@TransportBlog @JulieAnneGenter community outrage at new bike lane death trap in Island Bay

Source: Wellington’s Island Bay cycleway has left residents confused and angry | Stuff.co.nz.

We drove past this bicycle death trap in island Bay in Wellington the other weekend. The first thing I noticed is a lot of bicycle will be sideswiped as passengers in cars open their left door not expecting anybody to be there. The bike lane also narrows the road from buses. Residents now have a lot of trouble safely getting out of their houses without both are running over bicyclists and seeing oncoming cars. Further proof that bikes are a killer green technology.

Source: Wellington’s Island Bay cycleway has left residents confused and angry | Stuff.co.nz.

Part of the nonsense behind this death trap is that more people ride their bike if they can do so safely such as on this death trap according to the local mayor:

Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown acknowledged the recent social media backlash – which she dubbed “bike-lash” – but was confident it would simmer down once the cycleway was complete.

She pointed to the council’s research, which showed 76 per cent of Wellingtonians would cycle more if cycling was safer.

“And I think a scientific survey is a clearer indication [of Wellingtonians’ views on the cycleway] than the number of social media likes or dislikes.”

Obviously our local mayor has not heard of the social acceptability bias that arises when answering questions about whether or whether not they are use fashionable forms of transport.

The number of people in Wellington taking a bicycle to work in Wellington is trivial. Three times as many walk to work as take a bike to work in Wellington.

Source: New Zealand Transport Agency.

The Twitter Left mantra as championed by the Greens and Transport Blog is that it would all be so much different we invested a little bit more in public transport is a myth.

The experience in Europe and North America is that if you make buses free, the cheapies that currently bike take the bus or train. In addition, the street people find it comfortable warm place to hang out when during the day which drives the regular customers away.

A 2002 report released by the National Center for Transportation Research indicated that the lack of fares attracted hordes of young people, who brought with them a culture of vandalism, graffiti, and bad behavior—which all necessitated costly maintenance. The lure of “free,” the report implied, attracted the “wrong” crowd—the “right” crowd, of course, being wealthier people with cars, who aren’t very sensitive to price changes.

In Wellington CBD, average value of commercial building is almost halved with a red or yellow sticker

Within the Wellington CBD, the average value of a commercial building is almost halved if it receives a legally binding earthquake-prone declaration. Discounts on specific buildings will vary around this average level, reflecting a number of factors such as costs of remediation and the nature of existing rental agreements.

Source: Before a Fall: Impacts of Earthquake Regulation and Building Codes on the Commercial Building Market | Motu

Early Film Footage of London

Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury housing costs to income ratios since 2007

Global deaths from indoor and outdoor pollution

@TransportBlog @JulieAnneGenter mode of commuting in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch

Jim Rose's avatarUtopia, you are standing in it!

Bugger all people commute by bus or train outside of Wellington. Even in Wellington taking the bus or the train has trouble staying well ahead of walking to work.

Source: Ministry of Transport. (2015).  25 years of New Zealand travel: New Zealand household travel 1989–2014. Wellington: Ministry of Transport.

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@NYTimeskrugman nails urban inequality @PhilTwyford @metiria

Source: Inequality and the City – The New York Times via Krugman: Deregulate Housing, David Henderson | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

The emergence of generation rent in the USA and UK

No Generation Rent in Deutschland or Nihon? Housing price to income ratios, USA, UK, Japan, Germany and New Zealand

Japan and Germany seem to be pretty relaxed places to buy a house over the last 15 years. The USA had a bit of a bubble but it burst. New Zealand and the UK are dogs of places if you are young and house-hunting.

Source: OECD Economic Outlook November 2015, Annex Table 61.

@Maori_Party sold their people out to the NIMBYs

The Māori Party face the least political risks from deregulating land supply because so few Māori own their own homes. Less than half the rate of European New Zealanders. Māori home ownership rates peaked in 1991.

Source: 2013 Census QuickStats about housing.

Nonetheless, the Māori Party supplied the last two votes to vote down attempts to relax regulatory restrictions on the supply of land in New Zealand.

Source and notes: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed June 2015; nominal housing prices for each country is deflated by the personal consumption deflator for that country.

Their rationale for making land more expensive is a commitment to environmental principles. As the Māori Party coleader explained at the time:

We know there is considerable pressure and need for this Government to address the housing shortage, particularly in Auckland. However, one intent of the RMA, is to protect our environment for generations to come and this must remain paramount.

The 2014 policy manifesto of the party did not discuss housing supply or the need for reform of the RMA. It was mainly about social housing and the quality of rental house.

The chances of Māori increasing their homeownership rates rather than becoming leading members of Generation Rent requires a relaxation in restrictions in the RMA on the supply of land.

Auckland is up with London and New York in terms of housing unaffordability relative to median incomes. US cities with responsive land regulation don’t experience housing bubbles.

Glaeser and Gyourko summarised the findings of a number of studies on land supply and housing prices:

Recent research also indicates that house prices are more volatile, not just higher, in tightly regulated markets …. price bubbles are more likely to form in tightly regulated places, because the inelastic supply conditions that are created in part from strict local land-use regulation are an important factor in supporting ever larger price increases whenever demand is increasing. …. It is more difficult for house prices to become too disconnected from their fundamental production costs in lightly regulated markets because significant new supply quickly dampens prices, thereby busting any illusions market participants might have about the potential for ever larger price increases.

There has been a steady decline in housing affordability in New Zealand. The position is critical of the bottom 20% of the income ladder. Four in 10 now spend more than 30% of their disposable income on housing costs. Māori will be over-represented in this group but the party set-up to speak for them fails to do everything it can to make their housing cheaper.

NZ mode of commuting

Bugger all people commute by bus or train outside of Wellington. Even in Wellington taking the bus or the train has trouble staying well ahead of walking to work.

Source: Ministry of Transport. (2015).  25 years of New Zealand travel: New Zealand household travel 1989–2014. Wellington: Ministry of Transport.

@TransportBlog would #cyclists ever pass the precautionary principle?

Jim Rose's avatarUtopia, you are standing in it!

If bikes were not invented until today, would they ever be allowed on the road by road safety regulators. Here is the business case: allow pedestrians to move around at high speed on the road including at night with poor visibility as long as they travel on a metal contraption.

image

Source: Ministry of Transport, Cyclists 2014.

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Who spends more than half their income on housing in the UK?

When did buying your own home become a good investment in Australia?

When I left university, all my mates were in a fever pitch about buying a house because it was such a good investment. They didn’t mention that housing had been a dog of investment for the previous 10 years. Housing was a good investment for a couple years around the time of this feverish home buying by my friends as the chart below shows. I didn’t buy a house because I could rent houses that were far nicer and more convenient to work and that any I could buy in Canberra. That pretty much applies to today.

Source and notes: Dallas Fed International Housing Database July 2015 – The author acknowledge use of the dataset described in Mack and Martínez-García (2011); real housing prices are nominal housing prices deflated by a personal consumption deflator.

Through all the 1990s as the chart above shows in retrospect, I was too polite to inquire of friends about their house prices in case they had no equity in their own house after the bank took its slice. For all of the 1990s, investing in a house was a dog of an investment in Australia if the above chart is a reasonable national summary of what is a medium-sized country. Things then hit a fever pitch at the end of the 1990s with house prices doubling and then some across Australia.

When did buying your own home become an investment in New Zealand?

Buying a house became an investment in New Zealand coincidently with the passing of the Resource Management Act and all the restrictions on land supply it empowered. Prior to then buy a house was a good idea except if you want to make money because real housing prices in 1993 were the same as in the mid-70s.

Source and notes: Dallas Fed International Housing Database July 2015 – The author acknowledge use of the dataset described in Mack and Martínez-García (2011); real housing prices are nominal housing prices deflated by a personal consumption deflator.

Housing prices rose by 50% in the first few years after the passage of the Resource Management Act. Housing prices doubled again in the last five years of the last Labour Government in New Zealand. With the economic recovery, housing prices increased again by 30% in the last four years or so.

The housing prices charted in deflated above are nationwide figures originally from nationwide nominal data published by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and Quotable Value. They do not show the even faster growth in housing prices in, example, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and stagnant housing prices in declining regions, cities and towns of New Zealand.

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