Most business people can be pursuaded to change, especially when the costs favour a new approach rather than an old one

Rail lost its freight entirely due to business needs – cost, reliability, timing, not being met – nothing to do with emotion

Passenger rail has suffered from some of these things, but also because car sellers have promoted the emotion of the thing (comfort, style, speed, sex appeal) and rail operators did not match them

In France, the TGV is marketed as having sex appeal, and does very welL!

A genuine road freight network (as opposed to a freeway network) would doubtless not include much of what we see today. Who would build the Westgate Bridge 70 metres up in the air? A drawbridge like in Port Adelaide would have done. Why build 6-8 lanes. 2 lanes with lay-bys would have been plenty, as the trucks could have been kept to say 80 and forced to drive top to tail.

The infrastructure you see was in fact built for cars-commuters, despite what they say.

However, you make a valid point about the disaggregation of freight and cars, and car-friendly policies encouraging greater truck use. Also, it pays to keep in mind that those trucks are often transporting consumer goods, so fewer TVs = less being transported, produced, etc. Buy local fruit rather than imported, etc – many so called ‘commmercial’ emitters are, in the long run, attributable to domestic consumers.

But I think research and planning is a good and necessary step to take, and this seems to be something you two seem to be very good at. Once a detailed plan is produced, something that could be plausibly adopted, then of course it needs to be lobbied.

For all the things that one can say about the RACV, they have to be given credit for running an incredibly efficient operation for their members. They do have the steady stream of roadside assist money and insurance commissions coming in to help of course – money which simply isn’t there for public transport lobbyists.

It’s not just money though – they set the bar high for big new projects, whereas public transport groups get stuck debating the merits of excruciatingly small projects.

I’d like to think there’s a way above the minutiae, but further Balkanisation of public transport lobby groups is hard to justify. Perhaps taking the research and planning rather than the lobbying side is the way forward.

I suppose we are going to have to reconcile our beliefs about Car emisssions and peak oil.

If the peak oil monster comes, we won’t have to worry about car emissions! or congestion

I’m not worried about the quality of the RACV’s advocacy – more worried about the quality of RACV, Smartpax and so on. We should admire our enemies, and focus on improving our own abilities.