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Press Release from Sustainable Energy Forum
12 December 2003
"We are starting to see engagement and commitment to solve the transport problems - now we need a visionary public transport system to get the people moving around Auckland" said the Convenor of the Sustainable Energy Forum, John Blakeley.
"We need to start building sustainable transport facilities for the future. Oil is running out. The money will not be well spent if, by the end of the decade, the cost of fuel is so high that Aucklanders can not afford to use cars to go to work."
"Building more motorways will increase fuel demand, cause more congestion and pollution in cities, and lock us into a twentieth century solution to transport problems."
"The 21st century solution is to provide much more user-friendly and efficient public transport, and road pricing measures to reduce congestion in business districts, such as is now being used in London and Singapore" Mr Blakeley said.
"International organisations are now stating that oil supply is likely to reach a peak within about the next ten years and will then gradually diminish. With continually increasing demand for oil worldwide, this is likely to lead to shortages and a substantial rise in oil prices within the next decade" Mr Blakeley said.
"Recent official projections in New Zealand suggest that business-as-usual transport energy use will increase by one third by 2025. With the imminent demise of the Maui field, we are now becoming much less self sufficient in providing our own transport fuel, now declining to around 20% of the total required."
The question has to be asked as to whether as a nation we will be able to afford to import one third more fuel than we do now? Importing oil is already a major factor in the balance of payments which New Zealand has been incurring ever since the oil shocks of the mid to late 1970's." Mr Blakeley said. "A significant rise in the price of oil would now cause us severe economic problems, as it did in 1973, and we are very vulnerable to this".
"In Christchurch, transport planning engineers have recently told the City Council that demand management measures such as road pricing will almost certainly be required within ten years under a draft Council plan to tackle traffic congestion, particularly when technology now makes it possible for tolling to be done without having to stop at a toll booth" Mr Blakeley said.
"The worst possible scenario will be that in ten years time the public transport system is still inefficient and overcrowded, while we have a lot of flash new motorways and yet people do not have the fuel to use them." "We need to read the international signs that are already there of substantial future fuel shortages which will be brought about either by decreasing resources, or political instability in oil producing countries, or both" concluded Mr Blakeley.
ENDS
For more information please contact the SEF Office: info@sef.org.nz
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