????
Seriously consider adding unemployment benefits the HECS loan. There are a number of attractions to this approach:
- It always seemed ridiculous to me that someone has to take out a loan to study full time while someone who was doing nothing got a welfare gift.
- It would help reduce costs. Clive Palmer isn’t the only well off person who was on the dole at one stage of his life and could afford to repay later.
- It helps get rid of the idea that unemployed people are bludging off taxpayers.
- It makes it easier to increase the amount paid to people when they really need it.
- It reduces the claw back disincentive because, in theory, it has to be paid back at some time in the future.

The thing that really got to me was Joe Hockey’s smartarse reply when asked what he would do if he was unemployed. All his reply of “I would get a job.” did was convince me that he was an unfeeling bastard who didn’t have a clue how the other half lived.

USEFUL DATA SET

ABS employment data June 2014

Unemployed 783,000 (5.9% – some of these will be willing and able to work)
Employed 11.582 m
Participation rate 64.7%
Aggregate monthly hours worked 1,613 million (=25.32 per employed person per week)
Disability support pension recipients 2010 792,581

ABS domestic students in higher education 2010

857,000 (Some of these would prefer to work if they could get a reasonable job.)

ABS job vacancies May 2014

146100

Minimum wage after 1/7/14

$640.90 a week ($16.87 an hour)=38 hr week
Will affect people on the minimum wage and award-rate workers, including Australia’s lowest-paid cleaners, retail and hospitality staff, childcare workers, farm labourers and factory workers.”

Newstart allowance income test (The newstart allowance is $250/week for a single adult.)

Income above $50 and up to $125 per week reduces payment by 50 cents in the dollar.
Income above $125 per week reduces payment by 60 cents in the dollar. Leaves $6.75/hr for someone getting the basic hourly rate. Keep in mind that someone who has worked part of the year may be paying tax on top of this! (Imagine how the entitled rich would scream lack of incentive if they were taxed 60 cents in the dollar?)

Newstart allowance waiting periods Waiting periods before the payments start will be at least a week and often much more. For example:

Base waiting period – One week.
Liquid assets (accessible money) based waiting period can range up to 13 weeks depending on liquid assets. For a single adult the 13 week wait will be reached if liquid assets exceed $5500. (The government saving from the 13 week wait is 55% of $5500!)
The Seasonal Work Exclusion Waiting Period may apply “If you or your partner have finished doing seasonal, contract or casual work in the 6 months before you claim, you may need to wait for a period of time before you can receive your payment. The Seasonal Work Preclusion Period will depend on how much you earned from your work and how long you were working for. The duration is based on how long it would take an average wage earner to earn the same amount as a person engaged in contract, seasonal or casual work.

ABS 1301.0 Year Book 2012 was a mine of useful information. In particular:

Table 8.30 provided information on the duration of unemployment from financial years 06/07 to 10/11. Key figures:

Less than 13 weeks – 50 to 58%
Less than 26 weeks – 67 to 74 weeks
Over 52 weeks – 14 to 19%

Table 8.32 provided information on the the difficulties in finding work. Note that there were some important differences between men and women.

Subsequent pages in this workbook cover topics such as underutilization and reasons why some people are not classified as being in the workforce.

8.33 LABOUR UNDERUTILISATION


		Units	Period	Males	Females	Persons
Labour underutilisation rates
	Unemployment rate	%	Aug 11	5.1	5.1	5.1
	Long-term unemployment rate	%	Aug 11	1.1	1.0	1.0
	Underemployment rate	%	Aug 11	5.1	8.8	6.8
	Labour force underutilisation rate	%	Aug 11	10.2	13.9	11.9
	Extended labour force underutilisation rate	%	Aug 10	11.3	15.6	13.2


Source: Australian Labour Market Statistics (6105.0); Labour Force, Australia (6202.0); Labour Force, Australia, Detailed – Electronic Delivery (6291.0.55.001).

Table 8.37 gave “volume measures” of labour underutilization for August 2010. The table shows that hours people worked would have increased by 3.0% if all the people with jobs had been able to work the hours they wanted to. If all the unemployed and underemployed had been able to work the hours they wanted to this would have added 7.5% to hours worked.

From “The shock of being forced back to work.” Rob Burgess Business Spectator. (These graphs are a useful starting point to a discussion re what is happening to available work):

Manually taking figures off the graphs gave the following:

YEAR	PEOPLE PARTICIPATION	WEEKLY HRS PER PARTICIPATOR	% DROP IN WEEKLY HRS SINCE 2008
Mar 1978	61%	NC	NC
Mar 2008	66%	25.3	0
Mar 2014	65%	24.0	6.5

The unemployment rate was 4.1 % for March 2008 and 5.8% for March 2014

Comments:

Average hours worked per month dropped by 6.4% between July 08 and Mar 14 despite the unemployment rate staying relatively stable. The good news here is that the decline in hours worked during this period was handled by sharing the available work rather than an increase in unemployment. The bad news is that the available work declined even though this didn’t show up in the unemployment stats.
If we were to do the logical thing and measure productivity in terms of available hours (instead of hours worked) productivity would have dropped dramatically.
Figures would look better if we counted being trained and educated as useful work.
People participation in the workforce actually rose from 62% to 66% between Feb 78 and Feb 08, dropping to 65% by Feb 14. No signs of a participation crisis here.

Doing things to make life harder for the unemployed or parents spending more time looking after their children is nothing but a cruel joke when the jobs aren’t available.

Disability Support Pension recipient numbers 1990 to 2010

Year	DSP recipients
1990	316 713
2000	602 280
2004	696 742
2005	706 782
2006	712 163
2007	714 156
2008	732 367
2009	757 118
2010	792 581

Note: Years selected track growth over last two decades and show the impact of 2006 reforms.

Source: Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA).[2]

2 THOUGHTS ON “IS HARASSING THE UNEMPLOYED JUSTIFIED?”

John Davidson

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014 AT 9:20 PM EDIT

This Business Spectator article asks whether the cost of the “earn or learn” policy is worth it.

One aspect of the government’s ‘unfair budget’ that has not received much scrutiny is just who will manage the growing army of unemployed youth back into work or study — that is, press them into the ‘earn or learn’ mould.

Part of the problem is the private providers that will operate (exploit) this system:

Fast forward two years, and the youth joblessness crisis is spiralling out of control, and the Abbott government’s response to it is bringing on a political crisis all of its own.

The characteristically rhyming slogan used to present Abbott’s plan is “earn or learn”, though there is growing concern that this could just as easily mean ‘burn public money to no end’.

A young Tasmanian on the ABC’s Q&A, for example, recently complained that he’d done plenty of higher education, but lived in a region where there were 16 unemployed for every job being advertised.

In such an environment, cynics point out that the best way to find a job is to start your own ‘employment provider’ consultancy, and take government money matching these jobless Tasmanians to jobs (fat chance) or, failing that, to approved ‘registered training organisations’.

Liberal member for Murray, Sharman Stone, faces a similar situation in her electorate around the Shepparton region in Victoria. Stone fears that setting up RTOs might be the only growth industry in town, though training the unemployed for which jobs exactly?

Read the article.
John Davidson

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 AT 5:22 PM EDIT

The ABC reports that Age Discrimination Commissioner Susan Ryan has said that

bias against older workers is endemic and ‘quite frightening’

I was retrenched the day after I turned 50 and took some time (and a lot of luck) to get back into employment. Part of my problem was that I was an operating manager at the time and that there was a reluctance for people to offer a job that represented a significant demotion.
Part of the problem too was that my experience limited the range of jobs that I was competent to do, a common problem with older workers. In other cases, older retrenchees are considered to be less physically, emotionally or mentally able to do jobs or work the hours younger people can live with. I had started to reach a point before my entrenchment where I was starting to wonder how much longer I really wanted to keep working as an operating manager.

Susan advises older workers to:

people should get a career check-up to map out at least the next decade of their working life as they approach 50.
“I think we need a national approach which will involve people in a systematic check-up on their career prospects while they’re still in employment, regardless of what sort of job they work in,”

“[They] should be saying, ‘well, can I do this job for the next 20 years? Will I be able to? Do I want to? Have I got the physical strength to? And if I need to change what is available to me? How do I find another job?’

In my case I ended up being lucky in that the retrenchment got me back into technical work that kept me going till I was over 65.
She also queried

the need for an influx of foreign workers on 457 or similar working visas, when so many older Australians are still willing to work.

“I agree if we do have serious skills shortages, and we do have overseas workers who can come in, that’s a sensible thing to do,” she said.

“But it’s very hard to believe, when you look at the numbers of unemployed people in their 50s and 60s, the numbers of people who are willing to train, who are willing to move for a job.”

“You have to ask yourself, are employers looking at our local talent pool of mature workers before they decide they need to import labour? I don’t think the answer is yes in every case.”

For many people over 50 it is a time when travelling Aus, doing a bit of fruit picking, working on jobs that haven’t got great security starts to make a lot of sense.

Switching to public transport may be harder than you think

2016-08-25T10:55:00.001+10:00

“Increase the use of public transport” is an easy response to Brisbane’s transport problems. However, once I realized that only 10% of car commutes went to the CBD the picture became more complex. Public and active transport was no longer the answer to everything.

This post started off as a note about reducing public transport fares. However, once I started to put together the data needed to estimate what some of the proposals were going to cost the picture became more complex. Up till then I thought that, because about 65% of commutes used cars as their main method of travel to work there was plenty of scope for reducing transport emissions and congestion by getting most of these car commuters to switch to public or active transport.

Up till then I thought that, because about 65% of commutes used cars as their main method of travel to work there was plenty of scope for reducing transport emissions and congestion by getting more of these commuters to switch to public or active transport.

However, some key bits of data changed my mind:

67% of trips to work were to places that were within the commuters “normal area of residence.”
Only 10% of car commutes were to places within the city center area.
63% of commutes to the city center were already using public transport by 2011.

It was concluded that the potential for switching car commutes to active or public transport was much less than what was implied by the “65% of Brisbane commutes used cars”.

As part of the homework a number of possibilities were considered for increasing the use of public transport:

Make public transport times more competitive by increasing the number of T2 lanes. (Lanes restricted to the use of buses, commercial vehicles and cars with passengers.)
Replacing low frequency public transport routes that go all the way to the city center with free, shorter, high frequency feeder bus routes that only go to nearby high frequency transport routes, local workplaces, shopping centers, parks etc. Potential benefits include:

Increasing the number of people who have access to high frequency transport.
Providing a system that will encourage people to use public transport instead of cars for travel within their local area.
Reducing the number of buses going into the city center.

These proposals should be accompanied by campaigns to highlight the quality of life benefits of public transport such as reduced transport stress, time to think, wind down etc.

Both these proposals would have negligible costs unless a decision were made to use more buses on the feeder routes to increase frequency or extent of the feeder bus system.

DETAILS:

Table 1 provides a breakdown of the modes of travel used by commuters on Tues 9 2011.

Table 1: MAIN Method of travel to work Tues 9 August 2011- GREATER Brisbane

Method of travel	Number	Brisbane %	Queensland %
Total public transport	127459	12.7	7.4
Total Car	648082	64.5	67.2
% cars driver only	82.5	82.5	81.5
Truck	11403	1.1	1.3
Motor bike	9729	1.0	0.9
Total Active	41774	4.2	4.7
Total employed people over 15	1004813	100.0	100.0

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2006 and 2011. Compiled and presented by .id , the population experts.

Tables like this suggest that many of Brisbane’s commuter problems could be solved by getting people out of cars and onto public transport. The underlying assumption here is that it is practical for most commuters to use public transport to get to work.

However, it is not quite as simple as this. When “How many commuters travel every day?” was googled this came up:

“As of the 2011 census, Brisbane had a working population of 643,000. Of this figure, only 211,281 (33%) commute outside their usual area of residence to work. The destination most commuted to is the inner city, with 145,599 (22%) commuting to the inner city on a daily basis. “

Funny thing is Brisbane has a public transport system that is largely about moving the 22% between the CBD and the suburbs. It is not about moving the 67% who work within their usual area of residence and certainly not about moving across the city to a workplace that is nowhere near the CBD.

A Brisbane Times article was also found that came with the following chart and map that changed the way I think about Brisbane public transport:

Fig 1: Public transport mode share of journeys to work by work location (Census 2011).

Source: Chartingtransport.com

And

Fig 2: Percent of people using public transport to go to work

(darker green denotes a higher percentage).

Source: Chartingtransport.com

Fig 3 gives more information about the transport split of people going to work in city centres.

Fig 3: Transport split for city centres – 2001 to 2011

Source: Chartingtransport.com: The Journey to Work and the City Centre (Australian cities 2011)

The key Brisbane figures for 2011 were:

Public transport=63.2%
Active transport=7.8%
Total sustainable=71.0%
Private transport=28.7%

Note that the share of public and active transport grew significantly between 2001 and 2011.

For other useful information see How People Got to Work in Brisbane and Breakdown of CBD Travel

NOTE: There are differences between some of the data sources. These differences are not large enough to affect key conclusions or create significant errors in calculations based on mixed data.

Travel to the City Centre for Work:

The high use of public transport by those travelling to the city center should hardly be surprising:

The Brisbane public transport system is largely about meeting the needs of people travelling to and from the city center.
For most of travelers, parking costs make the cost of driving higher than using public transport.

Not sure why some people choose to drive to the city center to work. Possibilities include:

They want to spend less time travelling to and from work. (I found that 3 zone commuting between the CBD and Chapel Hill using a low frequency bus route (425) took about twice as long as driving.)
Simply see travel time using public transport as the same as driving time. (Public transport involves less stress, time to wind down, etc. compared with driving.)
The start and/or finish of their journey is not well served by public transport. (Part of the problem I found when depending on route 425.)
They drive a company car (or at least get free parking as part of their package.)
They have found somewhere to park for free and want to avoid the higher cost of using public transport.
They drive a vehicle that really is needed for work.
They need to carry things like tools or teaching materials to and from work.

NOTE: Commuting to the city center by car in 2011 was about 10% of the Brisbane total car commutes. This should be kept in mind when deciding where the increasing public transport effort should go.

In terms of commuting between the city center and the suburbs:

Not sure that reducing fares would be a very cost effective way of getting people out of cars and on to public transport. (It would be easy to spend a lot of money reducing the fares of people who are already using public transport in return for only a small increase in the use of public transport by city center commuters.)
It may be far more cost effective to link a campaign highlighting the stress reduction etc. benefits of public transport while doing things to make public transport more competitive in terms of travel time using low cost options such as:

Converting low frequency routes into shorter, higher frequency feeder routes.
Increasing the use of dedicated T2 lanes for buses, taxis, commercial vehicles and cars with passengers.

Some polling of city center commuters who drive instead of using public transport would be useful.

NOTE: In terms of the total contribution cars make to to congestion, keep in mind that the city center figures above for cars do not include vehicles that are merely passing through to destinations that are outside the city center. The location of bridges, the number of major roads that feed into and through the city center and the quaint practice of placing a toll on congestion bypasses all contribute to this through traffic problem.

People Working Within Their “Usual Area of Residence”.

(NOTE: My understanding is that “Usual Area of Residence” are the areas shown in fig2.)

The figures above suggest that about 85%% of those working outside of the city center would work within their “usual area of residence” and that, for this group, the average use of public and active transport would be lower than the overall. This is not surprising. For example, for the Chapel Hill/Kenmore area where I live:

Driving to most of these jobs would take 10 to 15 mins.
Parking is free and easy to find.
The potential jobs are not concentrated in any one area.
Most of the jobs are outside of easy walking distance.
A bike could be used to safely get to some parts of the area but, for other parts, the bike route is not safe.
Most of the area is hilly so active transport can mean arriving at work hot and sweaty.
Most of the public transport routes are low frequency. In additionGetting from where I live to many other parts of the area would require trips on more than one bus.
Using one full peak travel zone of public transport would cost about $30/week compared with $6/week for a small car traveling 4 km to work. (The cost for the first zone is much higher than it is for the remaining zones.)

There are things that might be done to reduce some of the above problems. For example:

Provide more safe bike routes.
Use e-bikes or scooters to fix the “arriving hot and sweaty problem.”
Replace low frequency bus routes that run all the way to the city with local, higher frequency feeder bus routes.
Merge some feeder bus routes to allow more of the area to be reached without having to change buses.
Make the feeder buses free like the city center free bus loops.
Encourage the concentration of jobs in areas that are safe and easy to get to using public or active transport.

Even if all of the above changes were done, driving a vehicle would still be the quickest and most convenient way of getting to work for most jobs in the Chapel Hill/Kenmore area.

Not all “usual areas of residence” will have the same transport problems or opportunities as Chapel Hill/Kenmore. They need to be looked at on an area by area basis. Active and/or public transport may/may not be a far more practical way of commuting in some of these areas.

Other “Working Outside the City Centre” Jobs:

Only 11% of travel to work fell into this group of jobs. This makes it hard to tell from the above information what the split between travel modes is or what actions may be worthwhile taking to increase active or public transport.

In some cases the issues and solutions will be similar to those associated with travelling to the CBD or within the “usual area of residence”.

For others the key problem is that the public transport system is CBD centric and provides a very poor service for workers who have to travel across the city instead of to and from the CBD. (For example, at one stage I was working in the Archerfield industrial area. To get there by 9 AM from where I live at Chapel Hill takes about 35 mins x 20km direct drive by car Vs 1.5 hrs using a longer public transport journey that involved using 3 buses.)

Actions that make the public transport system less CBD centric are desirable.

Discussion and Conclusions:

Public transport is not some magic answer to city transport problems. High frequency public transport is a good way of moving lots of people, particularly to an area where parking is limited or expensive. For this reason, public transport makes sense for most of the people who work in a place like the city center. The 63% of city centre workers who commuted using public transport reflects this.

On the other hand, high frequency public transport makes less sense for moving smaller numbers of people relatively short distances to jobs that are spread over a large area. The 65%+ of people who work outside the city center who commuted by car reflects this reality.

It may make sense for the BCC to spend money trying to encourage some of the people who commute by car to switch to public transport. However, we need to accept that there are circumstances where commuting by private vehicle makes sense from the city, car user and other transport user perspective.

One of the figures that stands out in table 1 is that 82.5% of car commutes take place in driver only cars. A safe, weather proof motor bike seems a more logical vehicle for these commuters. The BCC should campaign for the setting of the standards and road rules required to allow this type of vehicle to be legally used.

So what can we say about potential actions to increase public transport usage?

Apart from some fare reduction proposals that will be discussed in a separate note the most promising approaches involve making public transport travel time and convenience more competitive. Combined these changes with the promotion of public transport as a lower stress, “time to do other things” form of transport compared with driving makes sense.

Dedicated Lanes:

Public transport travel times can be made more competitive by increasing the number of T2 lanes (that can only be used by buses, commercial vehicles and cars with passengers.) Keep in mind thatdedicated lanes have no effect on the travel times of those who aren’t allowed to use them provided that the section of road they are on is not a bottleneck. The cost of setting up T2 lanes is negligible – nothing more than a few signs.

Free feeder buses:

The feeder bus concept involves replacing low frequency bus routes that go all the way into the city with much shorter, higher frequency feeder bus routes that simply move people to high frequency transport routes and local workplaces, shopping centers, parks etc. Significant gains in frequency can be made without increasing the size of the bus fleet. Merging some of these feeder routes will make it easier to ride around a local area without having to change buses.

It is proposed that feeder buses will be free like the city center free bus loops. Normal fares would apply when passengers transfer to the normal public transport routes. As a result there will be no loss of fares.

The key benefits of free feeder bus systems are:

It will increase the number of people who have access to high frequency transport.
It provides a system that will encourage people to use public transport instead of cars for travel within their local area.
The number of buses going into the city centre will be reduced.

Costs will be negligible unless a decision is made to add extra buses to the service to increase frequency or extend the service.

NOTE: This note has concentrated on travel to work because there was good data available for work travel. Breakdown of CBD Travel provides some useful information on CBD related non-work travel and how traffic volumes vary during the day. Feeder buses would provide significant benefits for non-work travel.

CONTAINER HOUSES

2016-02-15T23:50:00.001+10:00

Container transport results in a lot of containers ending up in places where shipping them empty to somewhere where they will be needed costs too much to be worthwhile. One result has been the development of "container houses". (Google “Container Houses Australia” and you can come up with something like 2 million hits."

This link gives examples that range from simple single container buildings like this basic unit that should be easy to move at some later stage and able fit on a very small piece of land:

Then there are more elaborate things like this one below and beyond that are meant to be more permanent and impressive:

Container homes are gaining popularity for a number of reasons:

Cost: Container homes can cost less than $30,000, rather than the hundreds of thousands or even millions for a typical suburban home.

Style: “We can sit these $180,000 container homes … beside a multi-million dollar home. You wouldn’t know the difference,” Brad Lyons of Container Homes Designer Domain has previously told Domain.

Environmentally friendly/weather resistant: “Structurally strong and weatherproof, shipping/freight containers are an ideal base from which to construct a habitable space, without placing the same burden on the environment as conventional construction methods,” the Cube Modular Homes website points out.

Time: “Construction time on-site can be as little as seven days to fully weatherproofed condition,” says New Zealand–based Addis Containers.

Footprint: Having a smaller footprint means container homes are lower-maintenance, require less energy, are more flexible in where they can be built and minimise waste compared to traditional homes and construction methods.

If I had to live in places where class 5 cyclones are a possibility a properly tied down container might be a good place to be.

See here for standard shipping container sizes. A single 20 ft standard container has inside floor dimensions of 5.9x2.35 m (13.0 m2) and a height of 2.69 m. A 40ft high roof container is 12.01x2.35x2.69m.

For someone who has spent a lot of time living in 6 m2 dongas even a single container sounds like spacious luxury.

INCREASING THE USE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT

2016-01-11T10:28:00.000+10:00

This started off as a note about reducing public transport fares. However, once I started to put together the data needed to estimate what some of the proposals were going to cost the picture became more complex. Up till then I thought that, because about 65% of commutes used cars as their main method of travel to work there was plenty of scope for reducing transport emissions and congestion by getting most of these commuters to switch to public or active transport.

However, some key bits of data changed my mind:

67% of trips to work were to places that were within the commuters “normal area of residence.”
Only 10% of car commutes were to places within the city centre area.
63% of commutes to the city centre were already using public transport by 2011.

It was concluded that the potential for switching car commutes to active or public transport was much less than what was implied by the “65% of commutes used cars”.

A number of possibilities were considered for increasing the use of public transport:

Make public transport times more competitive by increasing the number of T2 lanes. (Lanes restricted to the use of buses, commercial vehicles and cars with passengers.)
Replacing low frequency public transport routes that go all the way to the city centre with free, shorter, high frequency feeder bus routes that only go to nearby high frequency transport routes, local workplaces, shopping centres, parks etc. Potential benefits include:

Increasing the number of people who have access to high frequency transport.
Providing a system that will encourage people to use public transport instead of cars for travel within their local area.
Reducing the number of buses going into the city centre.

These proposals should be accompanied by campaigns to highlight the quality of life benefits of public transport such as reduced transport stress, time to think, wind down etc.

Both these proposals would have negligible costs unless a decision were made to use more buses on the feeder routes to increase frequency or extent of the feeder bus system.

DETAILS:

Table 1 provides a breakdown of the modes of travel used by commuters on Tues 9 2011.

Table 1: MAIN Method of travel to work Tues 9 August 2011- GREATER Brisbane

Method of travel	Number	Brisbane %	Queensland %
Total public transport	127459	12.7	7.4
Total Car	648082	64.5	67.2
% cars driver only	82.5	82.5	81.5
Truck	11403	1.1	1.3
Motor bike	9729	1.0	0.9
Total Active	41774	4.2	4.7
Total employed people over 15	1004813	100.0	100.0

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2006 and 2011. Compiled and presented by .id , the population experts.

Tables like this suggest that many of Brisbane's commuter problems could be solved by getting people out of cars and onto public transport. The underlying assumption here is that it is practical for most commuters to use public transport to get to work.

However, it is not quite as simple as this. When “How many commuters travel every day?” was googled this came up:

“As of the 2011 census, Brisbane had a working population of 643,000. Of this figure, only 211,281 (33%) commute outside their usual area of residence to work. The destination most commuted to is the inner city, with 145,599 (22%) commuting to the inner city on a daily basis. “

Funny thing is Brisbane has a public transport system that is largely about moving the 22% between the CBD and the suburbs. It is not about moving the 67% who work within their usual area of residence and certainly not about moving across the city to a workplace that is nowhere near the CBD.

A Brisbane Times article was also found that came with the following chart and map that changed the way I think about Brisbane public transport:

Fig 1: Public transport mode share of journeys to work by work location (Census 2011).

Source: Chartingtransport.com

And

Fig 2: Percent of people using public transport to go to work

(darker green denotes a higher percentage).

Source: Chartingtransport.com

Fig 3 gives more information about the transport split of people going to work in city centres.

Fig 3: Transport split for city centres – 2001 to 2011

Source: Chartingtransport.com: The Journey to Work and the City Centre (Australian cities 2011)

The key Brisbane figures for 2011 were:

Public transport=63.2%
Active transport=7.8%
Total sustainable=71.0%
Private transport=28.7%

Note that the share of public and active transport grew significantly between 2001 and 2011.

For other useful information see How People Got to Work in Brisbane and Breakdown of CBD Travel

NOTE: There are differences between some of the data sources. These differences are not large enough to affect key conclusions or create significant errors in calculations based on mixed data.

Travel to the City Centre for Work:

The high use of public transport by those travelling to the city centre should hardly be surprising:

The Brisbane public transport system is largely about meeting the needs of people travelling to and from the city centre.
For most of travellers, parking costs make the cost of driving higher than using public transport.

Not sure why some people choose to drive to the city center to work. Possibilities include:

They want to spend less time travelling to and from work. (I found that 3 zone commuting between the CBD and Chapel Hill using a low frequency bus route (425) took about twice as long as driving.)
Simply see travel time using public transport as the same as driving time. (Public transport involves less stress, time to wind down, etc. compared with driving.)
The start and/or finish of their journey is not well served by public transport. (Part of the problem I found when depending on route 425.)
They drive a company car (or at least get free parking as part of their package.)
They have found somewhere to park for free and want to avoid the higher cost of using public transport.
They drive a vehicle that really is needed for work.
They need to carry things like tools or teaching materials to and from work.

NOTE: Commuting to the city centre by car in 2011 was about 10% of the Brisbane total car commutes. This should be kept in mind when deciding where the increasing public transport effort should go.

In terms of commuting between the city center and the suburbs:

Not sure that reducing fares would be a very cost effective way of getting people out of cars and on to public transport. (It would be easy to spend a lot of money reducing the fares of people who are already using public transport in return for only a small increase in the use of public transport by city centre commuters.)
It may be far more cost effective to link a campaign highlighting the stress reduction etc. benefits of public transport while doing things to make public transport more competitive in terms of travel time using low cost options such as:

Converting low frequency routes into shorter, higher frequency feeder routes.
Increasing the use of dedicated T2 lanes for buses, taxis, commercial vehicles and cars with passengers.

Some polling of city centre commuters who drive instead of using public transport would be useful.

NOTE: In terms of the total contribution cars make to to congestion, keep in mind that the city centre figures above for cars do not include vehicles that are merely passing through to destinations that are outside the city centre. The location of bridges, the number of major roads that feed into the city centre and the quaint practice of placing a toll on congestion bypasses all contribute to this through traffic problem.

People Working Within Their “Usual Area of Residence”.

(NOTE: My understanding is that “Usual Area of Residence” are the areas shown in fig2.)

The figures above suggest that about 85%% of those working outside of the city centre would work within their “usual area of residence” and that, for this group, the average use of public and active transport would be lower than the overall. This is not surprising. For example, for the Chapel Hill/Kenmore area where I live:

Driving to most of these jobs would take 10 to 15 mins.
Parking is free and easy to find.
The potential jobs are not concentrated in any one area.
Most of the jobs are outside of easy walking distance.
A bike could be used to safely get to some parts of the area but, for other parts, the bike route is not safe.
Most of the area is hilly so active transport can mean arriving at work hot and sweaty.
Most of the public transport routes are low frequency. Getting from where I live to many other parts of the area would require trips on more than one bus.
Using one full peak travel zone of public transport would cost about $30/week compared with $6/week for a small car traveling 4 km to work.

There are things that might be done to reduce some of the above problems. For example:

Provide more safe bike routes.
Use e-bikes or scooters to fix the “arriving hot and sweaty problem.”
Replace low frequency bus routes that run all the way to the city with local, higher frequency feeder bus routes.
Merge some feeder bus routes to allow more of the area to be reached without having to change buses.
Make the feeder buses free like the city centre free bus loops.
Encourage the concentration of jobs in areas that are safe and easy to get to using public or active transport.

Even if all of the above changes were done, driving a vehicle would still be the quickest and most convenient way of getting to work for most jobs in the Chapel Hill/Kenmore area.

Other “Working Outside the City Centre” Jobs:

In some cases the issues and solutions will be similar to those associated with travelling to the CBD or within the “usual area of residence”.

Actions that make the public transport system less CBD centric are desirable.

Discussion and Conclusions:

Public transport is not some magic answer to city transport problems. High frequency public transport is a good way of moving lots of people, particularly to an area where parking is limited or expensive. For this reason, public transport makes sense for most of the people who work in a place like the city centre. The 63% of city centre workers who commuted using public transport reflects this.

So what can we say about potential actions to increase public transport usage?

Dedicated Lanes:

Public transport travel times can be made more competitive by increasing the number of T2 lanes (that can only be used by buses, commercial vehicles and cars with passengers.) Keep in mind that dedicated lanes have no effect on the travel times of those who aren't allowed to use them provided that the section of road they are on is not a bottleneck. The cost of setting up T2 lanes is negligible – nothing more than a few signs.

Free feeder buses:

The feeder bus concept involves replacing low frequency bus routes that go all the way into the city with much shorter, higher frequency feeder bus routes that simply move people to high frequency transport routes and local workplaces, shopping centres, parks etc. Significant gains in frequency can be made without increasing the size of the bus fleet. Merging some of these feeder routes will make it easier to ride around a local area without having to change buses.

It is proposed that feeder buses will be free like the city centre free bus loops. Normal fares would apply when passengers transfer to the normal public transport routes. As a result there will be no loss of fares.

The key benefits of free feeder bus systems are:

It will increase the number of people who have access to high frequency transport.
It provides a system that will encourage people to use public transport instead of cars for travel within their local area.
The number of buses going into the city centre will be reduced.

Costs will be negligible unless a decision is made to add extra buses to the service to increase frequency or extend the service.

NOTE: This note has concentrated on travel to work because there was good data available for work travel. Breakdown of CBD Travel provides some useful information on CBD related non-work travel and how traffic volumes vary during the day. Feeder buses would provide significant benefits for non-work travel.

Pragmatus J

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2007 SHORT NARROW TRACK VEHICLES

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Could The World Carry 11 Billion People?

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2 THOUGHTS ON “IS HARASSING THE UNEMPLOYED JUSTIFIED?”

Switching to public transport may be harder than you think

CONTAINER HOUSES

INCREASING THE USE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT