I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Joined: Sep 06, 2004 Posts: 5315 Location: Smalltown New Zealand
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:57 pm Post subject: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
This makes me a soothsayer!
Previously
rogerhb wrote:
Previously Auntie Helen said she was "committed" to doing the new roads, it was funny the way she said it, as if she didn't want to, but had made the commitment so "so be it".
She could of course blame "not doing the roads" on the price of Green loyalty, which would be a nice compromise. But we will have to wait and see.
The Dominion Post's headline is "Coast Road or 'Take the Train'"!
Cool.
Background: Previously argument was whether to widen existing coast road or build a new road through "Transmission Gully". Wellington Regional Council has decided to axe the Transmission Gully route and just go with widening the existing route. Of course this will be done piecemeal and over time they can just stop doing pieces, rather than making a whole new development that then stops half way through and becomes a road-to-nowhere white elephant. _________________ "Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:48 pm Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
At the present time, a one way adult 'economy' train fare from Wellington to Auckland is $145 on tranzscenic. This is scant incentive to get out of your car, but maybe reasonable for a lone traveler.. If one wishes to make the trip in a full occupied 4 passenger car, the competing rail fare would be $580 one way, the car is much cheaper. _________________ "The world is changed... I feel it in the water... I feel it in the earth... I smell it in the air... Much that once was, is lost..." - Galadriel
Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 2105 Location: kiwibush
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 2:46 am Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
Public transport in New Zealand....its a joke..there's only one daily service from Invers to Dunners.....yet we could replace a good deal of the road trukkin and throw a few passenger cars on as well with a decent service....not likely to happen to. _________________ Bugger me, I hear oil's runnin out mate!
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:57 am Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
The kapiti coast commuter rail link is a fantastic journey- hills and mountains, tunnels and bridges, its great, and much quicker in peak hour.
Interestingly, when they put more trains on and refurbished the old ones, a lot more people started to use it too.
The only problem is there are some sections with only single tracks, and there are still not enough trains at peak hour, nor enough park and ride facilities.
The Wellington region needs to get serious about public transport- a unified ticket valid on trains and buses, a tram along the waterfront to courtnay place, and more investment in rail would go a long way.
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:23 am Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
If you think it's hopeless having single track over there, try over here. There's large sections of the line between Sydney and Brisbane that are still single track!
Not to mention there's an antiquated "signalling" system in place for a significant stretch. That got picked up on not too long ago. It works, and is probably best kept in place as a backup, but it wouldn't hurt to have lighted signalling there...
Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 276 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 10:09 am Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
peaker_2005 wrote:
If you think it's hopeless having single track over there, try over here. There's large sections of the line between Sydney and Brisbane that are still single track!
Umm, it's single track all the way from Maitland to Brisbane. However, the absence of a second track is not the problem. The convoluted 1930s steam era alignment is, which is partly a function of the lack of investment in our rail networks since the great depression, and partly a function of the insane decision to extend the coast route to Brisbane and leave the inland routes to fester at Wallangarra and Boggabilla.
Straightening up the coast route would cost about as much as completely rebuilding one of the inland routes and extending it across the ranges.
However, in reality when you have a country with massive coal reserves and sweet nothing in the way of oil that can be used to produce Diesel, perhaps keeping steam era railway alignments isn't such a bad thing.
Quote:
Not to mention there's an antiquated "signalling" system in place for a significant stretch. That got picked up on not too long ago. It works, and is probably best kept in place as a backup, but it wouldn't hurt to have lighted signalling there...
As I understand it, they've either already abolished electric staff safeworking operations north of Casino or they are very very close to doing so already.
If you want antiquated, have a look at the main lines from Campbelltown to Albury, or Sydenham to Bendigo (being replaced as we speak), or Broadmeadows to Seymour (Broad Gauge). It's double line block all the way, technology that dates from the era of Alexander Graham Bell - literally - the antique wooden machines on signalmens desks are still in use!
But then, just because something's old doesn't automatically mean you throw it away. Sure, it requires people in signal boxes to operate instead of automated coloured lights. That can be a good thing, it creates employment. _________________ The purpose of human life revolves around an endless need to extract ever increasing amounts of carbon out of the ground and then release it into the atmosphere.
Joined: Feb 20, 2005 Posts: 2880 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 10:56 am Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
Steam locomotives suck ass. More ineffiecent vehicles are hard to imagine.
And you just said it: Australia has lot's of coal, which could be made into diesel. But why use diesel trains when you can use electric trains, and why use coal power at all when you sit above the largest uranium reserves in the entire world? _________________ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 276 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 11:20 am Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
Starvid wrote:
Steam locomotives suck ass. More ineffiecent vehicles are hard to imagine.
Perhaps if R&D efforts had continued for the last fifty years, steam locos would be as efficient as or better than the shining beacons of 1960s diesel technology used by Australia's various railways:
And you just said it: Australia has lot's of coal, which could be made into diesel.
Only if you're desperate and have energy and money to burn
Quote:
But why use diesel trains when you can use electric trains,
Perhaps you've not noticed, but Australia is a very big place, with sparse population centres and a whole lot of nothing in between. Copper supply is sparse. What's electric railway overhead made out of?
Quote:
and why use coal power at all when you sit above the largest uranium reserves in the entire world?
Because we don't have a single nuclear power plant anywhere in this country (there's one research & medical reactor around the corner from where I grew up but that's it), and there is little political momentum to actually start building any. _________________ The purpose of human life revolves around an endless need to extract ever increasing amounts of carbon out of the ground and then release it into the atmosphere.
Joined: Feb 20, 2005 Posts: 2880 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 12:02 pm Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
MrPC wrote:
Quote:
But why use diesel trains when you can use electric trains,
Perhaps you've not noticed, but Australia is a very big place, with sparse population centres and a whole lot of nothing in between. Copper supply is sparse. What's electric railway overhead made out of?
Seriously dude, you don't have to mine all the copper in Australia. You can import it. It's called trade.
MrPC wrote:
Quote:
and why use coal power at all when you sit above the largest uranium reserves in the entire world?
Because we don't have a single nuclear power plant anywhere in this country (there's one research & medical reactor around the corner from where I grew up but that's it), and there is little political momentum to actually start building any.
Well, for the sake of the global climate I hope Australians start to care about nuclear energy. _________________ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Joined: Sep 06, 2004 Posts: 5315 Location: Smalltown New Zealand
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 2:29 pm Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
I have commuted by train to Wellington for ten years now and find the service pretty good. It's great to zip past watching the cars crawling on SH2. Sure, I have to think about my travel times and plan weekends around the timetable.
At Wellington Station people have been handing out leaflets "Metlink Network Map" which attempt to show all the public transport as an integrated network. That counts as doing something in my book. _________________ "Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:51 pm Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
MrPC wrote:
Starvid wrote:
Steam locomotives suck ass. More ineffiecent vehicles are hard to imagine.
Perhaps if R&D efforts had continued for the last fifty years, steam locos would be as efficient as or better than the shining beacons of 1960s diesel technology used by Australia's various railways:
I didn't know those things were so old...
No wonder they have so many problems on the Main North.
Look at it this way: at least they'll have SOME reason to get new trains on... I'd daresay they'd be nearly on their last legs by now...
Joined: Sep 13, 2004 Posts: 142 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:03 pm Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
americandream wrote:
Public transport in New Zealand....its a joke..there's only one daily service from Invers to Dunners.....yet we could replace a good deal of the road trukkin and throw a few passenger cars on as well with a decent service....not likely to happen to.
The "Southerner" passenger rail service was progressively gutted by Tranzrail and then closed for good in 2002.
Now there are zilch rail services south of Christchurch.
I was looking at a business trip to Wellington and have to fly as the rail/ferry option is a joke schedule and price wise. _________________ Let's hope the next generation have a sense of humour ... our generation will need it.
Joined: Sep 06, 2004 Posts: 5315 Location: Smalltown New Zealand
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:08 pm Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
fastbike wrote:
I was looking at a business trip to Wellington and have to fly as the rail/ferry option is a joke schedule and price wise.
Are there still coaches? Buses also run between AKL and WLG and ironically leave WLG at the Railway Station. _________________ "Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
Joined: Jul 25, 2004 Posts: 681 Location: Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:28 pm Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
peaker_2005 wrote:
If you think it's hopeless having single track over there, try over here. There's large sections of the line between Sydney and Brisbane that are still single track!
Not to mention there's an antiquated "signalling" system in place for a significant stretch. That got picked up on not too long ago. It works, and is probably best kept in place as a backup, but it wouldn't hurt to have lighted signalling there...
LOL, I see others have responded to this, but i'm gonna jump in, too - Just because something is "old" doesn't make it "bad" or "wrong".
Viz: sex is old, older than humanity. Just because sex is old does not mean we should ban it or replace it (like the Radical Feminists want or the Puritanically Policitally Correct, who want everyone to become celebate).
Diesel replaced steam simply because of the costs of FUEL, nothing else. Steam locomotives, of all locomotives, have the potential to have vast improvements done to their efficiency.
For example: a STEAM power station (coal-fired) comes in at around 35% efficiency. Improvements could be made to double that, with some exotic stuff.
A diesel locomotive comes in at about 30%, immediately after an overhaul, travelling downhill, with a following breeze. Diesel manufacturers state their efficiency at the shaft of the diesel engine, a DISHONEST way of not taking into account transmission losses.
A traditional steam locomotive comes in at about 12% (the French compounds) and the average was about 5% (American stuff).
David Wardale, in South Africa in 1981, took a 5% efficient steam locomotive and uprated it to 15% in a few months' worth of work. It consumed 60% LESS fuel than it's counterparts (of the same class).
I, personally, beleive (and I've put the mental effort into finding out) that steam could be made up to 25% (or slightly better) efficent.
Given that a diesel very rapidly degrades in efficiency (down to about 25% some weeks after leaving the workshops), this means that steam, with modern physics, could be made as efficient as diesel.
But steam has a huge advantage over diesel: it can burn ANY fuel. This does not have to be coal: it can be left-over sugar cane; left over of logging operations (presently burnt) or compressed municipal waste.
Also steam locomotives are much easier to build (and hence much less expensive), and much easier to maintain than the incredibly complex diesels. The latest offering from US diesel manufaturers is a vastly complex computer-controlled rolling edifice to over-complication which has more computing power than the Moon Lander of Apollo 11 that landed on the Sea of Tranquility...why? Are we expecting our locomotives to navigate their way to the Moon?
The AC traction technology that is being offered has more Inverters, converters and "frankfurters"(unecessary frilly bits) than anything ever offered before...the only way the manufacturers can actually get people to buy these things (with a price-tag to match their complexity) is to offer to make the repairs as modular as possible, given that the only person who could actually repair these sophisticated DC-to-AC inverters that carry 9,000 amps each is a PhD in Electrical Engineering, with a price-tag similar to the first-cost of the locomotive.
Now, why can't a steam locomotive's manufacturer (with a product costing many times less than that of a diesel) also make things "modular"?
This would reduce steam's costs further.
The following table will give some idea of first cost of diesel versus steam:
All prices are in Australian Dollars, Unless Noted Otherwise. All locomotives are steam, Unless noted otherwise
Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 276 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 10:51 pm Post subject: Re: NZ: Coast Road or 'Take the Train'
peaker_2005 wrote:
MrPC wrote:
Perhaps if R&D efforts had continued for the last fifty years, steam locos would be as efficient as or better than the shining beacons of 1960s diesel technology used by Australia's various railways:
I didn't know those things were so old...
No wonder they have so many problems on the Main North.
Look at it this way: at least they'll have SOME reason to get new trains on... I'd daresay they'd be nearly on their last legs by now...
FYI the main north runs from Newcastle to Dumaresq (just past Armidale). That's the line that runs to Tamworth and Armidale for a daily passenger service and a few freights, and used to extend through Tenterfield to Wallangarra, a Standard Gauge to Narrow Gauge trans-shipment point on the NSW-QLD border that was in heavy use until the North Coast route was extended to South Brisbane in 1930, and also during WW2.
You're probably thinking of the North Coast line.
And incidentally, most of the North Coast line traffic actually uses 1990s locomotives (the NR class). That was Keating's legacy (National Rail), building a fleet of locomotives that can only be used on a few lines. They probably feel the need for something half decent when coastal shipping is a competitor along that entire corridor (and is probably more efficient to boot). If it wasn't for the likelihood that anything of value in the shipping container would mysteriously disappear somewhere between the truck and the ship, or the ship and the truck that is. _________________ The purpose of human life revolves around an endless need to extract ever increasing amounts of carbon out of the ground and then release it into the atmosphere.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
News
Discussions
Resources
Members
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
