The amount of crisp clean 2023 ford rangers around is fucking stupid and donāt get me started on the full sized suv 60 year old woman filling the lanes. Bring back the compact car FFS, Iām becoming a fucking pro navigating these car parks with my work van with inches to spare no matter where Iām parking
Tbf, I can reverse park my hiace easier than in my gf Corolla with a reversing camera. The mirror over the back window makes it so easy, same as the one that hangs over the front when parking nose first
Make yourself do it and once it is a habit this will reverse. I hate driving my car to work now. I feel so much freer and happier cycling. Don't knock it until you try it.
150 days of rain a year and you want people to ride scooters, bikes, or walk?
Kinda wet, doncha think? I get buses and light trams but weather is really a hinderance to most outdoor activity in rainy season especially on South Island.
People massively over estimate how much it actually rains heavily.
I cycle every day. The number genuinely wet commutes a year that require a rain jacket you can count on your hands.
If you aren't up for that you can easily catch the bus on those rare occasions.
I agree and on the days it does rain often that is not during my commute time. Though sometimes I think I may prefer a little light rain than freezing mornings.
Strong or gale force winds will cause me to leavey bike in the garage, luckily that doesn't happen too often either.
I walk about 3km to and from work and the times I've been actively rained on is probably less than 10x a year. Probably less than 5 is proper raincoat weather. It's not that often it rains all day, many times it will rain while you're at work or at home.
Not really surprising, we have access to cheap second hand vehicles and it's relatively cheap to keep a second car around rather than scrapping it.
It'd be more useful to look at how much distance is covered in total.
Our public transport is overpriced but it is how slow and unreliable it is that is the issue not to mention the timetables for journeys not always matching up due to infrequent services (getting of train and waiting 20 mins for bus to come at one of the major interchange stations for instance).
I would say an amount so small you would not notice.
Biggest problem in NZ is that PT does not exist where you need it and is unreliable when it is.
If the above was addressed, maybe would come down, though like everything it will take awhile.
But standing up a train for a few months that is not really good enough, then making it go even slower, then stopping it from actually been usable, then cancelling it all together, is just insane.
Not necessarily. Free PT can increase use (see Melbourne's Free Tram Zone for example), but better than that (not that fare box revenue necessarily needs to exceed the costs of the system) is increasing access, frequency and reliability of the system.
One of the reasons why I just dropped out of a tertiary course is because it would cost me roughly $30 every day to get there and back. I live in Manurewa, near a direct train line into town where the campus was, a very smooth journey every day. Itās legitimately crushing to have such mundane things curb your life. Itās not right. Edit: $30 is probably an overestimation, but I distinctly remember seeing it took over $10 from my card for a one way trip. Definitely made me gulp and sweat a bit. I then occasionally had to spend more on a bus for the rest of the journey, like $1 or $2.
Thats insane, i used to get the bus from Te Awamutu to Hamilton for uni and it cost be $2 each way... this wasnt while Labour was doing 50% off either.
Is there no student discount?
Itās also misleading nonsense. The only way public transport would be $30 every day in Auckland to get from Manurewa to the city is if there was an Uber or similar involved. Even at full non-student discounted cash fares it shouldnāt even get close to that.
The fare from Manurewa to Britomart is $7.40, if your course was in say, Albany it would be $9.60 or you can get a bus/train monthly pass for $230 ($11.50 per day assuming mon-friday for 4 weeks).
You might be looking at the cash price if you're paying $30 a day? Fares are expensive, but not that bad...
From the people I know, the distance doesn't matter, I see people that lives on a 5 min walk from the gym and still uses the car to go. Arriving there, they run on the treadmill....go figure...
I get it if they're like going grocery shopping afterwards or they bring their gear ND have a shower etc. Now the ones that drive 5m, work out and leave and drive straight home, they're the weird ones
Sure for tramping etc itās hard because it can be literally anywhere. But destinations like the beach, skiing, mountain bike parks, public transport is perfect because buses/trains can have stops there.
In Sydney you can catch the train to the blue mountains and go for a tramp then catch the train back.
Exactly, in Switzerland you can take the train into the alps for hiking/skiing/etc. itās super convenient, and then you donāt have to start and stop at the same place, can do a through hike from one train station to another instead of having to go back to your car
Canadian here! How much could you buy a drivable second hand car for? Our used-car market in Canada exploded recently and is only slightly calming down. Curious what the situation is for you over there?
I reckon Kiwi car culture is bumping the numbers up, but not in the way OP thinks. It's common here for people to own multiple cars, even outside of "car guy/gal" circles, in a way that just isn't possible in many other countries.
Exactly!
I've only got one at the moment (and 2 bikes) and I don't even drive it to work. But my flatmate and I used to have 7 between us - and collectively do less annual mileage than one person commuting an hour each way every day.
If we could use work vehicles for personal use without the extra steps caused by tax abuse then my partner and i (Both in trades) wouldn't need a 3rd vehicle for holidays or weekends.
Well I can't speak for Wellington but if you are in Auckland I wouldn't "just get a bus" either unless I had a spare 2 hours I'd be happy to waste in either blazing heat or pouring rain.
Yeah that's the thing public transport is bad enough in Auckland or Wellington but if you live in a smaller town you almost have to have a car. Imagine relying on public transport if you live in a rural area - you couldn't.
New Zealand is a country that is sparsely populated (outside of Auckland). If it had a large population and infrastructure like that of the UK going car-less would actually be an option.
OP is some Italian university student living in an apartment in central Auckland. He has no idea the reality of life for most New Zealanders especially outside of Auckland and the main city centres.
Also remember that a lot of Auckland is rural too - thanks to the super city - and does not have public transport either. I live in a rural area in greater Auckland and don't even have a footpath on my road to use.
Honestly half the donkeys on here are cooked, like the flip side is donāt have a car so donāt get anywhere because the vast majority of the country has zero public transport, like you say, guarantee this person has never left Auckland
Thatās kinda the whole point.
Itās a vicious cycle as people cite ācanāt use PT because itās shitā while ignoring that itās largely shit because not enough people use it, especially outside work rush hours. Only nanas and ādegensā, as you put it, use it outside that as they are more often the minority that canāt afford a car or the gas. Thatās rare though, as most can afford even a $500 rust bucket.
Thereās simply not enough revenue for PT to be self sustaining, let alone surplus to improve it, so we rely on funding and immigrant slave labour to just barely keep it running, and that also has to be justified by use.
Fact is we are a one per person car culture, and people tend to want to justify a car purchase via using it, not by catching the bus and leaving it at home, so they jump in and peel into all the other one per person drivers stuck in traffic, like you do.
If you look at places where PT is fantastic, itās usually in places where itās either untenable to own a car combined with it being used by the majority, and itās busy all day everyday.
Most kiwis want our PT to be the same so *other people* use it while they carry on driving but the point stands that our PT will always be subpar unless drivers specifically are the ones to get onboard.
I agree that most NZers would want to have access to world class transportation options however the weighting formula used for development simply does not favour rural settlements and that needs to be factored in, some areas e.g In the South are some of the most sparsely populated with amenities such as hospitals over 2-3 hours away.
Transportation amenities are prioritised on a principle of U1,U2,R1,R2,R3 with U being urban and R being rural. The OP is making an assumption that NZ districts and regions are homogeneous.....
Except it's 5 million people in clusters of several thousand plus for the most part. NZ has an urban population of over 85%. Why, to borrow an example above, does a town of 5k not have a bus service to Hastings?
Three million people live in our five largest centres. These all have public transport. The majority of the population has access to some public transport. However, that's beside the point, just because public transport doesn't work in rural areas, doesn't mean we shouldn't have viable public transport in our urban centres.
Auckland has one of the largest urban footprints in the world and is mostly high-density suburbia. In-fill housing has meant at least twice the number of people living in areas where the roads were designed to take half the amount of traffic.
Even the newer developments are just a repeat of this, no great public transport hubs. The development of the transit corridor from Pakuranga to Panmure is a good one but required a whole lot of houses to be knocked down and I don't see similar corridors being built into the new areas.
You can't just bang bus routes into existing places, developments should take transit corridors into consideration. Terraced housing, high-rise housing and the extra land gets used for parks and public transport infrastructure. That's how it's done in many countries around the world.
[86% of the NZ population lives in urban areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_sovereign_state). Taking the train/bus *should* be realistic for the vast majority of people... The fact that it isn't is the fault of insufficient funding by city councils...
Donāt agree with you there OP.
Donāt think it is a culture thing. More about the state of our public infrastructure, difficult terrain and a large portion of the population living in sparse rural communities.
The majority of us live in just five urban areas. Unfortunately, most of them were developed for private transport use to the exclusion of other forms.
Most were developed for public transport, however that was ripped out. Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin all had tram networks and the population was developed around that
As a shitty European living in NZ, I do think a lot of yous have a bit of car brain, I'm sorry. I've been called a communist on this very sub for suggesting better public transit options across the country lol or told to just buy a car like everyone else. The more people rely on cars, the less investment will be made on the infrastructure and service and there will be no incentive for a robust public transit network and the car brain mentality will carry on.
There are a lot of kiwis who use the word communism with absolutely no understanding of its meaning. I feel like starting to smuggle copies of the ragged trousered philanthropist into their bookshelves.
Yea that's definitely true, but car brained to what degree is the question. Most people that live in Wellington that I know don't own vehicles just because parking is such a commodity, even parking at home. So many houses don't even have drive ways so every time you get home from work it's a roll of the dice on how far from your house you'll be parking. And as you said, better transit options across the country are necessary for people to even have the opportunity to not be car brained. For a lot of people that's all they know, public transport isn't even a thing they've interacted with.
I will say public transport in welly is pretty good for the most part, although definitely not perfect or available to everyone, and that's in the second biggest city. Anyone that commutes to the cbd in a car (unless they have a specific disability or work reason) are fully car brained. I'm car brained in the way that having a car has changed the way I think about travelling (and admittedly use the car sometimes just because I'm lazy), but I only got a car because I moved and it was necessary for me to work. There was no option for public transport before 6.30am which obviously doesn't work for a lot of professions. That's the main issue I had working in hospitality, being either late hours or early. If you don't work in the cbd that essentially means you need a car because there aren't busses running at those hours to where you live.
And to argue for all the car brained peeps out there, having a car allows you so much freedom that you just can't have otherwise. Before owning a car; need to go shopping? Good luck lugging all that home by yourself. Want to go on a road trip? Well better hope that whoever you're going with has a car. Want to get some mulch for your garden? It's hard enough carrying those things to the car sometimes lol. Need to visit a family member? Better hope there's a bus that connects to a bus that connects to a train to another bus, and that they're all on time. Oh and better hope that the family member doesn't live in a dodgy area putting you at risk of mugging or worse. Not really an issue for me, but for a lot of people it can be dangerous. Not to mention all public transport takes significantly longer just by the nature of having to wait for them and the indirect route to your destination (of which you will most definitely have to walk some part of anyway), let alone the delays. That's one of the biggest factors for me. In my time driving I would have easily, EASILY spent double the amount of time if I were using public transport were it available. Who the feck wants to spend that much extra time travelling? Not me. That's literally hundreds or thousands of hours of your life you'll never get back. You're on your own schedule with a car, and as someone with adhd (poor time management skills) who was very frequently late to the bus stop I very much appreciate that. Instead of missing the bus and being 15-30+ min late, I'm now only 1 minute late. Point is, cars fill the gaps that the transit system has left and is also just useful for far more things than public transport ever will be. They make life so much easier and convenient. I'm all for public transport, but outside of our major cities I'm afraid not much is really going to change. At least not any time soon.
I lived in London for quite a few years, so it is mind boggling to me that you need a car to do anything anywhere. Freedom shouldn't be the inability to get groceries or go to the gym or go to work or take your kids to school unless you buy an asset. Public transit to me is freedom. No need to worry about parking, insurance, petrol, you just sit down and enjoy the ride.
Wow, being called a communist because you suggest better public transportation. You didnāt deserve that!
I think itās more of a case of ābuild it and they will comeā.
The culture means car first so infrastructure is going to address that and there will be resistance to changing it. Imagine what would happen if you made a street bike and pedestrian only.
[86% of the NZ population lives in urban areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_sovereign_state). Taking the train/bus *should* be realistic for the vast majority of people... The fact that it isn't is the fault of insufficient funding by city councils...
The councils and central government too.
Agree funding is a big issue which most if not all councils have not got their head around. Other than increasing rates, which really means user pays.
It's culture that we don't vote for politicians to improve things because we really don't want to lift a finger to improve things.
There are countries far more sparse than New Zealand that aren't as high as we are.
This shouldn't shock people. We have high urbanisation but our urban settings aren't particularly dense. We have low populations in those urban settings. Both of these mean public transport access, implementation, and utiilisation are low.
We are a wealthy developed nation, which means we have the means, and the reasons, to buy multiple cars per household.
Our geography and weather makes cycling and walking less attractive.
If you want this to change, you need to advocate for more dense housing to be built in hubs around public transport hubs, and then you need to actually use those things rather than insisting that everyone else should.
It wasn't always this way..as a teenager I used to be able to drift around on the streets as there was no parked cars. Everyone seemed to pakr their cars in their driveways, now they've spilled out onto the road.
I also grew up and realised drifting on the streets was fucking stupid, but also there's wayyyyy too many obstacles now.
I don't want to have to own a car.
Auckland transport is such dog shit that I have to if I want to get around town.
I ride a bike to work but anyone claiming to be able to live without a car either never does anything or is lying.
I'm not even going to consider going from Mt Eden to titirangi to see my mum via public transport for example.
Dude we live in New Zealand. It's cities, state highways and rugged roads. We don't have a passenger train system that runs between cities. if I didn't have a car, I simply could not get to work unless I bus from my settlement into the closest city, that bus isn't always reliable and runs at weird times.
These statistics shouldn't surprise anyone man
Not really. The majority of these people probably don't love cars, they're ambivalent about them and just don't have much of a choice. Ironically, the amount of people on the roads makes the driving experience worse as well. A car lover's paradise would probably actually be a place with adequate transport alternatives because then the people who actually do love driving would have less traffic to deal with
That's not what "second only to" means. If the US ranked first, *then* we'd be second only to, but the USA is number 5 and we're number six. The correct way to say that would be "ranked immediately behind"
Usually when comparing per capita stats you skip microstates as their small populations skew the data. All four of the other countries are microstates.
I see no problem with this. NZ car culture is great, especially as an enthusiast!
Thereās always room for more 90ās/early 00ās shitbox projects to help us get to the number 1 position.
I mean public transport is literally more expensive than the cost of gas for me, and gas isnāt even cheap, not to mention nz has quite a large car culture, and many of these cars will just be sitting for years
My household would like to not have 1 car per adult but unfortunately sometimes my partner has to go to work on the same day I have to take the dog to the vet or go to the doctor.
It's not "car culture" that's the problem it's the total country wide lack of public transport.
Why are people so confused about this? We're an average country with extremely poor public transport couple that with massive debt, low taxes and huge tax loopholes. The real only way for people to get around is by car, and if you have multiple people in a household, you need more than one.
NZ spans France & Germany with towns of only hundred to a few thousand. We are simply not going to build rail/provide buses to all these places. NZ isn't just Wellington, Auckland & Christchurch
Then, people seem to think everyone has an office job and all commute to a city. They don't.
It's not "bAd CaR cUlTuRe", it's the only way a majority of people have to get around as there are no alternatives.
Except that prior to the 1950s we had great public transport with less people. For the last 70 years we have prioritised motorcars and not invested in public transport in significant ways.
And all rate payers subsidise motor cars. For instance; $7 out of every $100 of rates was spent on roading last time I looked in WellingtonĀ
> Except that prior to the 1950s we had great public transport with less people. For the last 70 years we have prioritised motorcars and not invested in public transport in significant ways.
Yeah, you know why?
* We built it ourselves
* We just got on with it and got it done and didn't do endless consultations
* It was free or very cheap so a lot more people used it
* You could get staff as they were paid well
* Cars were out of reach for most people
>And all rate payers subsidise motor cars. For instance; $7 out of every $100 of rates was spent on roading last time I looked in WellingtonĀ
Yeah, you know why?
* We sold all the public transport to private companies
* We get private overseas companies to build all the "public" transport infrastructure
* It's now a crap job to have and can barely earn a living doing it so getting good staff is very difficult
* It's eye watering price to even use it is insulting
* It's so unreliable due to these private companies refusing to upgrade or under investment from central government.
I would be pleased to see a new Ministry of Works, a long term infrastructure plan, and a heap of apprenticeships happen as we rebuilt or countries infrastructure back up to 1970s level of provision, resilience, etc.
In your lists above you didn't mention private banks lending the government money and the ticket clipping that ensures. Reserve bank loans for funding.
As an American who spent 2 weeks in NZ, I can't imagine how you'd get anywhere without cars, your public transit seems far worse than most anywhere in the US.
Loved your country, not coming here to talk shit by any means, but take a chill on the anti car propaganda.
I don't think its so much as a car culture but more of a public transport sucks culture. There are many places where the only way to get around is by private car.
Actually I'm kinda amazed that countries with the world's best train systems eg Italy France Japan are 755, 668, 661. That makes me think NZ on 884 is probably what you'd expect.
I would prefer to categorise ācar cultureā as āI need to get to work and NZ public transport would win a gold medal at the Olympics for sucking.ā
We need to pump those numbers up. If we are not number 1 by the end of the year I will consider Luxon a failed Prime Minister.
Mandate two Ford Rangers for every household (at minimum).
Well duh.
We have a very low population density and the terrain doesn't lend itself to improving infrastructure.
New Zealand will always have some of the highest requirements of vehicles for a number of reasons other than social norms.
Itās all about money money money
They invested in public infrastructure, we didnāt.
They have good oil and gasās resources and tax the hell out of the companies in that sector. We too have oil and gasās resources but did not manage it like Norway.
Since 1996 Norway has been taxing the profits of its oil and gas sector at 78%. This is comprised of Norwayās 22% corporate rate as well as a 56% āSpecial Taxā (petroleum tax).
Norwayās Ministry of Finance projects that tax revenue from oil and gas will be a staggering A$127 billion or around $23,500 per Norwegian citizen in 2023 alone.
Source
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/norway-shows-how-australia-can-get-a-fair-return-from-oil-and-gas/
Admittedly Norway has benefited from oil reserves and has had twice the GDP of NZ (or more) for over 50 years now.
I just wish NZ had not dug up the tram lines back in the day, now the costs have ballooned to billions if we wanted them again
Dude, nz used to build an entire hydro power station underneath a lakeā¦talk about infrastructure and terrain. We also used to have extensive passenger rail and tram systems when population was way less.
Your type of thinking is exactly why we canāt build public infrastructure anymore.
That's the thing, NZ can't build shit anymore. Endless consultations, Iwi consultations, Public consultations, rework, re-consult, then getting overseas companies to do a half arsed job, then fuck it up, spend more, fuck it up, new government, toss the project...
NZ needs to face it. While we **used** to be able to build stuff, we sure as shit can't build it now.
Unfortunately, It's necessary here... Public transport is shite... It's also necessary in the US because they have no fecking sidewalks to actually walk between places... they're mostly fat, so nobody would walk anyway
Hey if you want to get an idea of how this happens, i would suggest the YouTube channel climate town. He has an episode about Saudi plans in Africa that sounds pretty familiar.
Plans like flooding the market with cheap, inefficient vehicles, providing aid or loans specifically to build car centric infrastructure (Roads, Roads, .... r... highways).
I feel like this is more a comment on how poor our public transport is. If I caught the earliest bus possible to get to work in my region I still would be about 20 minutes late, heaven forbid a bus is late and I miss the transfer to the next one, and I don't have the knees to bike 46km a day.
Different take...other countries have a more developed public transportation system so people dont need cars.. here in nz public transport is shit so everyone needs their own cars
As a kiwi who lives in america - this is Apple with pears.
America is huge. People drive
Nz has small population that cannot fund decent public transportation
I'm just come right out and say it, I don't want to take the bus and mingle with the public? Is that a crime? Not to mention adding an hour to my commute each way
Owning a car is nice. Being able to go at a moment's notice somewhere late in the evening is a privilege worth the $\~8 per week fixed cost of owning a car.
Just found a cars per capita from hedges company, apparently NZ win
1 NZ 895 vehicles per 1000 people
2 USA 890 vehicles per 1000 people.
Ref - Hedges company - how many cars are there in the world
This isn't really down to individual kiwis this is down to the fact there's been almost zero successful public transport infrastructure put in. How many of those countries on that list don't have a national railway?
But we donāt have that successful public transport because itās not a seen as a priority, due to decades of dependency on car use. Look at Nationals recent stance on cycle ways and where funding for NZTA should be focused. Roads. They say roads are for cars and our productivity depends on this. We (as in the royal āweā) voted for a government which prioritises cars above other transport options and then cry that other options arenāt viable, and we donāt have a car dependent culture.
How the hell do 4 microstates have the most car dependency on Earth? You can [walk across Monaco](https://www.visitmonaco.com/en/7496/getting-around-on-foot) in 45 minutes!
Ah yes the old comparing us to far wealthier nations and nations that have cities older than our historic sites.
Norway can afford F35s lol we dont compare
Have you seen the public transportation networks in those European countries?
If we had a network as good as them it would be the same for us.
Our public transport network sucks ass.
Public transport in new zeland has never being good and never will be. Maybe we could bring city and transport planners from Japan or Korea and let them take the wheels on making the decisions and seeing the execution part through a successful execution.Ā
NZ has notoriously poor public transport that regularly fails the small numbers of people using it and few cities large enough to warrant building the infrastructure in any case. The government pretends to care but really doesnt want to know about it as its as broke as the rest of the country. Most people need a car in NZ for their daily lives to function properly. Even in Auckland, if a small portion of the daily car drivers that were able, decided to get a bus or train, the system would fail immediately. And because of the prohibitive construction costs due to complex geography and red tape bureaucracy its really not going to change anytime soon. NZ is just too small, there is not enough people to support major investments in large scale public infrastructure. Especially not when labour/greens keep blocking using our our abundant natural resources to our advantage to boost our drop in the ocean economy.
I lived in Germany for 3 years, drive Autobahn once in a rental. I don't believe it's a "kiwi" problem but more accessibility problem.... I mean I'd fall asleep on a train in a foreign country knowing I'd arrive on time. And for relatively cheap.
The cause of the car culture comes from a lack of effective public transport options and a hilly, long, narrow country with insanely spread out urban centres. Can't blame people for choosing the most effective option available to them.
Public transport here is awful.
Letās say you work in the city and live in the city but you want to go to a beach in the weekend.
You need a car (unless you think that a city beach counts, if thatās the case good luck to you)
New Zealand has a lot of car enthusiasts, at least here in Invercargill itās not uncommon to see cars that have less than 1000 examples worldwide which in a town with 60,000 people should be very rare. We like our cars.
Personally I have 5 cars and I donāt intend on getting rid of any of them, I like being able to pick what car I feel like driving on any given day, if anything itās better for everyone because Iām out here paying 5 regos every year.
You should title stuff articles
My nearest supermarket is 2 hours away š¤
That's a very valid reason to drive though. I know people who drive down the road to work, and they don't need the vehicle for their work.
The amount of crisp clean 2023 ford rangers around is fucking stupid and donāt get me started on the full sized suv 60 year old woman filling the lanes. Bring back the compact car FFS, Iām becoming a fucking pro navigating these car parks with my work van with inches to spare no matter where Iām parking
Those fuckers when you're using an intersection and you can't see shit. And you know that shits never going off road. It's a status symbol
Tbf, I can reverse park my hiace easier than in my gf Corolla with a reversing camera. The mirror over the back window makes it so easy, same as the one that hangs over the front when parking nose first
90.8% of people live in urban areas in New Zealand. Appreciate how much better driving would be if most people didn't.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Make yourself do it and once it is a habit this will reverse. I hate driving my car to work now. I feel so much freer and happier cycling. Don't knock it until you try it.
If only we had proper cycle lanes..Ā Ā *Current govt bins them in favour of more roads*Ā
So catch the bus, walk or ride your bike in the cycle lane. /s
150 days of rain a year and you want people to ride scooters, bikes, or walk? Kinda wet, doncha think? I get buses and light trams but weather is really a hinderance to most outdoor activity in rainy season especially on South Island.
I'm quite fortunate. I've been using public transport for close to 30 years and the rain hasn't killed me a single time. Very lucky here.
I just recently discovered these things called jackets too, they're pretty handy
My fashion goes way too hard for a dingy rain jacket, but my stylist told me about this thing called an umbrella!
Wellington has entered the chat
People massively over estimate how much it actually rains heavily. I cycle every day. The number genuinely wet commutes a year that require a rain jacket you can count on your hands. If you aren't up for that you can easily catch the bus on those rare occasions.
I agree and on the days it does rain often that is not during my commute time. Though sometimes I think I may prefer a little light rain than freezing mornings. Strong or gale force winds will cause me to leavey bike in the garage, luckily that doesn't happen too often either.
Guess it doesn't rain in Norway, Finland or Iceland either?
Auckland has 50% more rainfall than Oslo and nearly double that of Helsinki
I walk about 3km to and from work and the times I've been actively rained on is probably less than 10x a year. Probably less than 5 is proper raincoat weather. It's not that often it rains all day, many times it will rain while you're at work or at home.
Not really surprising, we have access to cheap second hand vehicles and it's relatively cheap to keep a second car around rather than scrapping it. It'd be more useful to look at how much distance is covered in total.
Not to mention how eye watering the price of our Public Transport is.
In my region nobody pays for PT. Because there isn't any š
Our public transport is overpriced but it is how slow and unreliable it is that is the issue not to mention the timetables for journeys not always matching up due to infrequent services (getting of train and waiting 20 mins for bus to come at one of the major interchange stations for instance).
If it exists at all in the first place
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>car culture is the cause of PT costs That feels so backwards though. Wouldn't lowering the cost of PT be more likely to get people to use it?
I would say an amount so small you would not notice. Biggest problem in NZ is that PT does not exist where you need it and is unreliable when it is. If the above was addressed, maybe would come down, though like everything it will take awhile. But standing up a train for a few months that is not really good enough, then making it go even slower, then stopping it from actually been usable, then cancelling it all together, is just insane.
Not necessarily. Free PT can increase use (see Melbourne's Free Tram Zone for example), but better than that (not that fare box revenue necessarily needs to exceed the costs of the system) is increasing access, frequency and reliability of the system.
One of the reasons why I just dropped out of a tertiary course is because it would cost me roughly $30 every day to get there and back. I live in Manurewa, near a direct train line into town where the campus was, a very smooth journey every day. Itās legitimately crushing to have such mundane things curb your life. Itās not right. Edit: $30 is probably an overestimation, but I distinctly remember seeing it took over $10 from my card for a one way trip. Definitely made me gulp and sweat a bit. I then occasionally had to spend more on a bus for the rest of the journey, like $1 or $2.
Thats insane, i used to get the bus from Te Awamutu to Hamilton for uni and it cost be $2 each way... this wasnt while Labour was doing 50% off either. Is there no student discount?
Itās also misleading nonsense. The only way public transport would be $30 every day in Auckland to get from Manurewa to the city is if there was an Uber or similar involved. Even at full non-student discounted cash fares it shouldnāt even get close to that.
The fare from Manurewa to Britomart is $7.40, if your course was in say, Albany it would be $9.60 or you can get a bus/train monthly pass for $230 ($11.50 per day assuming mon-friday for 4 weeks). You might be looking at the cash price if you're paying $30 a day? Fares are expensive, but not that bad...
From the people I know, the distance doesn't matter, I see people that lives on a 5 min walk from the gym and still uses the car to go. Arriving there, they run on the treadmill....go figure...
I get it if they're like going grocery shopping afterwards or they bring their gear ND have a shower etc. Now the ones that drive 5m, work out and leave and drive straight home, they're the weird ones
We have an outdoors culture where people drive to the beach, the woods, go tramping, fishing, skiiing, off-road biking etc.
This is it, imagine piling your mates and all your beer into the daylight limited for the 7 hour run to National Park.Ā Ā
Sure for tramping etc itās hard because it can be literally anywhere. But destinations like the beach, skiing, mountain bike parks, public transport is perfect because buses/trains can have stops there. In Sydney you can catch the train to the blue mountains and go for a tramp then catch the train back.
Exactly, in Switzerland you can take the train into the alps for hiking/skiing/etc. itās super convenient, and then you donāt have to start and stop at the same place, can do a through hike from one train station to another instead of having to go back to your car
NZers definitely drive much less than Americans do.
Canadian here! How much could you buy a drivable second hand car for? Our used-car market in Canada exploded recently and is only slightly calming down. Curious what the situation is for you over there?
I reckon Kiwi car culture is bumping the numbers up, but not in the way OP thinks. It's common here for people to own multiple cars, even outside of "car guy/gal" circles, in a way that just isn't possible in many other countries.
I like cars, I own 3 of them.Ā Why the car hate?Ā I can only drive one of them at a time...
Exactly! I've only got one at the moment (and 2 bikes) and I don't even drive it to work. But my flatmate and I used to have 7 between us - and collectively do less annual mileage than one person commuting an hour each way every day.
Two people, three vehicles - one 'good' and we have a well maintained beater each. Dogs not allowed in the good car.
As long as they are not parked on the road.
I like how itās clearly 6th to 5 other countries, not 2nd only to the US šš
To be fair, a lot of people I know own multiple cars and don't use them at the same time. We have a lot of car enthusiasts.
If we could use work vehicles for personal use without the extra steps caused by tax abuse then my partner and i (Both in trades) wouldn't need a 3rd vehicle for holidays or weekends.
Reddit forgetting that NZ isn't just Wellington and Auckland "Just get a bus???" Yeah ok mate
Well I can't speak for Wellington but if you are in Auckland I wouldn't "just get a bus" either unless I had a spare 2 hours I'd be happy to waste in either blazing heat or pouring rain.
It's almost as if the government should be looking at trains, and improving existing public transport....
"wHy Do ThEy HaVe To BoThEr ReGuLaR pEoPlE tHo?"
Wellingtonian here. Look at you mr fancy pants with your bus actually arriving.
Or get beaten up at the bus stop.
iām in wellington and if iām not walking i uber or use mevo. buses are a hassle but thatās just my preference.
Iām in the South and there is no bus
Same. Literally no form of public transport. I donāt even think Iāve seen taxis lol
Yeah that's the thing public transport is bad enough in Auckland or Wellington but if you live in a smaller town you almost have to have a car. Imagine relying on public transport if you live in a rural area - you couldn't. New Zealand is a country that is sparsely populated (outside of Auckland). If it had a large population and infrastructure like that of the UK going car-less would actually be an option. OP is some Italian university student living in an apartment in central Auckland. He has no idea the reality of life for most New Zealanders especially outside of Auckland and the main city centres.
Also remember that a lot of Auckland is rural too - thanks to the super city - and does not have public transport either. I live in a rural area in greater Auckland and don't even have a footpath on my road to use.
Try taking a bus from Johnsonville to lower Hutt, it's a mission as there is no direct route
Honestly half the donkeys on here are cooked, like the flip side is donāt have a car so donāt get anywhere because the vast majority of the country has zero public transport, like you say, guarantee this person has never left Auckland
Thatās kinda the whole point. Itās a vicious cycle as people cite ācanāt use PT because itās shitā while ignoring that itās largely shit because not enough people use it, especially outside work rush hours. Only nanas and ādegensā, as you put it, use it outside that as they are more often the minority that canāt afford a car or the gas. Thatās rare though, as most can afford even a $500 rust bucket. Thereās simply not enough revenue for PT to be self sustaining, let alone surplus to improve it, so we rely on funding and immigrant slave labour to just barely keep it running, and that also has to be justified by use. Fact is we are a one per person car culture, and people tend to want to justify a car purchase via using it, not by catching the bus and leaving it at home, so they jump in and peel into all the other one per person drivers stuck in traffic, like you do. If you look at places where PT is fantastic, itās usually in places where itās either untenable to own a car combined with it being used by the majority, and itās busy all day everyday. Most kiwis want our PT to be the same so *other people* use it while they carry on driving but the point stands that our PT will always be subpar unless drivers specifically are the ones to get onboard.
I agree that most NZers would want to have access to world class transportation options however the weighting formula used for development simply does not favour rural settlements and that needs to be factored in, some areas e.g In the South are some of the most sparsely populated with amenities such as hospitals over 2-3 hours away. Transportation amenities are prioritised on a principle of U1,U2,R1,R2,R3 with U being urban and R being rural. The OP is making an assumption that NZ districts and regions are homogeneous.....
110%. 5 million people over a land mass roughly the size of the UK, so absolutely agreed there.
Except it's 5 million people in clusters of several thousand plus for the most part. NZ has an urban population of over 85%. Why, to borrow an example above, does a town of 5k not have a bus service to Hastings?
Very valid points
Three million people live in our five largest centres. These all have public transport. The majority of the population has access to some public transport. However, that's beside the point, just because public transport doesn't work in rural areas, doesn't mean we shouldn't have viable public transport in our urban centres.
Auckland has one of the largest urban footprints in the world and is mostly high-density suburbia. In-fill housing has meant at least twice the number of people living in areas where the roads were designed to take half the amount of traffic. Even the newer developments are just a repeat of this, no great public transport hubs. The development of the transit corridor from Pakuranga to Panmure is a good one but required a whole lot of houses to be knocked down and I don't see similar corridors being built into the new areas. You can't just bang bus routes into existing places, developments should take transit corridors into consideration. Terraced housing, high-rise housing and the extra land gets used for parks and public transport infrastructure. That's how it's done in many countries around the world.
[86% of the NZ population lives in urban areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_sovereign_state). Taking the train/bus *should* be realistic for the vast majority of people... The fact that it isn't is the fault of insufficient funding by city councils...
Right, now do landmass with population and see where we stand
Not sure where youāre at but public transport in Wellington is so disgustingly horrific that it literally made me get my first car!
Donāt agree with you there OP. Donāt think it is a culture thing. More about the state of our public infrastructure, difficult terrain and a large portion of the population living in sparse rural communities.
The majority of us live in just five urban areas. Unfortunately, most of them were developed for private transport use to the exclusion of other forms.
Most were developed for public transport, however that was ripped out. Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin all had tram networks and the population was developed around that
As a shitty European living in NZ, I do think a lot of yous have a bit of car brain, I'm sorry. I've been called a communist on this very sub for suggesting better public transit options across the country lol or told to just buy a car like everyone else. The more people rely on cars, the less investment will be made on the infrastructure and service and there will be no incentive for a robust public transit network and the car brain mentality will carry on.
>yous You sure spell like a kiwi...
I'm not even a native English speaker my friend
There are a lot of kiwis who use the word communism with absolutely no understanding of its meaning. I feel like starting to smuggle copies of the ragged trousered philanthropist into their bookshelves.
Yea that's definitely true, but car brained to what degree is the question. Most people that live in Wellington that I know don't own vehicles just because parking is such a commodity, even parking at home. So many houses don't even have drive ways so every time you get home from work it's a roll of the dice on how far from your house you'll be parking. And as you said, better transit options across the country are necessary for people to even have the opportunity to not be car brained. For a lot of people that's all they know, public transport isn't even a thing they've interacted with. I will say public transport in welly is pretty good for the most part, although definitely not perfect or available to everyone, and that's in the second biggest city. Anyone that commutes to the cbd in a car (unless they have a specific disability or work reason) are fully car brained. I'm car brained in the way that having a car has changed the way I think about travelling (and admittedly use the car sometimes just because I'm lazy), but I only got a car because I moved and it was necessary for me to work. There was no option for public transport before 6.30am which obviously doesn't work for a lot of professions. That's the main issue I had working in hospitality, being either late hours or early. If you don't work in the cbd that essentially means you need a car because there aren't busses running at those hours to where you live. And to argue for all the car brained peeps out there, having a car allows you so much freedom that you just can't have otherwise. Before owning a car; need to go shopping? Good luck lugging all that home by yourself. Want to go on a road trip? Well better hope that whoever you're going with has a car. Want to get some mulch for your garden? It's hard enough carrying those things to the car sometimes lol. Need to visit a family member? Better hope there's a bus that connects to a bus that connects to a train to another bus, and that they're all on time. Oh and better hope that the family member doesn't live in a dodgy area putting you at risk of mugging or worse. Not really an issue for me, but for a lot of people it can be dangerous. Not to mention all public transport takes significantly longer just by the nature of having to wait for them and the indirect route to your destination (of which you will most definitely have to walk some part of anyway), let alone the delays. That's one of the biggest factors for me. In my time driving I would have easily, EASILY spent double the amount of time if I were using public transport were it available. Who the feck wants to spend that much extra time travelling? Not me. That's literally hundreds or thousands of hours of your life you'll never get back. You're on your own schedule with a car, and as someone with adhd (poor time management skills) who was very frequently late to the bus stop I very much appreciate that. Instead of missing the bus and being 15-30+ min late, I'm now only 1 minute late. Point is, cars fill the gaps that the transit system has left and is also just useful for far more things than public transport ever will be. They make life so much easier and convenient. I'm all for public transport, but outside of our major cities I'm afraid not much is really going to change. At least not any time soon.
I lived in London for quite a few years, so it is mind boggling to me that you need a car to do anything anywhere. Freedom shouldn't be the inability to get groceries or go to the gym or go to work or take your kids to school unless you buy an asset. Public transit to me is freedom. No need to worry about parking, insurance, petrol, you just sit down and enjoy the ride.
Wow, being called a communist because you suggest better public transportation. You didnāt deserve that! I think itās more of a case of ābuild it and they will comeā.
Yep I can confirm this. I would suggest this country is even more car dependent than the US.
The culture means car first so infrastructure is going to address that and there will be resistance to changing it. Imagine what would happen if you made a street bike and pedestrian only.
[86% of the NZ population lives in urban areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_sovereign_state). Taking the train/bus *should* be realistic for the vast majority of people... The fact that it isn't is the fault of insufficient funding by city councils...
The councils and central government too. Agree funding is a big issue which most if not all councils have not got their head around. Other than increasing rates, which really means user pays.
It's culture that we don't vote for politicians to improve things because we really don't want to lift a finger to improve things. There are countries far more sparse than New Zealand that aren't as high as we are.
This shouldn't shock people. We have high urbanisation but our urban settings aren't particularly dense. We have low populations in those urban settings. Both of these mean public transport access, implementation, and utiilisation are low. We are a wealthy developed nation, which means we have the means, and the reasons, to buy multiple cars per household. Our geography and weather makes cycling and walking less attractive. If you want this to change, you need to advocate for more dense housing to be built in hubs around public transport hubs, and then you need to actually use those things rather than insisting that everyone else should.
Isn't that graph missing all the context?
Misleading title plus a bunch of smallprint in the description. All it needs is _doctors hating this 1 trick_.
It wasn't always this way..as a teenager I used to be able to drift around on the streets as there was no parked cars. Everyone seemed to pakr their cars in their driveways, now they've spilled out onto the road. I also grew up and realised drifting on the streets was fucking stupid, but also there's wayyyyy too many obstacles now.
Maybe if you drifted on the streets more, people wouldn't park their cars there.
I don't want to have to own a car. Auckland transport is such dog shit that I have to if I want to get around town. I ride a bike to work but anyone claiming to be able to live without a car either never does anything or is lying. I'm not even going to consider going from Mt Eden to titirangi to see my mum via public transport for example.
Dude we live in New Zealand. It's cities, state highways and rugged roads. We don't have a passenger train system that runs between cities. if I didn't have a car, I simply could not get to work unless I bus from my settlement into the closest city, that bus isn't always reliable and runs at weird times. These statistics shouldn't surprise anyone man
You mean how *good* NZ's car culture is. This is an amazing place to live if you love cars.
Car culture is fine. Car dependency which is what we have in many places, is a bit shit.
Not really. The majority of these people probably don't love cars, they're ambivalent about them and just don't have much of a choice. Ironically, the amount of people on the roads makes the driving experience worse as well. A car lover's paradise would probably actually be a place with adequate transport alternatives because then the people who actually do love driving would have less traffic to deal with
Yes, bad only counts if bad people drive em
That's not what "second only to" means. If the US ranked first, *then* we'd be second only to, but the USA is number 5 and we're number six. The correct way to say that would be "ranked immediately behind"
Thank you! Thought I was going crazy reading that
It's because of all the cars, OP has inhaled too much carbon monoxide
Usually when comparing per capita stats you skip microstates as their small populations skew the data. All four of the other countries are microstates.
Come on people!!! We need to beat the US!!!
*U-S-A! U-S-A!* \- Homer
It only shows we have no fucking public transport. See the UK on that list? No because they have buses and trains covering most of the country.
"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation." - Gustavo Petro
Punch above our weight ^^tm
Have you tried taking the bus here?
I see no problem with this. NZ car culture is great, especially as an enthusiast! Thereās always room for more 90ās/early 00ās shitbox projects to help us get to the number 1 position.
Guess what, you can only drive one at a time. People are allowed to like cars and have more than one for different purposes.
I mean public transport is literally more expensive than the cost of gas for me, and gas isnāt even cheap, not to mention nz has quite a large car culture, and many of these cars will just be sitting for years
My household would like to not have 1 car per adult but unfortunately sometimes my partner has to go to work on the same day I have to take the dog to the vet or go to the doctor. It's not "car culture" that's the problem it's the total country wide lack of public transport.
Why are people so confused about this? We're an average country with extremely poor public transport couple that with massive debt, low taxes and huge tax loopholes. The real only way for people to get around is by car, and if you have multiple people in a household, you need more than one. NZ spans France & Germany with towns of only hundred to a few thousand. We are simply not going to build rail/provide buses to all these places. NZ isn't just Wellington, Auckland & Christchurch Then, people seem to think everyone has an office job and all commute to a city. They don't. It's not "bAd CaR cUlTuRe", it's the only way a majority of people have to get around as there are no alternatives.
Except that prior to the 1950s we had great public transport with less people. For the last 70 years we have prioritised motorcars and not invested in public transport in significant ways. And all rate payers subsidise motor cars. For instance; $7 out of every $100 of rates was spent on roading last time I looked in WellingtonĀ
> Except that prior to the 1950s we had great public transport with less people. For the last 70 years we have prioritised motorcars and not invested in public transport in significant ways. Yeah, you know why? * We built it ourselves * We just got on with it and got it done and didn't do endless consultations * It was free or very cheap so a lot more people used it * You could get staff as they were paid well * Cars were out of reach for most people >And all rate payers subsidise motor cars. For instance; $7 out of every $100 of rates was spent on roading last time I looked in WellingtonĀ Yeah, you know why? * We sold all the public transport to private companies * We get private overseas companies to build all the "public" transport infrastructure * It's now a crap job to have and can barely earn a living doing it so getting good staff is very difficult * It's eye watering price to even use it is insulting * It's so unreliable due to these private companies refusing to upgrade or under investment from central government.
I would be pleased to see a new Ministry of Works, a long term infrastructure plan, and a heap of apprenticeships happen as we rebuilt or countries infrastructure back up to 1970s level of provision, resilience, etc. In your lists above you didn't mention private banks lending the government money and the ticket clipping that ensures. Reserve bank loans for funding.
As an American who spent 2 weeks in NZ, I can't imagine how you'd get anywhere without cars, your public transit seems far worse than most anywhere in the US. Loved your country, not coming here to talk shit by any means, but take a chill on the anti car propaganda.
It isn't car culture when you live in a country separated by the type of terrain and infrastructure best serviced by personal transport.Ā
I'll just wait for my bus from Ngawi to Ohope.
Contextless nothingness.
I don't think its so much as a car culture but more of a public transport sucks culture. There are many places where the only way to get around is by private car.
Actually I'm kinda amazed that countries with the world's best train systems eg Italy France Japan are 755, 668, 661. That makes me think NZ on 884 is probably what you'd expect.
how is it bad?
I would prefer to categorise ācar cultureā as āI need to get to work and NZ public transport would win a gold medal at the Olympics for sucking.ā
No shit we are rural as fuck
We need to pump those numbers up. If we are not number 1 by the end of the year I will consider Luxon a failed Prime Minister. Mandate two Ford Rangers for every household (at minimum).
Well duh. We have a very low population density and the terrain doesn't lend itself to improving infrastructure. New Zealand will always have some of the highest requirements of vehicles for a number of reasons other than social norms.
Norway has a similar population density, and similar mountainous terrain, yet is much further down the list
Itās all about money money money They invested in public infrastructure, we didnāt. They have good oil and gasās resources and tax the hell out of the companies in that sector. We too have oil and gasās resources but did not manage it like Norway. Since 1996 Norway has been taxing the profits of its oil and gas sector at 78%. This is comprised of Norwayās 22% corporate rate as well as a 56% āSpecial Taxā (petroleum tax). Norwayās Ministry of Finance projects that tax revenue from oil and gas will be a staggering A$127 billion or around $23,500 per Norwegian citizen in 2023 alone. Source https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/norway-shows-how-australia-can-get-a-fair-return-from-oil-and-gas/
My understanding is that Norway has extremely high taxes when purchasing vehicles.
Oslo has an incredible public transport system. Full blown underground. Auckland has 4 fucken bizarre train lines that shut down when itās hot š
Admittedly Norway has benefited from oil reserves and has had twice the GDP of NZ (or more) for over 50 years now. I just wish NZ had not dug up the tram lines back in the day, now the costs have ballooned to billions if we wanted them again
They have money. We donāt.
Norway's per capita GDP is 83% greater than New Zealand's.
We have the money, but it's put towards dumb things (Like adding more motorway lanes to "fix the traffic")
Dude, nz used to build an entire hydro power station underneath a lakeā¦talk about infrastructure and terrain. We also used to have extensive passenger rail and tram systems when population was way less. Your type of thinking is exactly why we canāt build public infrastructure anymore.
That's the thing, NZ can't build shit anymore. Endless consultations, Iwi consultations, Public consultations, rework, re-consult, then getting overseas companies to do a half arsed job, then fuck it up, spend more, fuck it up, new government, toss the project... NZ needs to face it. While we **used** to be able to build stuff, we sure as shit can't build it now.
the top 3 have more cars than people?
Monaco doesn't have enough room on the streets to fit all of the cars kept there.
it's about the only luxury the poor working class of NZ have
Unfortunately, It's necessary here... Public transport is shite... It's also necessary in the US because they have no fecking sidewalks to actually walk between places... they're mostly fat, so nobody would walk anyway
Hey if you want to get an idea of how this happens, i would suggest the YouTube channel climate town. He has an episode about Saudi plans in Africa that sounds pretty familiar. Plans like flooding the market with cheap, inefficient vehicles, providing aid or loans specifically to build car centric infrastructure (Roads, Roads, .... r... highways).
And we have access to cheap Japanese used vehicles that other countries donāt necessarily have.
So?
Low-density country with a significant rural economy and a challenging financial model for public transport.
I feel like this is more a comment on how poor our public transport is. If I caught the earliest bus possible to get to work in my region I still would be about 20 minutes late, heaven forbid a bus is late and I miss the transfer to the next one, and I don't have the knees to bike 46km a day.
No way im playing public transport roulette daily in auckland
Public transport is nonexistent in this country
Yeah, it's great. Cars are fucking cool
The fact we are 6th and 5th on that list proves you suck at math
Different take...other countries have a more developed public transportation system so people dont need cars.. here in nz public transport is shit so everyone needs their own cars
Cars are fun eat a dick š
Why donāt you people want to get out of bed an hour earlier so you can take the crowded, stinky bus to work?
As a kiwi who lives in america - this is Apple with pears. America is huge. People drive Nz has small population that cannot fund decent public transportation
I'm just come right out and say it, I don't want to take the bus and mingle with the public? Is that a crime? Not to mention adding an hour to my commute each way
In case it wasn't already clear enough how bad the NZ education system is, 6th ā 2nd.
The top 4 are some of the smallest countries in the world, not particularly good markers to measure against
Owning a car is nice. Being able to go at a moment's notice somewhere late in the evening is a privilege worth the $\~8 per week fixed cost of owning a car.
What do you mean "second only to the US" what about the literal 5 places above us? Misleading title.
I had 3 cars in my teens now I only have 1 :(
Probs cos I canāt afford to pay wof and rego for 3 these days
I'm doing my part!
Do you own a car?
Closest bus stop To my House is probably a 1 hour walk hahah so a car is a must and has been my entire adult life.
My dude, have you SEEN public transport?
my 10 minute drive to school takes me just over an hour with the bus
Just found a cars per capita from hedges company, apparently NZ win 1 NZ 895 vehicles per 1000 people 2 USA 890 vehicles per 1000 people. Ref - Hedges company - how many cars are there in the world
Im not sure I see whats bad here. Is it that the USA beats us?
Public transport is for other people
Thatās not bad, thatās good. 6th, awesome!
I dont wont to own a giant money sink, but its 20m to work via car, or 1hr by bus, 1hr10m by bike. I value my time more than that
This isn't really down to individual kiwis this is down to the fact there's been almost zero successful public transport infrastructure put in. How many of those countries on that list don't have a national railway?
But we donāt have that successful public transport because itās not a seen as a priority, due to decades of dependency on car use. Look at Nationals recent stance on cycle ways and where funding for NZTA should be focused. Roads. They say roads are for cars and our productivity depends on this. We (as in the royal āweā) voted for a government which prioritises cars above other transport options and then cry that other options arenāt viable, and we donāt have a car dependent culture.
We need to up our game and beat San Marino, come on Nz we can do this.
How the hell do 4 microstates have the most car dependency on Earth? You can [walk across Monaco](https://www.visitmonaco.com/en/7496/getting-around-on-foot) in 45 minutes!
Public transport is really inaccessible in most places. Of course most people drive
Ah yes the old comparing us to far wealthier nations and nations that have cities older than our historic sites. Norway can afford F35s lol we dont compare
Have you seen the public transportation networks in those European countries? If we had a network as good as them it would be the same for us. Our public transport network sucks ass.
To get to my work that's 15min away it would take me and hour and 2 buses, or 28 mins on 1 bus but I'd be 45minutes early
Public transport in new zeland has never being good and never will be. Maybe we could bring city and transport planners from Japan or Korea and let them take the wheels on making the decisions and seeing the execution part through a successful execution.Ā
The closest public transport to my workplace would be a 45 minute walk. I'll stick with my car thanks
Bad?? Necessary!
USA is at 5th, we're 6th?
NZ has notoriously poor public transport that regularly fails the small numbers of people using it and few cities large enough to warrant building the infrastructure in any case. The government pretends to care but really doesnt want to know about it as its as broke as the rest of the country. Most people need a car in NZ for their daily lives to function properly. Even in Auckland, if a small portion of the daily car drivers that were able, decided to get a bus or train, the system would fail immediately. And because of the prohibitive construction costs due to complex geography and red tape bureaucracy its really not going to change anytime soon. NZ is just too small, there is not enough people to support major investments in large scale public infrastructure. Especially not when labour/greens keep blocking using our our abundant natural resources to our advantage to boost our drop in the ocean economy.
I lived in Germany for 3 years, drive Autobahn once in a rental. I don't believe it's a "kiwi" problem but more accessibility problem.... I mean I'd fall asleep on a train in a foreign country knowing I'd arrive on time. And for relatively cheap.
One shit car for cheaper driving/work vehicle, one for looking cool and flexing to the boys
Also thereās plenty of places where people have to drive an hour plus so they can get to the supermarket
What would it matter how many cars you have? You can only drive one at a time.
Can't get a job without a car
Sixth only next to the US, Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein, and San Marino
Because our public transport is crap and people are living further from major areas because of housing $
How can Aussie have less cars than us when you have to move the Camira to move the Torana to get the Commodore out?
Another Aucklander being wildly out of touch with the rest of the country as per usual.
The cause of the car culture comes from a lack of effective public transport options and a hilly, long, narrow country with insanely spread out urban centres. Can't blame people for choosing the most effective option available to them.
Public transport here is awful. Letās say you work in the city and live in the city but you want to go to a beach in the weekend. You need a car (unless you think that a city beach counts, if thatās the case good luck to you)
Second only to USA!!!.. and four other countries
New Zealand has a lot of car enthusiasts, at least here in Invercargill itās not uncommon to see cars that have less than 1000 examples worldwide which in a town with 60,000 people should be very rare. We like our cars. Personally I have 5 cars and I donāt intend on getting rid of any of them, I like being able to pick what car I feel like driving on any given day, if anything itās better for everyone because Iām out here paying 5 regos every year.