May 12, 2008...6:37 pm
C-c-car-boom!
Up 5c a litre to 193.9c a litre. That was the price of petrol at my local BP as seen out the window of my home-bound trolley bus tonight. Another record, and there will be more to come, with international oil prices still firming at $US 126 a barrel, $US 3 more than on Thursday, when I was suspecting a 6c a litre price rise.
Are you driving less as a result? Walking more, or taking the bus or train?
As a daily bus commuter, I prefer to use the bus even at nights and weekends. You can do that in Wellington. My local bus route has a 10-minute off-peak service on weekdays (only minutes apart at peak time) and runs every 15 at weekends. My bus is almost as packed late on Saturday nights as at peak hour on weekdays. My $95 monthly Gold Pass gives unlimited rides, and at just $4.31 a weekday if I only use it for work trips, and much less if I make other trips, and I always do, it’s a bargain whatever the price of petrol.
I realise if you don’t live in Wellington, you don’t have access to this European level of public transport service.
Thanks to it, though, I don’t see myself cutting back much on my already limited car use, which is mainly for leisure and supermarket-shopping purposes. I put $55 worth of petrol in my tank the other Sunday, about the same I have put in every two or three weeks for some time now.
What I am finding cheaper is flying. I go to Auckland reasonably regularly, and airfares at $69 or less each way are now substantially cheaper than driving. I’d need to be taking at least two of my children in the car with me to make the eight-hour drive (which I enjoy) economic now. I do hope Pacific Blue stays with us. Its elongated 737-800s were full on the two round trips to Auckland I made on it a few weekends ago, a hopeful sign, as competition like this allows many more people to travel. Overall passenger numbers are up strongly on routes with this kind of competition, which we haven’t enjoyed since Ansett arrived two decades ago, ironically, just as the massive economic downturn after the 1987 sharemarket crash really started biting.
16 Comments
May 12, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I am driving a lot less. Now a trip to Wellington has to be budgeted for rather than just off on a whim. I have a friend 20mins drive north that I hardly see now because of the cost. We are staying home much more, no weekend drives or anything.
May 12, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I walk to work so only drive around 5,000 km/year (including the odd road trip), consequently petrol prices haven’t affected my driving habits. I’ve been paying more attention lately to the supermarket coupon specials though.
May 12, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I believe (could be wrong) that avgas has no tax on it. So part of the explanation for cheap flights might be that they pay no tax (or to put it another way, don’t pay for the externalities).
May 12, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Doesn’t impact me although it was a surprise to get $63.01 petrol my little Fiat. Still that will last over 500km in the city.
Why not bus? A 0:35-0:45 minute commute in the car, at the time that suits me, is 1:45-2:00 by bus if the 2-5 connections (depending on the time) connect….
May 12, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Hmmm…. I used to catch the no. 3 and the no. 21 in Wellington, back in the day (last year) when I lived there. But never happily, at night. The 21, which would take me very close to my home, stopped running at about 7pm, so that left the no. 3, running along the main route. Regular enough, and occasionally on time, but I had a 10 minute walk up along a suburban street, including going past a park entrance. Just a little worrying, and I never felt comfortable about it. Even getting to the bus in town meant that I had to walk past a bushy, poorly lit area (Parliament grounds!), which was, well, uncomfortable. So catching the bus once the sun was down was always difficult.
May 13, 2008 at 8:27 am
It costs me around $70 to fill my car and I can practically see the needle falling . As a result I am a big fan of the #7 bus. Seriously considering trading my car in for a Prius/other hybrid. I thought it might be worth waiting a few years for prices to come down and the technology to develop.
May 13, 2008 at 9:19 am
There are lots more people using the Capital Connection now with up to 100 getting on at Palmerston North and the train is commonly full when it leaves Waikanae.
I understand that Auckland’s new bus lanes have a problem because the park n ride carparks are already full to capacity and there is nowhere for commuters to park. The park n ride were expected to reach capacity in 4 years - not 3 months.
Palmerston North’s busses are well used because they did a deal with Massey offering free rides for students and staff in exchange for Massey abolishing free parking on both campuses.
May 13, 2008 at 10:01 am
Jet fuel and avgas have no tax on them only if used internationally. Same for marine fuels. Domestic flights are subject to fuel taxes, though I think it is only GST - no excise - but the volume is small - 10% of total jet.
I suspect demand will recover because fuel is still relatively small part of household budgets compared to what it has been in the past ie our wealth has increased at a greater rate than fuel costs.
Experience has been we tend to be sensitive in the short term to these costs but realise the benefits of mobility far outweigh them and adjust accordingly. Expect diesel demand to decline though, as the economy eases. I know my railway station carpark is getting fuller by the week, but that could be the winter effect.
May 13, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Looking at the gas stations in China, they were paying less than $1NZ a litre at the pumps. Not sure how much it was in North Korea ;-P
May 13, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I think they subsidise fuel in China plus labour is cheaper and safety standards might be lower along with the fuel specs. It would be about 115-120cpl in NZ if no tax whatsover
May 13, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Looking at the gas stations in China, they were paying less than $1NZ a litre at the pumps. Not sure how much it was in North Korea
There are cars in North Korea? And gas stations?
Seriously, while I knew the elite had cars, any picture I had ever seen of this Stalinist paradise showed streets empty of anything except pedestrians, cyclists, buses, trolley buses and trams.
I am really looking forward to your first-hand account of what it is really like there.
Not to mention your account, if you can publish one, of how the Chinese media have reported the quake.
Talk about being in the place at the time!
May 13, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Palmerston North’s busses are well used because they did a deal with Massey offering free rides for students and staff in exchange for Massey abolishing free parking on both campuses.
PN’s buses to Massey are, yes (and it was an excellent move). The rest of them though are mostly empty outside the daily school runs - perhaps because they’re irregular, moderately unpredictable, and only run during the day.
May 14, 2008 at 11:07 am
Omnibus comment:
Public transport
I’m in Auckland. Public transport here is good in some parts, but poorly integrated. You often have to walk 500 metres to get to a bus stop, then another 500 metres to transfer from one bus to another…and then another 500 metres from the destination bus stop to where you want to go. You pay a new fare on each leg unless you’re on a system-wide pass ($219 / month). The net of that is that unless the ONE bus you’re getting on goes where you want to go, public transport s a non-starter for most people. having said that, I take the 973 or 974 from Beach Haven to the Auckland CBD and back as a matter of preference. In the morning and evenings, the bus lanes make taking a bus faster than driving. On a ten-trip (3 stages) that costs me $3.80 each way. Otherwise, it’s $4.30 each way. Per person. Taking the whole family to town (on 10 trips) costs nearly $30 return….and the car starts to look like the better option.
Having lived car-less for 6 months in Toronto last year, it’s obvious enough what a good public transport system needs to be….and Auckland isn’t there yet, but it is at least headed in the right direction.
Petrol and Cars
I sold my petrol-guzzlers late last year. We now have a 1.3l 1998 Mazda Demio. It has loads of inside space. Better head room and foot room for 4 people than our old Nissan Terrano! I’m 190cms all I find this ’small’ car much more comfortable.
It does 6.0-6.5 L / 10okms in the city and 5.7L / 100kms on the highway (according to *my* fuel log). That is better than any hybrid I know of. Hybrids tend to be larger cars that would normally do 10-12 litres / 100kms but instead do 7.5-9 litres / 100 kms. My brother hasa hybrid Lexus 4WD and he’s lucky to get under 8L / 100kms on the highway and 10L / 100kms in the city (Toronto).
If you want to use the least petrol, get a 1.3L car instead of a hybrid. I’m told the latest Demio does about 5.3L / 100kms. The 1.3L cars are cheaper to rego, too, I think. They also have a lot of “zip” if you get a standard. Automatics are to be avoided (by me, anyway). My Demio cost me under $8000 in December, so it shouldn’t take buckets of money to save money now.
China and Oil
As for China, I read last week they subidise the price of fuel. With trade surpluses as massive as those they enjoy, money wouldn’t be hard to come by for that. Plus, we don’t know how much they actually pay for their oil. The spot price may bear no relation whatever to specific contracts between parties - like Sudan and China, for example.
May 15, 2008 at 3:37 pm
China does subsidise oil. Wish they wouldn’t. Making people pay the real cost would do wonders to ease Beijing’s traffic and air pollution. Still, it would lead to even more crowding on the public transport.
Poneke, the media coverage of the quake has been spectacular. I had CCTV 1 going for a couple of hours last night and apart from ads and the weather, it was all earthquake all the time. Media websites are the same. And it all seems very open. The death toll, for example, is being regularly updated and seems very precise. And I didn’t notice any “lag”, either. I was in class on Monday afternoon, in what seems to be a very sturdy building (I believe it survived the 1976 Tangshan quake), so the first I heard was at about 5pm when I got out of class and my wife sent me a message. I got online and there it was, wall-to-wall coverage, with the Chinese media reporting pretty much the same as the foreign media. Almost as if we’ve suddenly got a free press.
Of course, we still do get the obligatory “Wen Jiabao visited Wenchuan and shouted at survivors buried under the rubble through a loud-hailer” stories, but most of what is on TV and online is about the rescue efforts.
May 15, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Of course, we still do get the obligatory “Wen Jiabao visited Wenchuan and shouted at
survivors buried under the rubble through a loud-hailer” stories, but most of what is
on TV and online is about the rescue efforts.
This was even on the news here tonight and yesterday… what I thought it showed was the Communist Party leadership wanting to be seen as acting like politicians in a western democracy, by being out there in a time of crisis. They did something similar in the big snow that stopped the trains, too.
Despite China’s communist leadership, they want to be seen as leaders of the people. The contrast with Burma can’t have been more explicit, and I am sure the CCP know that.
Whenever there is some big disaster in NZ, or in any western democracy, the media always show the politicians turning up at the scene… if they didn’t turn up, the media would make a big thing of it because it is expected.
So despite the lack of elected politicians, the Chinese leadership are taking note of democratic norms.
I think China is well on the road to democracy.
May 15, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Malcolm. What externalities should aviation pay for that other transport modes pay for? Aviation pays the full cost of operation including air traffic control and airport costs. Fuel taxes only exist for on road use in NZ, to pay for roads (but also pays to subsidise public transport, walking and cycling infrastructure). Rail doesn’t pay fuel tax (except a tiny local authority fuel tax of 0.33c/l). Then again, manufacturing doesn’t pay for externalities either, neither does the primary sector, neither does retail or services, or consumers. If you are going to start taxing externalities (because, for some reason some believe the government should benefit from bad behaviour), it becomes a very big and complicated argument.
Leave a Reply