Green Up Moggill

Why is the Kenmore bypass such a divisive issue in Moggill? Why is finding your way around such a problem for so many people?

We can divide the problem into four parts:

• problems with Moggill Road
• too many people having to travel
• too much of the travel in the same direction
• no alternatives

But first, I’d like to explain why I became involved in the issue.

We are facing an era of great change. Oil prices have only tumbled from record highs because of an economic meltdown evoking memories of 1929. Dealing with climate change will force us reduce emissions. Both forces point to reduced role for the private car. Of course, some people will still have to use cars by the nature of their work, but many others in the new energy economy will mainly use cars for recreation, and use bicycles or public transport for routine travel.

Even without these changes, though, there are good reasons to look at alternatives to building a road as a way of solving congestion. In cities like LA, where building roads was the only solution under consideration, the result is a city full of freeways and traffic gridlock. In cities such as London, Paris, Seoul and Bogota where the approach was to provide alternatives to cars, most people don’t drive, and do not miss sitting in traffic.

Let’s now go on to more detail of the problems and how I propose we tackle the problem.

Problems with Moggill Road

Aside the problem of heavy traffic, Moggill Road has patches that are poorly designed and unsuited to their purpose. A few examples:

• dangerous crossings
• hazardous school drop-off zones such as at Our Lady of the Rosary School
• the poorly designed roundabout at Kenmore State School

It is questionable whether reducing traffic alone would fix these problems; some may even be worse if it were possible to travel faster.

So these problems need to be fixed whether a bypass is put in or not. Unfortunately the bypass appears to be used as an excuse for inaction.

Too many people travelling

Too many people having to be travel can be addressed by putting more facilities and services into the outer suburbs. Kenmore High School is bursting at the seams, with many students from the outer suburbs. If we put in a new high school in Bellbowrie, we would not only cut a lot of traffic, but help build the community. If you have a medical emergency in the outer suburbs, where do you go? You have no options that do not require a long trip. A 24/7 emergency centre that could be upgraded to a full hospital would solve that problem. Add in services and entertainment, and the need for travel would be greatly reduced.

Much of the problem arises from new houses that were put in at Moggill without requiring that the developer include local services. The notion that you can build a pure dormitory suburb in an era of climate change and declining oil supply is crazy.

Much of the demand for more roads therefore arises from poor planning, a problem that must be addressed whether a new road is built or not.

Too much of the travel in the same direction

Because of the shortage of services in the outer suburbs and the poor state of public transport, much of the travel through Moggill is in the same direction. Inevitably, many residents of the outer suburbs who have children head towards Kenmore because that end of the electorate is where most of the schools are. Most residents head in towards the city for work. Someone I met in Bellbowrie leaves home at 6am to be in time to find parking in Taringa, the nearest park and ride train station from the Moggill side of the river.

No alternatives

Public transport in Moggill is abysmal. I’ve had students as close in as Kenmore telling me it takes them an hour to get to Uni by bus. That’s not an alternative, that’s punishment. The big problem with buses on Moggill Road is that they are stuck in the same traffic as the cars. There also is no option to catch the train – unless you are willing to drive in to Taringa or Toowong to find parking.

The problem of no alternatives can be addressed in four ways:

• light rail – the Greens light rail plan will take traffic to the city off the roads, freeing them up for people with no option but to use a car
• a river crossing to the Ipswich line – the exact alignment and nature of the bridge needs further investigation, but giving residents of the outer suburbs the option of taking the train in to the city will also take cars off the roads
• safe bike paths – you wouldn’t think that more bikes than cars have been sold in Australia for the last 9 years, the way infrastructure planning all centres on cars. While there are some excellent bike ways, it is not safe to ride your bike on the roads. We must fix that
• comprehensive school bus system – a country as poor in public transport as the United States has a comprehensive school bus system. School children are picked up reliably, transported safely and dropped off safely at school. The existing city bus system is not adequate; there have been too many stories of children being left at the side of the road.

Why are so many people upset?

Why are some people so upset about the proposed bypass? Because it’s not a little road, suited to a residential suburb. It’s part of a plan to construct a large freeway, many times the length of the initial plan, that will not only cut the suburb in half, but turn it into a noisy urban environment.

Here’s a picture extracted from the Department of Main Roads description of the Moggill Pocket Arterial Road/Moggill-Warrego Highway Connection.

The little red piece on the right is the Kenmore bypass; the blue part on the left is the longer-term plan. The actual map of the complete route is far too big to display on any meaningful scale on a web page. This road will start from the Centenary Highway at Fig Tree Pocket and end at the Warrego Highway at North Tivoli, cutting through Kenmore, Pullenvale, Anstead and Karalee.

Won’t the Kenmore Bypass solve the problem?

So, won’t this new road (the little bit that’s already planned, the Kenmore bypass), solve all these problems? If history is a guide, no. There is a great highway down to the Gold Coast. Developers spotted the easy commute to Brisbane, and put in new housing. That great “easy commute” highway is now a parking lot at busy times.

Putting in this new road will also not address the lack of community development of the outer suburbs, or the over-crowding of Kenmore High School. It will also not address the dangerous school drop-off zones and other issues identified as problems with the road. These things need to be fixed anyway, bypass or not.

It also won’t address the problem of dependence on cars.

Of course some people do need to use their cars, a need that doesn’t go away even in cities with great public transport. But if we can reduce traffic by at least as much as in the school holidays, there is no need for a bypass. And good planning can take even more cars than that off the roads.

What’s more, this is the wrong time to be planning for an increase in use of cars. Oil supply is starting to look tenuous. Climate change not only demands that we use cars far less but that energy will become more expensive.

What will solve the problem?

We would be much better off spending the money that would go towards the Kenmore Bypass and the other roads infrastructure around Brisbane that collectively adds up to many billions of dollars on better public transport, a cross-river connection to the Ipswich line, school buses and safe bike paths.

Of these solutions, school buses could be brought in fastest, and would go a long way towards reducing the dangers of school drop-off zones. As a guide to how soon a crossing to the Ipswich line could be put in, the Green Bridge (now Eleanor Schonell Bridge) at the University of Queensland, carrying buses, bicycles and pedestrians, was completed in six months. Light rail would take longer, but the quicker measures would considerably ease congestion. Constructing a new school and adding local services and entertainment would be an ongoing project. Completion of the Kenmore Bypass, by contrast, would take at least four years, during which time none of the other problems would be solved – and some would still not be solved once it was built.

So not only is the Kenmore Bypass a poor fit to the times, a poor fit to the community and unlikely to solve the problem in the long term, but other solutions could be put in place faster.

That’s why the Greens say No to the Kenmore Bypass

Let’s use the best science to make Brisbane safe, says Greens candidate


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“In the wake of the Victoria Black Saturday disaster, it is important to consider whether fire management in Queensland is up to scratch,” says Greens candidate for Moggill, Dr Philip Machanick. “In consulting my science advisors, I am troubled to learn that some preventive fire strategies in Brisbane could be increasing risk of fire.”

There has been reporting in Victoria of the need to reduce fuel loads, and to avoid dangerous strategies in high-fire areas like planting big trees close to houses.

“Reducing fuel loads sounds like a good idea,” Dr Machanick continues, “but it is also important to ensure that you don’t end up making the problem worse by replacing the burnt fuel by vegetation that burns hotter and faster. The problem arises because frequent burn-offs of the same large area selects for fire-adapted vegetation. Why is this bad? Fire adapted vegetation uses a combined strategy of burning hot and fast to clear the competition, then growing back rapidly after the fire. This means that a poorly-managed preventive burning program can increase the risk of catastrophic fire.”

Addressing the Queensland situation specifically, Dr Machanick says, “I don’t know if this is the case in Victoria, but in Queensland, we have a lot of exotic African grass, much of which is highly fire-adapted. Around Brisbane, the city council has a preventive burning program that fails to take this fact into account. If you look for areas they’ve burnt, you can see singed trees with no indigenous undergrowth, only exotic grasses, ready to burn hotter and faster next time some dolt drops a smouldering cigarette butt out of their car window, or deliberately lights a fire.”

Natural undergrowth

Similar area after burning

Dr Machanick takes The Australian to task for assigning blame to the Nillumbik Shire Council before all the facts are known, and publishing strongly-worded opinion pieces that say the best science was ignored, while survivors are still grieving. “It’s possible that mistakes were made, but the people who made these decisions have paid a heavy price. It is extremely insensitive to go hard on criticising them when we should be focusing on disaster recovery. This is the same paper that tells us routinely that we should ignore the best science on climate change. I hope this means they are coming around to the view that we should always use the best science.”

He concludes: “In the wake of the Victorian disaster, rather than the usual finger-pointing and blame shifting, I hope we can have some real solid debate on the best science of fire prevention and survival. We have to get this right because climate change will lead to more frequent, longer and hotter heat waves.”

Many more bicycles are sold than cars in Australia, a trend that has persisted over the last nine years. You wouldn’t think it from how little infrastructure is provided for bikes. Given the combined problems of climate change, peak oil and the obesity epidemic, getting more people out of their cars and onto bikes has to be a priority. Why it isn’t for the other parties is not for me to say; it definitely is for the Greens.

I plan on campaigning for a number of improvements in bike infrastructure, including continuing with current plans to improve the bikeway infrastructure. However, bikeways are not enough. It should be safe to ride a bike in suburban and city streets as well.

Here are some details. Watch this space as I pick up more ideas from the community.

• safe bike paths in suburban and city streets
  • bikeways are only part of the solution; local streets as well as the long-haul routes need to be safe
  • paint on a road is no protection from a vehicle weight 40 times your weight
• cycle and pedestrian awareness built into road design
  • for example if the footpath and cycle path are raised relative to the road surface, drivers crossing these paths have to be aware that they are no longer in a car-only space
• environmentally sensitive mountain biking
  • end the conflict between mountain bikers and conservationists in our green spaces
• include bikes in detour planning
  • when road construction or capital works impede traffic flow alternatives for cars are always added
  • bike paths sometimes simply disappear

Watch this space for brief reviews of science topics and pointers to places where you can find out more.

If the World is Warming, How can we have very cold weather?
Global warming refers to the long-term world-wide average. Redistribution of energy from one part of the planet to another may make some areas warmer and others cooler. For example, in the northern hemisphere 2009-2010 winter, some areas experienced extreme cold. However, if you look at the distribution of northern hemisphere temperatures, what happened was that the Arctic warmed considerably. Look at the image: the Arctic region shows strong warming, with Greenland considerably warmer than usual (more accurately, less chilly), yet Northern Europe and North America are large local areas of cooling. Possibly this effect caused cold air to move south, but in any case, the cooler overall northern hemisphere in the most inhabited regions has hit the news, a slightly misleading picture when you look at the whole map.

Dead Zones
A dead zone is part of the ocean where oxygen levels are too low (less than 2 parts per million) to support life, or anoxic. Here is a site at Montana State University that provides some information. For more, see NASA’s information on dead zones. Algal blooms can make part of an ocean anoxic. In an extreme case, about 251-million years ago, the oceans became widely anoxic, as part of a mass extinction event at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic though probably that event had different causes.

Life In Your Back Yard
Want to find out if there are endangered species or unwanted alien invaders somewhere, or just check out who or what your wild neighbours are? The federal environment department has a great tool for finding these things out. Click the “Interactive Map“ link, find your area of interest on the map, click Report and use the mouse to drag out a rectangle on the map.

How Green is the electric car?
Electric cars – in the early days of motoring, a mainstream option – are making a comeback, with variations such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids. But how green are they really? Here’s an article with more detail. Check out Tesla’s first sedan. A UK company, Riversimple, has some interesting ideas on how to build an ultra-efficient car using a hydrogen fuel cell. I remain unconvinced of the hydrogen economy because hydrogen takes a lot of energy to produce, but Riversimple has some interesting ideas, like leasing the cars rather than selling them as a way of avoiding the false economy of planned obsolescence.

Smart Grid
Something that will be talked about increasingly is managing energy use more intelligently not only to be more efficient but to fit swings in demand to swings in supply better, as a remedy for the intermittency of some modes of renewable energy. Look out for articles about the smart grid such as this one.

Electric Vehicles
Now that the Obama administration is talking up clean energy, there’s been an explosion of interest in electric vehicles, so much so that rather than summarize articles, I’ll list pointers to them here as I encounter them:

• Willie D. Jones. New Electric Power Train Promises 160-km All-Electric Range—on a Bus! IEEE Spectrum, April 2009

Biochar
Biochar is the idea of burning carbon-containing materials in low oxygen (pyrolysis), resulting in charcoal that can be buried in the ground, improving the soil while sequestering carbon and reducing nitrous oxide (potent greenhouse gas) emissions from the soil. Biochar can also be used to produce biofuels as a byproduct. Here’s a nice YouTube summary of Australian work on biochar:

“Clean” coal
Various projects claim to be cleaning up coal. Carbon sequestration is one of the buzz words. The theory is that you can bury the CO₂ deep underground. In practice, to do so on a significant scale would be very hard. The perceived need for carbon sequestration arises from the incorrect perception that a coal producing country like Australia cannot survive a transition away from coal, a claim that is hotly contested even by former coal supporters. Here are some contrary views:

• Quarry vision: why clean coal isn’t the answer, ABC Radio National, 25 March 2009
• Quarry vision: why coal is no longer important, ABC Radio National, 25 March 2009

• Mining stalwart sees no future in carbon plan, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 2009

Some obstacles: worldwide emissions would amount to around 30km³ per year even compressed down to a liquid. One power station would be a lot less but still a vast volume of toxic gas to handle. Pumping it out at high temperature through a high smoke stack dissipates it into the air, and turbulence mixes it into the atmosphere quickly. A cold leak at ground level on the other hand will not dissipate fast, and can kill people in large numbers, as occasionally happens as a result of volcanic processes. Here is a detailed critique I wrote of a “clean coal” proposal for Felton in Queensland. And here is a Coen brothers ad featuring their take on clean coal:

Forest management and climate change
The forestry lobby is big on the benefits of harvesting timber. Cutting down trees, they claim, is somehow good because new growth will sequester even more carbon. The reality is a lot more complex than that; logging old growth is almost always a net loss, and managing plantations for the best overall return on carbon emissions takes careful management. This Forest, Carbon, Climate Myths slide show covers most of the major issues.

Regenerating lost forests
Watch biologist Willie Smits explain how he re-grew clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans – and at the same time creating work for the locals. Ignore the car ads.

Read the rest of this entry »

Government cash handouts irresponsible, says Greens candidate

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“The prime minister has announced a fiscally irresponsible $40-billion stimulus package on top of his previous $10-billion dollar effort, with very little of it targeted at retooling the economy for the twenty-first century. President Obama on the other hand has outlined a clear message of hope for the future for the United States. What we need to do in Australia is sit up and take note,” says Dr Philip Machanick, Greens preselected candidate for the Queensland state seat of Moggill. “Usually government spending on this scale would be highly inflationary. The massive worldwide recession represents a once in a lifetime opportunity for governments to spend big on the future without a major inflation risk. Instead, our federal and state governments are blowing enormous sums on short-term economic stimulus. This is mind-bogglingly irresponsible, faced as we are with the twin challenges of the twenty-first century of climate change and depleting fossil fuels,” he continues.

“The United States is embarking on a massive Green New Deal, rebuilding and retooling their economy for a clean energy future. The Greens here have already started campaigning for a similar concept, with plans for solar thermal power plants, enhanced incentives for home solar power and solar hot water, and an emphasis on public transport. The long-term future of the Australian and the Queensland economy is in creating quality jobs in a clean energy economy. There is enough cause to pursue a clean energy strategy for environmental reasons, but economic reality increasingly favours going clean and green,” Dr Machanick elaborates. “The US is already one of the most protectionist economies in the world, and carbon taxes will be the trade barrier of the future, whether our industries like it or not. If we continue to produce aluminium by the dirtiest possible process, we can expect to get priced out of the market. If most of our exports are either fossil fuels, or produced by heavily emitting technologies, our industries will be increasingly uncompetitive in a carbon-taxed world market.”

Dr Machanick also emphasises the importance of diversifying Queensland’s economy. “If Queensland continues to rely so heavily on resources for state revenues, we will remain subject to the boom and bust cycles typical of commodity-based economies. Already, mines are laying off workers in the thousands. If the economic downturn continues, many more will be out of work. Sad though this is for those who’ve lost their jobs, this presents a great opportunity to follow President Obama’s lead by re-orienting the Queensland economy to the new reality of the twenty-first century. Yet the two economic stimulus packages on offer are both designed for a twentieth-century economy: more roads, more capacity to export coal, support for building old-fashioned cars, cash handouts to encourage consumerism. Where is the investment in renewable energy, in making it easier to leave your car at home, in research in technologies we can sell to the rest of the world? The odd gesture like a partial program to insulate roofs of houses and an improvement in the solar hot water rebate does not do it. The federal government claims that its roof insulation program will do the equivalent of taking 1-million cars off the road by 2020. Where is the plan that will actually take cars off the road?

“The Greens have long stood for the principle of sustainability not only as an environmental concern, but as a basis for sound economics. We are pleased that the US is now moving in the same direction we have long advocated. This is the time for Queensland to embrace the politics of hope and confidence in the future that the Greens represent.”

Dr Machanick promises to work hard at developing the solutions we need for this century. “Queensland should be both the smart and the sunshine state. We have some of the best science in the country, and some of the best solar resources. How can it be then that Germany, hardly a sunny country, has far more solar power installed than we do? Much of our best science ends up overseas, with no financial benefit to the taxpayer. At a time of economic emergency, the fiscal irresponsibility of subsidising obsolescent projects and once-off cash handouts is crazy. Money poured down a sinkhole is money wasted at the best of times; money wasted now means that much less opportunity to tackle the real problems. We need to change the focus of government from rewarding inefficiency, and launching grand projects that make neither environmental nor economic sense, to working for the future – and working smartly for the future.”

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Background

“Greens launch green-collar jobs package for Queensland”: http://qld.greens.org.au/media-releases/greens-launch-green-collar-jobs-package-for-queensland
“Why Obama’s green jobs plan might work”: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-greenjobs4-2009jan04,0,378269.story

Contact

Contact: Dr Philip Machanick, Greens preselected candidate for Moggill
Email: greenupmoggill@gmail.com
Phone: 042 234 6909
Website: www.greenupmoggill.org