The Oil Drum

The NRMA and its president Alan Evans are getting plenty of press as a result of high oil prices.

Unfortunately he is taking advantage of this opportunity to stick his head in the sand and demand a return to the cheap oil past, rather than trying to understand what this means for Australian motorists in future.

Last week, Mr Evans was unrealistically demanding that oil companies must absorb petrol price hikes rather than passing them onto motorists. While this sort of thing gets plenty of media attention, it isn't ever going to actually happen - and if it occurred on a regular basis, it would eventually result in oil and petrol shortages as the oil companies decide to sell their product elsewhere.

This week, Mr Evans is complaining about cycle lanes - apparently the small amounts of money devoted to slowly building out a decent cycle network are unjustifiable in his book, and the state government should instead be trying to turn these into an additional car lane on thoroughfares like Epping Road, ignoring the fact that another car lane would simply add further to peak hour congestion, and would costs orders of magnitude more than the cycle lanes. What next - get rid of the bus lanes and train tracks as well ?