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Allan Joyce’s move to ground the entire Qantas fleet today was an inevitable attempt to break the backs of trade unionist reactionaries. As a Qantas shareholder I am dismayed at the current outcome but, as Qantas has not paid dividends for a couple of years, I support attempts to force the airline to gain competitiveness [...] Australia is a geographically large country with a dispersed though highly urbanised population. This creates intrinsically difficult – ‘tyranny of distance’ – transportation issues. Australia relies heavily on trucking as a means of transporting raw materials to population centres and ports but also experiences significant congestion in its capital cities. Traffic accident [...] I always think it crass of people to ask to get invited to a party. In my life I have not received invitations on more than a few occasions so that generally, these days, I am miffed only momentarily. But I was crass enough* to seek an invitation to the Government’s October Tax Summit and, as [...] When I worked on transport sector externality issues recently I became aware of the issue of the impact of air pollution from vehicles on human health. Concern with this issue has subsided a lot over recent years because of improved emissions performance by vehicles. Most attention gets focused on traffic congestion issues and road accident [...] I had a business breakfast in Melbourne city this morning and was rewarded with a free train trip to the city with the ‘early bird’ fare arrangements on offer. This provides free travel if you leave early and arrive in Melbourne city before 7-00am. Apart from saving a few dollars it gave me a pleasant [...] I wrote a brief note earlier this year on how Beijing should resolve its traffic problems. The interesting news over the past few days is that the Beijing administration has announced a whole set of anti-traffic congestion policies. The Vice-Mayor of Beijing in charge of traffic ‘resigned’ the day the measures were introduced and is [...] Can anyone explain to me why Qantas operates only a single daily flight to China, namely to Shanghai? Why don’t they operate direct flights to cities such as Beijing? China is Australia’s fourth largest source of tourists – in 2009 366,000 tourists came from China – and many Australians are now visiting Chinas for business and [...] I’ve been in Sydney most of this week attending the Australia’s Future Tax System – A Post-Henry Tax Review. It had some excellent speakers and was for me – not a taxation specialist – very informative. I particularly liked John Freebairn’s overview and a superb paper by Ben Smith which clarified my views on the resource [...] The Intelligent Access Program offers heavy vehicles improved access to a wider range of Australian roads – and the ability to carry increased loads – in exchange for the vehicles agreeing to carry on board telematic devices that describe where the vehicles are as well as their self-assessed load characteristics (mass, vehicle dimensions, suspension) that [...] The Sunday Age today presents a proposed ‘transport revolution’ for Melbourne prepared by Monash University’s Professor Graham Currie – a ‘transport expert’. The plan recognizes that expanding road supply is not a major sensible option in the face of Melbourne’s ballooning congestion problems and instead argues for creating a ‘road hierarchy’ that gives pedestrians, cars, [...] Again a retrieved post – thanks Christina. [...] Another retrieved post-hacking post. A letter published in AFR on January 16. [...] David Prentice and I wrote this as a reader’s guide to the main ideas in our longer report for the Australian Future Tax System Review. It is published online by Science Alerts. I gave a talk on this topic tonight at the Victorian Branch of the Economic Society of Australia, Transport Forum. The powerpoints are here. Met some top transport analysts and some prospering ex-students. A good evening and a great meal afterwards in China Town. I agree that I have pushed this area hard on the [...] It is obvious that state governments in Australia are fearful of pricing road use. This is so even though it is almost universally acknowledged that such policies make sense in terms of generating efficiency gains through reduced congestion and more effective use of roads by heavy vehicles. The backlash that the Brumby Government received from [...] I will be speaking in Melbourne on Transport Taxes and Congestion Pricing at the Transport Economics Forum at 5 PM Thursday 27 August – Reserve Bank Function Room. [...] The paper I co-wrote with Dr. David Prentice on “A Conceptual Framework for the Reform of Taxes Related to Roads and Transport” for Australia’s Future Tax System Review was released today. Comments are welcome. [...] In commenting on an earlier thread Paul H cited a graphic showing how the Chinese know what the short-run travel times are in a vast city like Beijing. It is apparently based on the (real time) travel times of 10,000 taxis in the city. It provides a guide to instantaneous marginal congestion costs based on information from GPS [...] One of the pretty results of road supply theory is that if you add extra links to a road network you can make everyone on the network worse off. Equivalently closing down links can improve all traffic flows. JB pointed me to this nice exposition. It is called the Braess paradox and its a well [...] Here is a seminar I gave at La Trobe University on road tax reform. Comments, questions, outrageously over-the-top praise and emphatic disagreements very welcome. |
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