They are rightly concerned that Labour wants to muscle in on another sector of the economy and muscle the private sector out of it. Thereby reducing choice and increasing costs in the marketplace.

Rail being in competition with roads has led us to the situation of now, which the government thinks they can “solve” by forcing the private company that runs it to come to the bargaining table and agree to sell at a very generous price, funded by the taxpayer, and now that the government has got a bit more muscle by doing this, they can then turn on the privately owned trucking companies and corner them the same way.

There’s still a hard core of the Labour movement who believe in socialism and who believe that rail is part of a core Government function, and should be restored to the monopoly long-distance-freight common carrier status it historically held in NZ for many years. As well as the freight carriage, there was also a monopoly on long distance passenger bus travel in favour of the Road Services division of the Railways department. All those shuttles that run up and down the Island wouldn’t have been allowed back in the 1970s in this country.

There’s also a lot of waffle about sustainability, and climate change, and a whole lot of other stuff that the government is not going to slit their political throats on, yet they still milk it for all it is worth. The only sustainability most of the government cares about is sustaining their time in office.

I’ve been totally offline since last weekend. Been tramping slowly and very coldly in the Tararua’s this last week… my real love … and I’ve only been home a few hours, so I’ve missed all the fun. But not having immediate access to the RTF mag you mention above… let me guess. This protest was organised by the big trucking company OWNERS because they are worried that Labour will make rail competitive again.

Nothing to do with their publically stated motives at all I should imagine.

Have I missed anything?

http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/2008/07/emmerson-squashes-clark.html

The new one’s aren’t very different either:

Me, I’m a system analysts.

Wow Felix, that was a good find, I doubt many made it that far!

I’ll reserve my decision on whether your one of those big ego-small brains types until I’ve seen more of your comments.

Oh Kevyn, you have so much to learn.

The new one’s aren’t very different either:

Me, I’m a system analysts.

Of course you are dear.

I’ll reserve my decision on whether your one of those big ego-small brains types until I’ve seen more of your comments.

Well at least you’ve given me one thing to be cheerful about – I’ve never met Carl Rove and don’t know or care who he is. Which fact I suspect will make him just as cheerful if you tell him.

The two recent increases in RUCs might be justified in light of the increase in the construction price index but without knowing the ESAL split between steel and airbag suspension it is impossible to know to what extent increased airbag use has offset the cost increases. Which is why I asked if you knew where the road cost allocation study Annette referred to could be found.

Perhaps you could ask Annette why road user charges for light trailers were reduced in the rates table when nobody is required to pay them. Or why the 3% increases only apply to the tiny minority of trucks that are always loaded to their weight limit and never need to buy supplementary licences. Or why petrol cars aren’t expected to meet their fair share of the 10% increase in maintenance costs?

Having a website called petroltax does mean that I know that road maintenance spending had increased only in line with inflation despite huge increases in traffic volumes, especially truck traffic. More truck km equals more dollars paid in RUCs. For the numbers to end up the way they do Transit’s improved maintenance management techniques must have been reducing costs at least as fast as inflation was increasing them. The nett result was no need for any increase in the maintenance component of RUCs. In fact, thanks to Dr Brash and the flood of used cars revenue for the road fund increased faster than inflation simply because traffic growth rates finally outsrripped the rate of inflation, the exact opposite of what happened under the Muldoon miracle that got our highways into the mess they are still mostly in. Anyway, since revenue increased faster than traffic or maintence spending we were finally able to see some real progress on the crash reduction program begun by the National Road Board in 1985. It’s a pity Helen’s reaction to Banksie’s mayoral aspirations was to decide that Transit “has been spending too much on safety and not enough on congestion.” Alas, without that political decision overriding the wisdom of Steve Fitzgerald and the National Road Safety Committee there would be 1,000 empty graves by now.

From the tone of your responses I suspect you are either a politician, an ex-politician or an aspiring politician. Or one of those very average people who hates information because it means they have to think instead of regurgitating someone elses opinions. I think one of the former is most likely because you do seem to think about your beliefs or at least you don’t sound like you’re parroting some “role model” or political hero.

Me, I’m a system analysts. If the facts don’t fit then I’ll (grudgingly) admit it if provided with the source material so I can check the conclusions, methodology and assumtions for myself.