Simon Kingham Transport scientist

At some point, New Zealand will probably ban the import of petrol and diesel cars. The only cars allowed in will be electric.

This can’t happen too early or the country will be grounded. Nor can it be too late or the transport sector will be contributing to climate change longer than necessary. And there will be unnecessary air pollution as well.

‘‘Ultimately you’re trying to get to the point where there are no carbon-based cars at all,’’ says Dr Simon Kingham, a University of Canterbury professor of geography with expertise in transportation. He’s also the Ministry of Transport’s recently appointed chief science adviser.

Kingham has no idea when the last internal combustion engine will roll off a ship, but it’s decades away.

It has to be thought about now because there are implications beyond four tyres. For one, will we have enough electricity generation to charge millions of vehicle batteries every day and night?

Moreover, who will be the last folks to adopt electric vehicles? Apart from petrolheads, it’s a good guess it will be the poor. So that will have to be managed somehow.

‘‘I’ve been involved in conversations about that,’’ he says over coffee not far from the University of Canterbury, where he teaches and researches three days a week. He spends two days at the ministry in Wellington.

Many readers have heard of the prime minister’s chief science adviser. Juliet Gerrard recently replaced Sir Peter Gluckman in that role. It turns out ministries also have chief science advisers. There are 16 of them – at the ministries of defence, education, health and so forth. MBIE has three.

‘‘The role is to ensure that policy is based on good scientific evidence,’’ he says. ‘‘I want to see research impact policy.’’

Academics can sometimes go an entire career and never have a real-world impact. ‘‘I have always wanted to make a difference, do something impactful,’’ says Kingham.

The transport science adviser role came up and Kingham leaped. It’s perhaps incongruous because Kingham hasn’t owned a personal car since the mid-1990s. Oh there’s a family car, mostly steered by his wife to get their two kids around.

But his last personal car was back in Britain. It was almost stolen and fixing it was too expensive so he ditched it. He’s been cycling and riding public transport since.

His philosophy is summed by this quote: ‘‘If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places.’’

He’s not anti-car, but pro-communities. It means that in Christchurch he rides to work summer and winter.

These days he rides on cycleways mostly paid for by the former National government and former minister of transport Simon Bridges. It’s a 9km trip and all but 400 metres is a dedicated cycleway. ‘‘It’s obviously the best way for me to get to work and back.’’

He saves money, keeps healthy and it’s nearly as fast as driving.

Kingham doesn’t wear Lycra, or mountain bike on the weekends. He wears a helmet because that’s the law. His bike is single speed (one gear) and is ratty enough to deter thieves.

‘‘I’m passionate about cycles being part of our transport and it’s based on good scientific evidence.’’

Research shows 2 per cent of adults will cycle no matter what, Kingham among them. About 5 per cent are enthused and will cycle with a small amount of encouragement, he says.

Meanwhile 25 per cent to 30 per cent of adults will never ride a bike, no matter what.

So the fight is for the roughly 60 per cent who like the idea of cycling and will cycle if it’s safe enough. This means dedicated cycleways, traffic lights for cyclists, and good visibility at driveways and intersections.

Cities across the country, encouraged by the former government, built them.

Inevitably there was a ‘‘bikelash’’, says Kingham. The NZ Transport Agency defines that as ‘‘disproportionately intense resistance to a [cycling] project’’.

The ‘‘good news’’ is that there’s bikelash wherever cycling infrastructure is improved – Australia, the US, Canada and even the Netherlands in the beginning.

The people complaining about cycleways are often those who will never cycle, Kingham says. They are used to cars and suddenly see part of their space given to other road users and they often have to slow down as well. Over time, this resistance tends to reduce. Another group are business owners who lose their on-street parking to bikes. ‘‘I’ve never seen a piece of research that shows, overall, businesses do worse.

‘‘Most of the evidence says businesses do better once cycleways are put in. But not all of them, and that’s the key.’’

The trick is to provide parking nearby or being creative with laneways and the like.

Kingham started down this track in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He earned his PHD in geography from Lancaster University in 1993 by using geographic information systems (GIS) to measure air pollution and respiratory health.

It was about this time his father was killed in a traffic accident. It was a terrible loss and the other guy was convicted of bad driving.

But he didn’t change overnight and become anti-vehicle. ‘‘My views on transport were already shaped,’’ he says.

He married Sue and a few years later they came to New Zealand on a temporary fellowship, which turned into permanent position at Canterbury University. He got promoted to full professor and then into the ministry in February.

There he’s carefully called an ‘‘adviser’’. He doesn’t have a veto.

Rather, Kingham’s stamp of approval is ‘‘useful’’ when a policy proposal rises to the minister’s level. ‘‘If the minister asks, ‘Has this been seen by the science adviser?’ and they say ‘No’, then it’s a bit of a red flag,’’ he says.

He works on safety, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, public transport, accessibility, and linking research to policy. He spends ‘‘very little’’ time on cycling issues. He meets monthly with the minister. That elevation means he can’t publicly criticise the current Government but is happy to identify a previous policy that lacked scientific robustness – those $12 billion Roads of National Significance (Rons) implemented by the previous government.

‘‘With Rons, I would say it’s hard to find evidence that backs up the amount of spending they were fitting into them,’’ he says. ‘‘Not all decisions by governments are based on scientific evidence. There are lots of other drivers – politics, funding and all these other things.’’

Moreover, ‘‘anyone can be ignored by the minister’’, says Kingham. ‘‘They don’t have to take advice.’’

And as John Key once told the BBC, politicians can always find a different scientist to support their cause.

That said, the current Government has brought massive change to the Ministry of Transport. Nationally significant roads are deemphasised and rail and public transport are on the up. Kingham can hardly complain.

So what does Professor Kingham think about autonomous vehicles?

When will we all get self-driving, all-electric vehicles?

He doesn’t know, of course, but observes that they’ll first come to ‘‘controlled environments’’ such as airports.

You’ll drop your car at a distant car park and catch an autonomous vehicle to the terminal. Christchurch airport has a trial running with autonomous shuttles, although actual passengers haven’t been moved yet.

The challenge will be mixing self-drive cars with human-driven cars, Kingham says.

In 30-40-50 years, all of us will have autonomous vehicles but ‘‘how do we do the bit in between, that’s the tricky bit’’.

OK, what about the road toll, which is rising again?

Would more police help? Well, yes, but other measures would probably help more.

Alcohol is still a problem. Getting more people into public transport would be good.

Lower speed limits? Absolutely. ‘‘There is clear evidence that speed causes accidents and there’s loads of evidence saying we should reduce speeds,’’ he says.

What to is a different matter. And it’s politically messy – lower speeds in the main cities have caused outcries.

Kingham is sympathetic, but he’s the parttime science adviser. Politics isn’t his responsibility.

There’s another thing: Don’t ask him about maritime shipping.

‘‘I’m passionate about cycles being part of our transport and it’s based on good scientific evidence.’’