Infrastructure

The recent partial integration of Sydney’s Metro Light Rail (MLR) ticketing with the MyMulti/MyZone system is another welcome if very modest step towards a true integrated ticketing and fares system for Sydney’s public transport.

You can now use a MyMulti 1, 2 or 3, a MyMulti Day Pass, a Pensioner Excursion Ticket (PET) or a Family Funday Sunday ticket on the light rail. All these tickets have to be purchased prior to boarding a tram.

However, CityRail single-trip, return or weekly tickets are still not valid, nor are any bus-only tickets or concessions apart from the PET. Metro Light Rail also continues to issue the full range of its own tickets which are valid only for its own services. More on ticketing issues in my next post but first, how are the new arrangements operating and what has been the impact on patronage?

Trams don’t have ticket validators, so when you board a tram and show the conductor a My Multi or other valid ticket, he or she will usually issue a zero-value ticket. This is simple in practice but a ticket showing “$.00” value is a very odd thing to receive.

Given the absence of ticket validators on trams, this approach may be understandable as a temporary measure for counting how many NSW Transport tickets are being used. However, it could hardly be described as a watertight form of accounting. Indeed, on one of the trips I made just after the new fare arrangements were introduced the tram was so crowded that the conductor did not bother to issue “zero fares” to most of the people with NSW Transport tickets.

This brings us to patronage. I don’t have any figures (and if any are released, bear in mind the method of counting) so my evidence is based on my observations and anecdotal evidence, but there seems to be a small but noticeable increase in the number of tram users, particularly older users who qualify for PETs.

In particular there seems to be more people using the tram for short-haul trips, especially between Central, Capitol Square and Paddy’s Markets. For most people this is a walkable distance, but if you are infirm, carrying a lot of shopping or just in a hurry, the tram provides by far the best public transport connection between these points, especially if you already have a PET or MyMulti.

While the overall patronage increase seems relatively small, I was struck by the large number of passengers who did produce MyMulti and PET tickets on the tram, especially coming from or going to Central. This would seem to indicate that a significant proportion of people are already using the light rail in combination with trains; now they can use their MyMulti and other valid tickets without having to pay an additional tram fare.

Given the location of the current MLR terminus at Central, this is hardly surprising, but it also reflects the fact that the current ticket integration model tends to favour passengers transferring from trains rather than those who catch buses. For many train users, purchase of a weekly MyMulti costs little more than a weekly rail ticket but provides much better value – including now the light rail – and doesn’t lock them into travel between two stations on a particular corridor.

For bus users, especially in the inner city, it’s a different story. Even a Zone 1 MyMulti is relatively expensive, especially if passengers don’t have any opportunities to use trains or ferries. For these users, Travel10s are a cheaper alternative and offer reasonable flexibility – but these tickets, like all bus tickets, are not recognised on the light rail.

Part of the problem lies in the “unfinished” nature of the MyMulti ticket system, which I’ll look at in my next post.

Yesterday’s announcement by the new NSW Government of the creation of a new Integrated Transport Authority (ITA) not only fulfils a major election promise but also highlights the extent of the government’s transport ambitions.  

The announcement also echoes many of the governance recommendations of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) Independent Public Transport Inquiry. This called for a similar coordinating transport authority, though the government’s ITA will have a much bigger remit. There are other key differences, but let’s start with the similarities which are striking (and pleasing for those of us who worked on the SMH Inquiry).

The SMH Inquiry proposed a transport coordination authority managed by an independent board to plan and manage all aspects of Sydney’s public transport. Rail, bus and ferry operators would have been contracted on a contestable basis to provide services to the authority, which would have taken over and integrated their planning powers.

The SMH Inquiry report also proposed that the authority would prioritise customer service and the importance of providing each public transport user with a complete journey to meet their requirements rather than a set of disconnected bus, rail or ferry trips. This would have involved a branch dedicated to integrating all aspects of service provision including fares, ticketing, timetables, interchanges and information provision.

While the SMH proposal did not incorporate the management of car-based transport, the authority would have had a strong say in the approval of major new road projects.

The government’s ITA is very similar in that it will also integrate all aspects of public transport. It also emphasises customer service; there will be a division specifically dedicated to “Customer Experience”, which in the words of the Ministerial media release, “will make sure journeys are as simple and seamless as possible”.

There are other structural similarities, with divisions responsible for planning, services, projects and policies. The ITA will also take over planning powers from the individual transport agencies, much as the SMH Inquiry proposed, and use these resources to develop a comprehensive transport “masterplan”.

There are however some significant differences. These can be summarised as follows:

• The ITA will not be managed by an independent board, although an independent advisory board will be appointed by the government. The exact relationship of this to the ITA is unclear.
• The ITA will take over procurement, long-term planning and policy-making from the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) as well as from public transport agencies, thus giving it direct oversight of major road projects.
• The ITA will also manage freight transport and oversee transport across the State, not just in greater Sydney.
• However, it will not have the final say on major infrastructure projects, with the government intending to establish a state infrastructure body.

Despite these differences, the government’s new body is a huge step forward for transport planning and management in NSW. It is hard to disagree with the sentiment in the joint ministerial media release about the need to replace the current disconnected transport “silos” with a “streamlined agency which plans and delivers for all modes” and to concentrate on improving the transport user’s experience.

There is also compelling logic in integrating and extending the planning and management of transport statewide and to include road and freight transport as well as public transport. However, the government’s new approach is very ambitious and not without its risks:

• The first challenge for the new body will be getting on top of this enormous range of responsibilities and the associated expectations. While the primary reason for not including roads planning and transport management outside Sydney in the SMH Transport Inquiry recommendations was that these areas were outside its main terms of reference, there was also a desire to keep the proposed authority as lean as possible and focussed on Sydney’s public transport, which is a big enough challenge in its own right. The ITA has been handed a much more complex role and will need to be able to balance the competing demands of city and country, roads and public transport.
• Taking over planning powers from the current piecemeal collection of agencies and in particular the RTA will involve not just a short-term period of dislocation but also a long-term process of major cultural change, both within the agencies and at the political level as well. This will not be easy; for example, the attempted merger (by the previous state government) some years ago of infrastructure, transport and landuse planning had similar aims. However it began to unravel soon after the departure of the responsible Minister and was quietly dismantled shortly thereafter.
• Indeed, the Roads Minister has openly acknowledged the need to change the public perception of the “arrogance” of the RTA. Given the dominant role it has played in NSW infrastructure planning for decades and its success in getting motorway projects built, it will be fascinating to see if the RTA meekly accepts its new role of being just another transport provider.
• Having created a “mega-authority” with such far-reaching powers over all aspects of transport, it is understandable that the government has decided to separate the process of managing the state’s overall infrastructure program from transport planning. However, it will need to clarify the relationship between the two authorities and also how the additional funds required to meet the huge shortfall in public transport infrastructure will be provided.

Despite these concerns, the Government is to be congratulated on what is, in “Yes Minister” parlance, a “courageous” decision.  Given the widespread public cynicism regarding previous public transport plans and announcements, it will need to be equally courageous in ensuring that the planning and prioritisation processes to be implemented by the authority are also credible and transparent and above all, that the resulting projects are funded and built.

The NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell today announced his new ministry, with a few surprises.

Much has been made in the media about the two new MPs, Robyn Parker (Maitland) who is Environment and Heritage Minister and Graham Annesley (Miranda), who takes over Sport and Recreation. Victor Dominello (Ryde) who was in the previous parliament but not the shadow Cabinet has been appointed Minister for Citizenship, Communities and Aboriginal Affairs.

There are however a few other interesting things about the new Ministry, based on the list reproduced below from the Australian:

• Consistent with his election commitment, O’Farrell has brought planning and infrastructure together under one Minister, Brad Hazzard (Wakehurst), who is also Minister Assisting the Premier on Infrastructure NSW (another election promise). However he has also appointed Andrew Stoner (Oxley), the Nationals leader, as Minister for Regional Infrastructure and Services. In effect this means that there are two Ministers with responsibility for infrastructure, as well as by implication the Premier. It will be fascinating to see how this pans out.
• O’Farrell has retained and broadened the regional ministry concept introduced by the previous Labour government back in 1997. The previous government also adopted then gradually abandoned a corresponding regional approach to the delivery of both State-wide initiatives (eg, the State Plan) and metropolitan ones (eg, the Metropolitan Strategy), while retaining the regional minsters, often in name only.
• Under the new government, regional ministries now cover most of the state. Three of these regional ministries (Central Coast, North Coast and Western NSW) are held by MPs with seats in the relevant areas. Two (Hunter and the Illawarra) are held by MLCs, while the sixth (Western Sydney) is held by O’Farrell himself (again an election commitment). The new Government’s embrace of regional ministries and the appointment of Stoner as Minister for Regional Infrastructure  and Services may signal a return to a more regionalised approach to deliver, though what that means within Sydney is yet to be seen.
• While it is an encouraging sign of the region’s significance to the new government that O’Farrell appointed himself as Western Sydney Minister, it is unfortunate that not one of the new faces in the Ministry is from Western Sydney, despite its strong representation in the new government. The Cabinet is overwhelmingly made up of members from the North Shore and rural areas – understandable to some extent, given the nature of the Coalition government and the fact that virtually all the Western Sydney MPs were neophytes, but still disappointing.  O’Farrell should move to redress this imbalance in the appointment of positions such as Parliamentary Secretaries and Committee Chairs and members.
• The appointment of George Souris (Upper Hunter) as Minister for the Arts (as well as Minister for Tourism, Major Events, Hospitality and Racing) was a surprise to some who had expected the addition of the Arts to Robyn Parker’s (Maitland) portfolios of Environment and Heritage. While keeping Arts with Souris’s other responsibilities may be more consistent with the current Departmental structure, linking it to Environment and in particular Heritage would have seemed a more natural fit. Hopefully the Arts portfolio will enjoy a higher profile and more funding under the new Government, irrespective of who has Ministerial responsibility for it.
• The Ministries of Climate Change and Water have disappeared from the new Cabinet. The implications for the corresponding departments are yet to be announced, though one possibility is that responsibility for Water will fall under the Resources portfolio and Climate Change – assuming it has a future as a separate entity – under Environment.

Name	Portolio(s)	Seat (or MLC), Party
Barry O’Farrell	Premier, Minister for Western Sydney	Liberal, Ku-ring-gai
Andrew Stoner	Deputy Premier, Minister for Trade and Investment and Minister for Regional Infrastructure and Services	National, Oxley
Jillian Skinner	Minister for Health and Minister for Medical Research	Liberal, North Shore
Adrian Piccoli	Minister for Education	National, Murrumbidgee
Michael Gallacher	Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Hunter and Vice- President of the Executive Council	Liberal, MLC
Duncan Gay	Minister for Roads and Ports	National, MLC
Brad Hazzard	Minister for Planning and Infrastructure and Minister Assisting the Premier on Infrastructure NSW	Liberal, Wakehurst
Christopher Hartcher	Minister for Resources and Energy, Special Minister of State and Minister for the Central Coast	Liberal, Terrigal
Gladys Berejiklian	Minister for Transport	Liberal, Willoughby
George Souris	Minister for Tourism, Major Events, Hospitality and Racing and Minister for the Arts	National, Upper Hunter
Mike Baird	Treasurer	Liberal, Manly
Greg Pearce	Minister for Finance and Services and Minister for the Illawarra	Liberal, MLC
Katrina Hodgkinson	Minister for Primary Industries and Minister for Small Business	National, Burrinjuck
Andrew Constance	Minister for Ageing and Minister for Disability Services	Liberal, Bega
Gregory Smith	Attorney-General and Minister for Justice	Liberal, Epping
Don Page	Minister for Local Government and Minister for the North Coast	National, Ballina
Pru Goward	Minister for Family and Community Services and Minister for Women	Liberal, Goulburn
Anthony Roberts	Minister for Fair Trading	Liberal, Lane Cove
Kevin Humphries	Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Healthy Lifestyles and Minister for Western NSW	National, Barwon
Robyn Parker	Minister for the Environment and Minister for Heritage	Liberal, Maitland
Victor Dominello	Minister for Citizenship and Communities and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs	Liberal, Ryde
Graham Annesley	Minister for Sport and Recreation	Liberal, Miranda

A couple of updates on my last post:

First, a letter from Sandy Thomas (another member of the Sydney Morning Herald Public Transport Inquiry that reported last year) published in today’s Herald offers another and probably more achievable scenario on how the North West Rail Link (NWRL) can be built without loss of face by either Federal or State Governments.

He points out that the former State Government submitted a detailed proposal to Infrastructure Australia (IA) for funding for the NWRL. The letter notes that despite this, the funding for the Parramatta-Epping Rail Link was subsequently offered by the Federal Government from another non-IA pool. In summary, Thomas proposes that the previous State Government’s NWRL application for IA funding be revived and properly examined by IA as a basis for funding the North West line.

Second, it has been suggested that a “number eight” for my list should be full retention of the old Kings School site in Parramatta in public hands.

One of the last actions of the Keneally government was to announce that the bulk of the site would be retained and redeveloped as an arts and cultural precinct, with the sale of a small section to the Catholic Church providing some funding. It would appear that the Church still harbours some desire to obtain the whole site and the new government has not yet indicated whether it will continue to support the precinct proposal.

I strongly support this cause, but the “top seven” actions I listed in my last post were mainly to do with public transport infrastructure and strategic planning. However, reassuring the Western Sydney community that the Kings School site will be retained and developed as planned by the previous government (and not sold to fill some budgetary “black hole”) is something Mr O’Farrell could do easily in his first 100 days.

If I prepare a similar ”top seven” for Western Sydney, developing the Kings School as an arts and cultural precinct in public hands will certainly be on my list!

There is no doubt that Mr O’Farrell and his party scored an emphatic victory in the NSW election, rewriting the record books in the process. While the main factor in the result was the electorate’s obvious dissatisfaction with the performance of the previous government, the size of its win has given the new Government an unprecedented mandate to implement its policy agenda. The question is, where should they start?

The new Premier has got off on the right foot by announcing that he will implement a first 100-day action plan which will have a primary focus on transport issues. Although there is some debate about whether the electorate regards transport or health issues as the highest priority for action, there is no doubt that the previous government’s underinvestment in public transport infrastructure and its chaotic administration of the transport portfolio were the most public symbols of its failure.

Just as success has a thousand parents while failure is an orphan, new governments find themselves with lots of new friends and plenty of people offering free advice about their policy priorities (unlike new oppositions, which only get post-mortems for free). I’m joining a long queue, but in this spirit I’d like to offer seven suggestions on what the Premier should do in the next 100 days, specifically relating to planning and transport:

1. Don’t reinvent the wheel – just get it turning. There is no need for the new government to restart all transport and metropolitan planning from scratch. Transport in particular has been the subject of exhaustive planning processes, through the previous government’s transport strategies and those prepared independently, most notably the Sydney Morning Herald’s Public Transport Inquiry (in which I participated).  These have identified the key infrastructure projects required in the next 10 to 15 years.

While existing plans will need to be updated and the whole planning process rebuilt in the longer term (see suggestion no. 3), there are already more than enough planned projects on which work can begin. What we really need is a commitment to their funding and implementation, the things that have been sadly lacking in the past three decades. In the first 100 days the new government needs to consolidate the existing plans as a basis for immediate action.

2. Repeal Part 3A – but clarify what it will be replaced with. The new government’s commitment to repeal Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, which allows the government to take over from councils the assessment of “state significant” development applications, is very welcome. Under the previous government the definition of “state significant” had been increasingly widened to the point where it no longer had any meaning.

This commitment can easily be implemented within 100 days. However, there will still be some need for government input on the really major project proposals that will have a significant impact on a wider region.  To deal with these – and to reduce the temptation for future governments to reintroduce Part 3A-type powers via the back door – a collaborative framework between state and local governments needs to be established at the same time Part 3A is abolished (see next suggestion).

3. Set up a real partnership with local government to run the planning process. The promises made by the new government and reiterated by shadow ministers in the run-up to the election to consult and work with councils and Regional Organisations of Councils (ROCs) are also welcome, especially in the context of regional and metropolitan planning.

This initiative requires a meaningful and sustained commitment from both sides. The new Government should establish a dialogue with local government in the first 100 days to develop a new medium and long-term planning process as well as a mechanism to handle major development proposals – a difficult task with over 150 councils. This means that councils will also need to cooperate through the ROCs or other structures to present a coherent and strategic response.

4. 50:50 or 30:70 – it’s also a case of where people want to live. Mr O’Farrell has already made a commitment to change the target for the ratio between the population urban redevelopment in existing suburbs and new housing in greenfields areas from the current 70 to 30 percent to a 50:50 balance.

This needs to be carefully considered. Population movement is usually gradual process – people tend to move outwards in a “shuffle” as they change houses in Sydney, and not by leaps and bounds. While cheaper housing at the urban fringe might cause an initial flurry of interest, this demand may not be sustained as people increasingly consider the cost of transport and limited range of services available in these areas.

The new government therefore should commit in the first 100 days to a process to examine whether people actually want to move out to the outer suburbs in such numbers. And if the government proceeds, it must to commit to providing all the infrastructure required when these new suburbs are developed. To do otherwise would be to continue the vicious cycle of backlog and underinvestment that has plagued development in Western Sydney since the 1950s.

5. Sort out who’s going to prioritise transport infrastructure – and make sure the RTA doesn’t get in first. The new government has proposed the establishment of a new body called Infrastructure NSW to oversee all major infrastructure decisions as well as a separate Independent Transport Authority to oversee all public transport planning and operations.

While the infrastructure authority concept has drawn on the Herald’s Transport Inquiry’s recommendations, the proposal to create two separate authorities is an important difference. The Inquiry’s proposal was for a single authority to oversee all aspects of public transport, including infrastructure.

Having two bodies instead of one creates a potential for duplication and even conflict. The new transport authority will presumably have to pitch its proposals to the infrastructure body, competing with other departments including experienced hands such as the Roads and Traffic Authority. There is also a danger that public transport could be disadvantaged if Infrastructure NSW adopts narrow assessment frameworks to assess these projects.

To avoid this happening, the new government needs to move quickly to clarify the relationship between the two authorities. It also needs to ensure that public transport receives the priority it deserves and that Infrastructure NSW uses a broad range of environmental and social criteria in project assessment.

6. Recognise that the money for infrastructure has to come from somewhere. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Public Transport Inquiry not only identified and costed a range of transport options, it also looked at how to fund these projects.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, or a free transport system.  The Inquiry nominated a mix of funding options to raise the funds required, including fare increases, parking, registration and other levies, congestion charges and Commonwealth Government support. While at first glance none of these would seem to be very popular, the Inquiry also found that a significant majority of people are willing to pay for the redevelopment of the public transport network, so important do they regard this issue. The 100-day plan needs to include a commitment to identify funding sources for public transport infrastructure.

 

If both governments dig in, there is a strong risk that the Federal Government will simply trouser the $2.1 billion it has offered for the Parramatta-Epping link and use the money elsewhere. This would be a dismal result for NSW and Mr O’Farrell and the new Transport Minister should quickly exercise some nimble footwork to reach a compromise.

One solution would be to treat both links as a single, staged project, effectively providing a link from Parramatta via Epping to Rouse Hill and incorporating the full extension of the North West link to meet the existing Richmond Line.

The total cost would be considerable, but (along with the South West Link under construction) would be a major investment in Western Sydney’s future. It would mean that all major employment centres and residential release areas in the region would be linked by rail to each other, as well as to major destinations in eastern Sydney.

There would also be major savings in combining the projects, which lend themselves to a staged approach. Planning for the North West project is much more recent and considerably more advanced than for Parramatta-Epping, especially as the route for the latter is yet to be finalised.

This means that tunnelling could start in the North West and then continue straight after completion onto the Parramatta-Epping Link once planning for that is finished. Fit-out of both sectors could proceed in the same way and then North-West line completed to the Richmond Line.

Recently transport consultant Jarrett Walker posted an interesting article on his Human Transit blog regarding the intrinsic and non-intrinsic differences between rail and bus technology, drawing on an article in the Infrastructurist blog which had asked its readers if streetcars (trams) were better than buses and if so, why.

This article identified 36 reasons for the superiority of trams. These Jarrett classified into three groups:

• “misdirected differences”, for example, those such as electric propulsion and dedicated rights of way which are often associated with rail-based technology but which can be (and have been) applied to buses;
• “cultural feedback effects” which relate to the way trains, trams and buses are treated culturally, for example perceptions that “buses are for poor people” or that rail-based systems are more permanent are not technical differences but rather cultural constructs that can become self-reinforcing;
• “intrinsic differences”. Those are the “real” technical differences between bus and rail such as capacity, ride quality, energy efficiency and costs. Jarrett claimed that there were only seven such differences and only three were clearly to rail’s advantage.

This is a thoughtful piece and provoked lively debate. I didn’t entirely agree with Jarrett’s approach and took a slightly different tack. This is an edited version of my response (it’s useful but not essential to read Jarrett’s piece first).

 I think the approach of trying to identify the real “uniqueness” of bus and rail technology is important but I don’t think can be completely divorced from the nature of the corridors and services involved.

This is especially true at the “extremes”. For example, to provide a small, localised transport service in low density outer-suburban or rural areas (either on demand or on a scheduled basis), bus technology using existing roads is clearly the only answer because of its low cost and flexibility. Nobody would contemplate using any form of rail technology for something like this.

At the other end of the scale would be high speed and/or high frequency and high capacity services in dedicated and completely grade-separated corridors such as high-speed suburban and interurban rail services or underground metros. Even if all the “non-intrinsic” differences were eliminated, bus technology would simply not be able to offer the same level of service in these situations for a number of reasons.

An example is the Perth-Mandurah high-speed suburban rail line in WA, where buses would be unlikely to be able to offer the same fast travel times even if they had a dedicated corridor (in this context, maximum speed is probably another intrinsic difference between the two technologies, though it has to be acknowledged that for many transport corridors this probably isn’t a significant issue).

In the case of metros, if you were to take buses as your starting point, eliminated the non-intrinsic differences and minimised the intrinsic ones in order to meet the demands of providing a high-capacity, underground service, you would have to add electric traction, vehicle guidance, automated signalling systems, multiple trailers, platform loading etc, etc. The result would then be virtually indistinguishable from rail technology, apart from running on rubber tyres, so it would end up looking pretty much like the tyre-based Paris metro lines – and probably cost about the same as metal rail technology anyway.

In fact the Infrastructurist article (that inspired Jarrett’s article) talks mainly about the differences between streetcars and buses, not rail versus road-based transport generally. The points Jarrett has raised are also most relevant when applied to street-running bus services and trams, or a little further up the foodchain, busways and dedicated light rail corridors. In both cases there is much more overlap between bus and rail-based services than at the extremes I mentioned earlier.

There are a few other issues worth noting regarding this debate, however. Generally speaking, bus technology has to be more fully “optioned-up” from its base form than rail to eliminate the non-intrinsic factors and mitigate the others. Ride quality is a good example. Basic trams running on well-maintained tracks in mixed-flow situations will usually offer a better ride than buses in a similar situation.

It is only in dedicated corridors that the latter have the potential to approach the standard of the former and even this requires careful planning and additional construction costs – for example, the decision to build the Western Sydney bus transitways to light rail standard to allow for their potential conversion, or the extent to which the Brisbane busways were engineered to improve ride quality.

In some respects it’s a bit like choosing between a top-of-the-range car with all the extras built in or the basic model and then adding on the extras. Often the latter would end up being more expensive and the technology not as well integrated as the “de-luxe” model. In the case of busways, I understand that the cost of the dedicated busways in Sydney and Brisbane approached that of light rail.

This isn’t necessarily a reason not to build busways if they offer other advantages, but if all the options Jarrett’s article mentioned are added (such as electric traction, vehicle guidance, etc) to mitigate the “non-intrinsic” differences, they could well cost more than light rail. This expense also often results in trade-offs being made in relation to busways, as highlighted in many of the responses to Jarrett’s post.

A couple of other observations. I would add another intrinsic difference – rail, by its nature, has a built-in standardised “guidance system”. While there are differences in rail gauges and other associated technology, and railcar or tram of a given gauge will conform to this basic guidance system. This means it is possible for many tram and light rail systems to purchase vehicles off the shelf or lease them from other systems with little modification.

Of course, basic buses used for ordinary street-running of course have very few compatibility issues, but the situation is much more complex in relation to guided buses. There are at least four different basic technologies (kerb-guided, central rail, optical and electromagnetic) in use and eight or nine incompatible guidance systems based on these technologies. This isn’t to argue against the concept of guided busways, which have a lot of potential, but unless a dominant guidance technology emerges, rail should be considered to have an advantage in this area. You simply can’t buy a guided bus off the shelf.

Another interesting area of difference is flexibility and scale. Of course, buses have an advantage that the same vehicles can go very easily from running mixed-flow systems servicing local bus-stops in outer suburban areas to providing dedicated busway services in higher-density corridors.

While trams and light rail can’t match the flexibility of buses at the suburban level, they can be more easily scaled up at the other end. The transport system in Cologne and some other German cities are good examples, where trams can start in outer suburbs with basic on-street services, then run in dedicated corridors as light-rail services in middle-ring suburbs, much like busways – however, they then go underground to provide metro-like high capacity services in the CBD, a feat that would be much more difficult to do with buses.

Two media articles today paint an interesting picture of the current status of rail transport in Australia – and also provide a disturbing contrast with what is happening in the rest of the world.

The first is a Fairfax article which reports that a survey by research firm UMR shows that almost 80 per cent of Australians would consider using high-speed rail if it was available for holiday travel, while almost 9 per cent of those surveyed support the reopening of country railways. Perhaps not surprisingly, 60 per cent strongly supported the concept of cheap $1 rail tickets for individuals and families during holidays, while 30% supported the idea.

The survey appears to have been undertaken in the context of reducing the national holiday road toll; the distances involved and whether the questions were put in relation to rural or metropolitan train travel (or both) was not indicated in the article. However, even allowing for this and the fact that the research was commissioned by the national rail union, the results show a striking level of support for rail travel.

In the second rail-related news story to emerge today, Downer EDI has announced that the next generation of Sydney commuter trains will not start operating until late May or early June because of production delays. The company will also take a $250 million hit on the Waratah train contract, on top of a $190 million provision made last year.

Although the company claimed in December that it would hand the first Waratah trains to RailCorp by early January, it now says it has found bugs in the train’s electronics and has had to recruit “more senior staff with experience in train-building” and change its production schedule. This delay will make delivery of the trains to RailCorp 14 months behind schedule.

Contrast this state of affairs – a rolling stock order continually deferred and the unfulfilled desire of Australians for high-speed rail travel – with what is happening on two other continents, Asia and North America.

In China, the 1,318 kilometre high-speed link between Beijing and Shanghai has just opened, cutting travel time in half to less than five hours.  This is the longest high-speed line in the world – the entire French TGV system totals 1,700 kilometres.

 In little over a decade China has constructed the world’s largest high-speed rail network, at over 8,350 kilometres. It is expected that the system will reach 16,000 kilometres by 2016. Thousands of kilometres of urban railways are also planned to add to the systems and lines already opened.

China is not alone. Other Asian countries from Thailand to the Middle East have recently opened or are constructing major metro lines and high speed rail links, with even more ambitious plans for the future.

Even in North America, the land of the private car, 21 new light and heavy rail systems opened over the past decade and many existing ones were extended. In the next 12 months five new light rail lines or extensions will open, along with two new commuter rail corridors. A dozen public transport projects will begin construction, joining over 25 projects already underway.

So, in less than the time it has taken the (previous) Australian Government to announce and abandon an extensive feasibility inquiry into high speed rail – and then its successor to convene another “strategic study”  – the Chinese have built over 8,000 kilometres of high-speed track.

And in the time it has taken the NSW Government to build one suburban rail extension (Epping to Chatswood), commence another (South West Rail Link) and announce, cancel and re-announce about half a dozen other metros and heavy rail links, scores of North American and Chinese cities have built major rail extensions, new lines and in some cases constructed complete metro or light rail systems.

I know that Australia has greater distances and lower population densities than either North America or China, but surely we can do better than this. Judging by the UMR research, the Australian public certainly think so.

Recently I was involved in a project undertaken by the Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government, studying examples of amalgamations and other forms of council consolidation across Australia and New Zealand. The largest amalgamation we looked had around 320,000 people and the council concerned was among the six or eight largest councils in Australia. This is not the largest recent amalgamation, however; last year’s merger to form Auckland Council has resulted in a council with a population over 1.4 million, making it the largest in Australasia.

However, before the New Zealanders start to look at the record books (and leaving aside for a moment the question of whether amalgamations are a good thing or not), even the Auckland amalgamation is dwarfed by media reports of plans in southern China to create the world’s biggest mega-city with a population of 42 million by amalgamating nine existing municipalities. These include Guangzhou, which already has a population of around 25 million and is currently the world’s second-largest city.

Even in area the new city will be vast, at over 41,400 square kilometres.  This is an area described in the online articles as “twice the size of Wales” – or to put it in Antipodean terms, 60% of the size of Tasmania. This is China’s manufacturing heartland, comprising almost 10% of the Chinese economy.

The proposal seems to be aimed at standardising a range of services such as public transport and health care which are offered at the municipal level in China, making it easier for citizens of each of the existing cities to access services across an area where huge population growth is rendering existing boundaries largely meaningless.  It is also intended to give the region an advantage over competing urban areas around Beijing and Shanghai.

The merger will be supported by around 150 major infrastructure projects which will integrate and expand the existing transport, energy, water and telecommunications systems. These plans include 29 rail lines including an express line to Hong Kong. The total cost is around $196 billion.

Just how these projects will be financed is unclear and perhaps not surprisingly there is little news of any opposition to the amalgamation in the Western media, but at least it is refreshing that council amalgamation is seen in China as a basis for additional investment on a vast scale – and not just an excuse for governments to save money!

Recent news that Brisbane’s Clem Jones* (Clem7) road tunnel which opened only a few months ago is now on the verge of financial collapse has a familiar ring, confirming a pattern of losses in a string of privately-owned toll roads and other infrastructure projects across Australia.

As part of this growing pattern, a key factor has been what turned out to be a huge over-estimation in forecasts of the tunnel’s use. According the Sydney Morning Herald, the projection for the Clem7 was that 91,000 vehicles would be using the tunnel every day by now, with numbers exceeding 100,000 by late next year.

However, even with a prolonged toll-free period and a current halving of the tolls, less than 28,000 vehicles are now using the tunnel.  As a result the owner, RiverCity, has slashed tunnel’s value by $1.56 billion to only $250 million and is still losing $10 million a month. The Herald article claims the company has just $106 million in cash reserves and needs patronage to double and tolls to return to their normal levels just to meet its interest bills.

The Herald concludes that the forecasts turned out so wrong mainly because they were shaped by the financial models required to fund the project and not vice versa, a problem exacerbated by their apparent reliance on peak-hour demand. As Melbourne Urbanist also points out, this sort of exaggeration is not confined to infrastructure companies – lobby groups and other project promoters are sometimes guilty of the same sin, resulting in a climate of hyperbole in which such exaggerated claims become plausible.

Whatever the cause, investors are going to be understandably more reluctant to go anywhere near private-sector toll-road projects for the foreseeable future. It seems we are at last reaching the end of an era in which toll-roads and motorways were embraced as the answer to all our transport problems.

For a long time they seemed like the ultimate solution. Governments, construction companies and investors combined to give punters what they wanted, or thought they wanted – better roads – and they then got the punters to pay for it through tolls. The toll companies also ran the roads themselves, which was another attraction for governments who didn’t want to put money into boring, unsexy things like railways which they increasingly disliked because of their ongoing costs, unions, public complaints, etc.

Like all get-rich schemes, however, the toll-road bonanza was ultimately good to be true. The music was always going to stop sometime and now it has – leaving the owners of the Clem7 and similar projects holding some very expensive babies.

However, there are a few hopeful conclusions that can be drawn from this mess. First is that there appears to be belated recognition of the need for some rationality and planning to be applied to process of developing major infrastructure proposals. If governments are ultimately going to carry the can – which one way or the other, increasingly seems to be the case – then surely they should exercise more say over what gets built and when, where and how it is built. After all, that’s what they were once elected to do.

One alternative investment approach is the so-called “availability model”, which is being used for Melbourne’s Peninsula Link. Under this arrangement, the Victorian government will make periodic payments to the road’s builder irrespective of volume, thus leaving the government to bear the consequences if the project is a white elephant.

Although at first glance this approach may seem more expensive to governments, it will lessen the incentive for toll-road promoters to exaggerate patronage forecasts or to make the outrageous demands that that accompanied some projects such as Sydney’s M2 that operators be compensated if “competing” public transport projects are constructed to serve the same corridor.

It will also force politicians to be more realistic about some of the hard choices that have to be made about transport funding. For too long the obsession with lower taxes has swept the problem of infrastructure funding under the carpet, which is one of the reasons why toll-roads were seen as such an attractive option. Ultimately, as the Independent Inquiry into Sydney’s public transport (in which I was involved) established, there is no easy way out – extra money will have to be found, from taxes, levies and increased fares – to pay for new infrastructure.

And if governments are going to explicitly shell out the funds for major road infrastructure, either upfront or on an ongoing basis, then from a financing perspective these road proposals lose a lot of their perceived advantages over the proposed rail projects that these same governments have neglected over the years.

Without the hype of exaggerated patronage projections, project costs and anticipated rates of return, both road and rail projects can be considered on a more equitable footing, one that takes into account externalities such as environmental impacts and social outcomes as part of a proper planning process. One result of that should be the realisation that the government abdication of its responsibility to plan and provide public transport in favour of a user-pays toll-road model has grossly distorted transport investment decisions over the past 30 years.

*     Clem Jones (1918-2007) was Lord Mayor of Brisbane, from 1961 to 1975. Although he did much to modernise the city, he also presided over the closure of its tramways in the late 1960s, very much part of an era that saw trams as an impediment to the modernist ethic of the car –based city. There is an obvious irony in a major road project named after him facing financial failure over 40 years later.

In the first four posts in this series I looked at the distribution of Sydney’s forecast population growth across local government areas and in particular the projected increase in the number of councils with populations over 200,000, from two in 2006 to 14 by 2036. I also looked at the characteristics of councils which are forecast to experience above-average population growth rates or above-average increases in population numbers.

I noted that of the “200,000 plus” councils, all but Sydney City Council are in outer-ring suburbs and that nine of the 14 are located in Greater Western Sydney. The GWS region is expected to grow by over a million people or over 58%, significantly higher than the projected metropolitan growth rate of just under 38%, resulting in GWS having over 40% of the total metropolitan area population by 2036.

There was a strong correlation between the so-called mega-councils and those which are forecast to experience above-average growth, either in terms of rates of increase or total numbers. This perspective reinforced the pattern of Sydney’s growth as occurring most strongly in an arc running from the Hunter through most of Greater Western Sydney and tapering off into the Illawarra, with smaller concentrations of growth around Sydney city and parts of the inner west.

There are some interesting conclusions to be drawn from this, some of which I’ll look at under the broad headings of demographics, infrastructure and governance:

    DEMOGRAPHICS 

• Managing Sydney’s growth will always be an issue, irrespective of population policy or overall levels of migration. Whatever policies are adopted in the future, Sydney’s pattern of growth is likely to continue to be highly differentiated between high-growth and low-growth areas.
• Under almost any scenario, Greater Western Sydney (GWS) will experience by far the greatest bulk of this anticipated growth, reflecting lifestyle choices, competitive (though not cheap) housing costs and natural increase.

    INFRASTRUCTURE 

• The outer suburban areas likely to experience growth, particularly in GWS, are those which already suffer from marked under-investment in infrastructure, particularly transport and to a lesser extent in health, education and cultural infrastructure.
• If existing and proposed suburbs in these areas are to continue to accommodate rates of growth significantly higher than the metropolitan average,  then they will need comprehensive planning and early investment in infrastructure to avoid both new bottlenecks and compounding the mistakes of the past.
• Just as they are unlikely to reduce significantly overall  rates of growth, changes in population policy are unlikely to affect the demand for new infrastructure to support transport, education, health, employment social and cultural opportunities in these communities.

    GOVERNANCE 

•  Sydney’s forecast growth and the highly differentiated nature of this growth will pose particular challenges for Sydney’s future urban management
• The growth of Sydney’s outer suburbs in particular will pose significant challenges in terms of resource allocation as well as in attempts to provide additional employment in these areas. This growth is also going to continue to put strain on the environment of these areas, particularly those suburbs at the urban-rural interface.
•  There are likely to be further challenges resulting from the complexities of governance in a city with 53 councils estimated to range in population size by 2036 from under 20,000 to over 480,000.
• The 14 potential “mega councils” (those estimated to be over 200,000 in population by 2036) will experience particular problems because of their high growth but are also likely to have greater capacity to deal with some of these issues.
• It is clear that meeting Sydney’s infrastructure demands will have to involve the Federal Government as well as the State Government and councils. It is also likely to require a review of Sydney’s current governance structures.