Well, it’s out. The final report of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Independent Public Inquiry into Sydney’s public transport, chaired by Mr Ron Christie, was published by the Herald earlier this week.

The report follows the release of the Preliminary Report in February which I discussed in a previous post. The final report covers the same broad themes as the earlier one and draws similar conclusions, but it also takes into account the submissions received in response to the preliminary report as well as public transport developments since its release.

In addition the Inquiry team, in which I participated, has refined the original report to sharpen its focus, in particular identifying 65 key recommendations. These are available as a stand-alone summary document from the Inquiry website, along with the full report.

Obviously I can’t summarise a document of over 520 pages in a single post (even the summary recommendation report is around 40 pages). I would however like to identify four key points that are emphasised in the final report. 

The first is the fundamental importance of the nexus between public transport governance, planning and funding. We have been all too successful, as the report observes, at preparing transport plans for Sydney, but hopeless at funding or implementing them. 

I used to say that if any of the six or seven public transport plans hatched in the past two decades or so had been implemented Sydney would be better off, but Sydney’s fragmented governance arrangements mean that as time goes on I’m not so sure. The lack of adequate public transport management has meant that these plans have increasingly become a patchwork of government project announcements, irrelevant to the city and community they were meant to serve (the CBD Metro debacle is an obvious example of this). 

Mr Christie’s transmittal letter summarises the basis of this nexus, which informs the rest of the report: 

The Inquiry believes that there is nothing more important or urgent than:

• Genuine reform of the way the planning and management of public transport takes place (”governance”)
• A long-term plan which is developed with real community input and has real certainty, backed by legislation, and
• Guaranteed, dedicated funding for implementing the plan.

Without all three of these legs of what the Inquiry calls the “Iron Triangle”, confidence in the way public transport is handled in Sydney will continue to erode.

The second point is the Inquiry’s comprehensive and innovative research into community attitudes to public transport, demonstrating not only a strong willingness to pay for public transport improvements but also establishing a set of parameters for the amount that the public are prepared to pay for these improvements. As Jarrett Walker (who also participated in the Inquiry) points out here, the Inquiry also succeeded in linking this package of potential funding increases to a systematic set of short-term and long-term improvements. 

As Jarrett notes, any attempts to introduce these increases and taxes in a vacuum would be a political disaster, but carefully linking them to such a package of well-considered improvements would be much more attractive to the general public. 

The third and related point which I think is well demonstrated in the final report is how much improvement can be made to Sydney’s public transport in the short term. The report does not shy away from identifying the major infrastructure projects which Sydney needs to implement and which have been so neglected for the past 30 or 40 years, but it also recognises that much can be done to improve public transport in the next five years before any of these major projects can be completed. 

Many of these improvements, such as improving train frequencies and running times or establishing a “frequent network” of bus services are relatively straightforward and could be achieved with relatively modest funding levels. The importance of these proposals is demonstrated by the fact that they make up nearly half the report’s recommendations. 

These recommendations are also instrumental in relation to the last point from the report that I want to highlight – the importance it places on developing Sydney’s public transport as a coherent, integrated network. This is not just an abstract objective – the Inquiry has given a lot of thought to how the various transport modes should be integrated through reforms of the fares and ticketing structure, improved service frequencies (which reduces waiting times at interchanges), improvements to interchanges themselves and, above all, a complete overhaul of transport governance arrangements. 

I’ll return to other elements of the  final report in future posts, but for now I would just like to thank the fellow members of the Inquiry team and in particular Ron Christie for his leadership and vision. As to “where to from here?” in relation to the report, I think the conclusion of his transmittal letter about what the public and transport stakeholders are seeking says it all: 

They want a public transport plan which will meet their needs both now and in the future, a plan whose components can and will be implemented and a plan which they will be willing to pay for because it will happen and because it will meet their needs. 

And they want our political leaders to listen, act and lead – and above all else, show some real foresight which transcends the electoral cycles.

A lot has happened since the SMH Transport Inquiry released its preliminary report in February. Shortly after its release the State Government announced that it was dumping the CBD and West Metros, aspects of which were criticised in the Inquiry – though the Metro’s demise was probably due to increasingly widespread criticism which predated the Inquiry. This has left a considerable bill of about $500 million for the early stages of constructing the CBD metro and for compensation to contractors and businesses.

The Government has also released the draft Metropolitan Transport Plan and a review of the Metropolitan Strategy for public comment (a process which itself was the subject of some controversy) and indicated that it intends to integrate the two plans in some way. While the Transport Plan proposes some projects which were also advocated in the Inquiry’s preliminary report, it falls well short of the latter’s detailed analysis and ignores many of its proposals for new infrastructure and improved services. The closing date for comment on the Government’s plans has been extended until 28 May.

The Government has also launched MyZone, a partial reform of Sydney’s arcane and complex fare structure, ahead of the introduction of electronic ticketing which is now scheduled to occur in 2012. MyZone reduces the number of train and bus fare bands and introduces a limited zone arrangement, but only a weekly or daily basis. Unfortunately it fails to address one of the key failings of the current fares structure – the transfer penalty public transport users face in Sydney when they change modes (I’ll make further comments on MyZone in a future post).

Meanwhile the Transport Public Inquiry is working to complete the final version of its report which will update the preliminary report and also consider the issues raised in submissions and discussions in response to the release of the preliminary report. The Inquiry, in which I have played a small part, hopes to have this work finished within a few weeks.

It’s finally out – the interim report of the Independent Public Inquiry into Sydney’s public transport. 

The Inquiry’s report was prepared under the guidance of Mr Ron Christie, former NSW Coordinator General for Rail and former head of the RTA, who famously got the trains (and buses) to run on time during the 2000 Olympics. The inquiry was established and resourced by the Sydney Morning Herald, but was conducted on a completely independent basis. 

I felt honoured to be part of a team of transport advisers and planners who spent four months working with Mr Christie to develop the report, based on nearly 500 public submissions, meetings with key experts, detailed research into community attitudes and financial options, team members’ professional experience and expertise and, not surprisingly, robust debate within the team itself. 

I assisted in developing the governance section of the report. I also contributed to the overall debate, especially in raising social equity issues and the importance of looking at public transport provision in outer suburban areas, but the report is really a collaborative team effort. 

The result is a document which is far more comprehensive than any other transport planning initiative for Sydney I’ve seen in over a decade and which is also much more evidence-based than most transport plans. The report has six sections, starting off with what Sydneysiders actually said to the Inquiry about their own priorities for fixing the transport system, and perhaps more importantly the outcomes of an independent survey which clearly demonstrated their desire for change and willingness to pay for these improvements. 

Based on these responses, the rest of the 450-page report is divided into chapters on the long-term development of the transport network, fixing fares, short-term improvements, funding and finance and the chapter I contributed to, “Getting it done”. The recommendations based on these chapters are divided into nine, almost self-explanatory key themes, as follows: 

1. We have tried the ‘do nothing’ option for public transport. It has failed

2. We need a complete public transport network plan—and an agency that can deliver it

3. The three-legged stool: urban form, pricing and transport

4. Public transport, not just roads

5. A single, seamless public transport network

6. Cost-effectiveness

7. Short-term urgency and continuous improvement

8. Long-term commitment, now

9. Leadership and transparency for hard choices

I won’t try to summarise the report, because that has been done within the report itself as well as by the Sydney Morning Herald and by Mr Jarrett Walker, one of the team members. I would like however to talk about the two areas I was most involved in – governance, and the identification of transport priorities in Western Sydney. 

The governance section, “Getting it done”, was described by Mr Christie at the launch as being possibly the most important chapter in the interim report. To quote from the report: 

No matter how visionary a transport plan may be, it will succeed only if it is supported by a strong management structure committed to its long-term implementation.

This management structure, or “governance” system, must be:

• Able to secure the resources required to deliver the infrastructure underpinning the plan
• Strong enough to maintain a commitment to the plan in the face of short-­term political considerations
• Able to manage the whole public transport system cohesively and with authority
• Able to obtain enough funding to deliver a high level of services, and
• Be prepared to champion public transport and other sustainable modes in the face of competing priorities and interests, such as the demands of private vehicles.

If the governance system is inadequate the public transport plan is most unlikely to be delivered. Critical infrastructure will not be built, services will be poorly integrated and the level of service provision will remain patchy and unreliable.

The governance section outlines the fragmented nature of Sydney’s current transport management. It compares this state of affairs to overseas and interstate experience, especially systems that operate successfully in places such as Perth, London, Singapore, Vancouver and Zurich. It also summarises proposals regarding governance expressed in many of the submissions received by the inquiry. 

The overwhelming conclusion is that to have any success in overcoming its current “silo” based management and ad hoc planning, Sydney must adopt a single new authority to plan, develop and manage all public transport in Sydney. This authority must be responsible for most activities relating to public transport provision, including: 

•  long-term public transport planning
• defining public transport fare structures and fare setting
• implementing integrated fares and ticketing
• specifying routes, timetables and minimum acceptable performance standards for transport operators
• contracting for the provision of these services
• providing network information
• marketing and promotion of public transport services

The governance chapter also discusses the options for creating such an authority, including reforming the current structure or creating a new tier of governance (similar to the Mayor for London and the Portland Metro Council). It recommends a third option – the creation of an independent public transport coordination authority, called Transport for Sydney (TfS).

This body would undertake all the functions outlined above. The TfS would be managed by an independent Board with members from the State, Federal and local government and persons with experience in the transport sector, business, marketing and transport advocacy. A small secretariat, answerable to the Board, would manage Sydney’s transport through the following sections: 

• Plan Process, responsible for developing and reviewing the Public Transport Network Plan for Sydney and conducting public consultations.
• Infrastructure Development, responsible for the purchase (on a contestable basis) and project management of the design, construction and delivery of public transport infrastructure, plus the specification and setting of standards for all new rolling stock.
• Operations, the core of TfS, which would be responsible for the development and sale of integrated journeys to the community and the coordinated purchase of these improved and expanded public transport services, on a contestable basis, from transport operators.
• Budget and Government, responsible for financial management, funding negotiations and TfS’s relationships with State, Commonwealth and local governments in support of the Public Transport Network Plan.

Transport for Sydney governance model (click to see full size) from the Independent Public Inquiry interim report

The report goes on to discuss the relationships the proposed authority should have with state government agencies, the federal government and councils, as well as the role of an independent customer advocate and of consultation in the plan development process.

The Inquiry has proposed that the new authority prepare an initial plan for public comment and that subsequently drafts of the plan should be released nine months before every state election, thus providing additional scrutiny of the plan and the responses of the parties and politicians in the run-up to the election. As the report states: 

This four-yearly revision process, tied to the four-yearly electoral cycle, would present a major opportunity for the public, the government, the opposition political parties and individual electoral candidates to shape the policies and priorities of the transport authority.

The plan would then be finalised and adopted within 12 months of the election and would be protected by legislation against political interference outside of the plan adoption process outlined above.

The governance model proposed in the Inquiry’s interim report represents a clear break with the Sydney’s current complex and largely dysfunctional management processes. The primary intention is to greatly improve the planning and delivery of public transport in Sydney. In doing so, the model would remove many of the detailed aspects of transport administration from political control and interference, limiting the role of politicians to setting the broad directions of transport policy through the adoption of the four-year plan.

It is likely that this aspect of the proposed changes will meet the greatest political resistance, though, ironically, politicians stand to gain from being able to put day-to-day operational problems at arms length. Whether any or, ideally, all of the major parties have the courage to adopt the Transport for Sydney model remains to be seen.

In my next post I will look at Inquiry’s proposals for better public transport in Western Sydney.

In December I was a participant in an international roundtable on peripheral cities held in Paris. This was part of a seminar organised by FALP (an acronym from the French for “Forum of Local Authorities of the Periphery”) in conjunction with the University Paris 8 at Saint Denis and the Plaine Commune, which is a regional organisation for eight municipalities of the northern periphery of Paris.

The seminar was organised in the run-up to the FALP and the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) “Peripheral Cities” second congress planned for 10-12 June 2010 in the Spanish city of Getafe. Within the framework of preparing for this conference, several seminars are being held in different countries. 

The FALP network was founded in 2003 by councils on the edges of large cities in Latin America and Europe. Today, over 150 local authorities from 22 countries participate, mainly still from Europe and Latin America, but also some from Africa and the Middle East. 

I understand I was invited to participate in the FALP Paris seminar on the basis of my work at the urban periphery through the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (WSROC) and I believe that I am the first Australian to participate in one of these forums. 

The overall theme of the Paris seminar was “suburbs as hearts and hubs for solidarity-driven cities” (I think it loses a little in translation). As the program noted: 

Cities are at the heart and hub of the 21st century’s key social, democratic and environmental challenges. The question is whether they should all simply fit into the same mould and embrace the competitive, market-shaped rationale, at the risk of deepening social exclusion, spatial fragmentation, environmental harm and democratic deficits.

My roundtable was on the theme: “A different development model: inclusive metropolises”. The program summarised this as:

The worldwide economic and financial crisis is challenging the predominant metropolitan development model today, and its limits are becoming palpable. So it is vital to shift the paradigm and focus on building fair and balanced cities that rank human and environmental concerns above merely economic factors.

 Whilst there was general agreement that outer urban areas are bearing the brunt of economic, social and cultural change, there was less consensus about the best policy responses – for example, do we develop decentralised centres at the fringe to offer suburban residents the same sorts of services that inner-city dwellers enjoy, or do we improve connectivity from the suburbs to the centre? There was also a strong emphasis on the rights of suburban residents and the importance of social housing, which receives much more attention and support in Europe than in Australia.

I’ll post a summary of my presentation shortly. If anyone is interested in attending the peripheral cities conference in Spain in June, please post a comment here or send an email to alex@goodingdavies.com.au

Paris at the periphery - a different view

In October I was fortunate to have the opportunity to address 150 local government officials in Beijing on the theme of building good governance at the local government level.

The attendees were staff of the Beijing Municipal Commissions for Development and reform. This meant that they had a wide range of backgrounds in areas such as policy development, local government reform, project management, performance monitoring and anti-corruption activities.

The conference room before the presentation ....

 At short notice I ended up presenting for four days straight, as my co-presenter had to withdraw at the last minute. It was an exhausting but fascinating experience; the presentations were demanding, especially as for the most part I was lecturing through an interpreter, non-simultaneously, with only limited opportunities for workshop sessions or questions.

When the questions did come they were very broad-ranging, covering areas from exactly how did the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption catch corrupt local government officials, through to the impacts of the implementation of the Rudd Government’s code of ministerial conduct. Needless to say I was fortunate to have access to the internet in my accommodation to follow up on some of these queries!

The people I met seemed genuinely committed to achieving good governance and at least appeared receptive to the central message of my presentation – that in Australia, good governance and high ethical standards are the result of strong and independent public institutions, a free press and strong community input and expectations.

Thanks to the Trans Asian Education and Culture Association for arranging the presentation and for the care they took of me throughout the trip.

and during - things were kept very neat!

The former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone’s recent City of Sydney CityTalk address contained a strong argument for greater investment in education, infrastructure and sustainable transport to tackle climate change, but he made another  important comment on city management  in the Q&A session afterwards. As a result it did not appear in the published version of his talk and has therefore not received the attention it deserves. 

Livingstone was musing how his position as a popularly elected mayor contributed to his sweeping reforms of planning, public transport and other areas of service delivery in the UK capital. He noted that the extensive powers devolved by the UK government  in setting up the position certainly helped, but another key factor was the way in which the position had been structured. 

He observed that as a member of the British Labour Party he had spent most of his political life making deals “inside the building” as he put it, within the party room and caucus, both inevitable features of the Westminster system and very similar to their counterparts at the state and federal levels in Australia. 

Livingstone pointed out that the reinstated and radically reformed position – in effect the creation of a directly elected executive mayor – had forced him to look “outside the building” for the first time. 

He had been required to negotiate and build alliances directly with organisations and structures that were not necessarily part of the political system, as well as with the wider community, to build support for his policies. Livingstone concluded that this aspect of accountability contributed to making a directly-elected mayor an ideal city manager. 

The initial reaction among many in the audience after his address was admiration for the results Livingstone had achieved mixed with an almost-universal attitude of “obviously it’ll never happen here”. This is due to the remote prospect of any Australian state government creating a directly-elected metropolitan-wide position that could be seen as a competitor. 

However, Livingstone’s perspective is still food for thought. With the partial experience of Brisbane, no major Australian city has a single entity, elected or not, with sole responsibility for city management, in particular around key planning and transport issues. Most of the key decisions are still made not only within state governments, but firmly “inside the building”. 

The apparent success of Livingstone’s London “experiment” should make state governments and councils in Australia look outside their own buildings a bit more, to reassess their perspectives on urban management and consider experimenting with different forms of more direct and accountable metropolitan governance.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, writer and playwright Louis Nowra’s latest essay “Who turned out the lights?” in the Weekend Australian Magazine is a pungent summary of Sydney’s major problems, their causes and the resulting social, cultural and economic impacts.

The beginning paragraphs are available on line from the Weekend Australian website, but to read the full article you will have to purchase the paper. To summarise Nowra, the confidence that Sydney developed in its successful handling of the Olympics has disappeared, to be replaced by apathy, incompetence and above all, a lack of vision. As he notes, however, many of these problems predate the Olympics – and it is hard to disagree with Nowra’s summary:

“Many of the tribulations affecting Sydney are due to the fact that for the past two decades governments have forgotten that a city is more than its CBD and trendy inner suburbs. Outer suburbs are also integral to a city’s energy and sense of itself. But by the end of the millennium these suburbs, especially in the southwest and northwest, were fraying badly.”

Whilst his subsequent depiction of outer Western Sydney as being awash with “drugs, domestic violence and family breakdown” may be too sweeping a generalisation, there is no escaping the fact that parts of the region suffer from these problems and that complacency and policy failures by successive governments have contributed to this situation.

Nowra goes on to list some specific examples and their consequences. These start with under-investment in transport and other infrastructure (here Nowra takes a swipe at the decision to replace the northwest and southwest rail links with the CBD Metro), but also include inattention to a lagging economy, poor urban design, inept licensing laws and the collapse of the health system.

You might not agree with every one of Nowra’s arguments, but overall he builds a strong case for his conviction that Sydney has “outgrown the imagination of its politicians”. He concludes that to succeed Sydney needs to reinvest not only in infrastructure, but also in some less tangible factors such as pride, youthful enthusiasm, cultural exuberance and social diversity in order to create a “melting pot of ideas and a sense of purpose” to overcome the city’s current “malaise of apathy and cynicism”.

It would be very easy to dismiss Nowra’s criticisms as merely another polemic against the current State Government, but his critique is much more far-reaching. It should be compulsory reading for politicians on all sides, in Federal as well as State politics.

Well, I said that I would outline some of the so-called “shovel ready” alternative transport projects the NSW Government could have nominated for Infrastructure Australia funding instead of the less-than-shovel-ready metro proposals that were put up. However, a lot has happened regarding transport – or at least a lot has been said about transport – since my last post.

I’ll come back to discuss “shovel-readiness” in a moment, but first to recap the past two weeks’ events. First, Dr Garry Glazebrook (UTS) released a detailed report which outlines a radically different approach to planning Sydney’s transport future. Glazebrook’s report proposes a metro system, but one quite different from that proposed by the Government, along with an upgraded heavy-rail system, light rail and a set of bus ring-routes. This is an oversimplification of a comprehensive plan, which I’ll return to in a future post.

Second, almost out of nowhere, light rail has been put back on the table by the Minster for Transport, David Campbell, who is said to have been won to the cause by seeing light rail systems in France.

Not surprisingly his initial enthusiasm to extend the line to Dulwich Hill and possibly into the CBD has run into resistance within Government (not to mention comparisons in the media with the vastly more expensive Metro), but the proposal is still being considered. Yet another feasibility study will be conducted and today the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that inner city councils have agreed to “call the state’s bluff” by agreeing to the Government’s demand that they contribute to the cost of the study.

Campbell’s conversion to light rail apparently occurred after seeing systems in Paris and Nice, which is interesting given their nature. The Paris system comprises a set of four disconnected lines in the outskirts of the city. Like the Sydney light rail, some sections of the system have been converted from former rail lines, but they operate much more as feeders servicing the termini of Paris metro lines and other outer suburban areas.

The Nice system serves the coastal city of Nice, with a population of 350,000; the closest equivalent here in population would be Newcastle. In terms of a planned transport system, the Gold Coast light rail proposal which made up most of Queensland’s successful bid for Federal Government infrastructure funding would probably be the most similar.

Which brings us to the projects that the NSW Government could have put up for Infrastructure Australia funding. These include the North West Rail Link, probably the most expensive but arguably the most important of the cancelled/deferred rail lines. I suspect that the original heavy rail plan, to run from Epping to Rouse Hill, rather than the short-lived NW metro iteration would be the most viable option. The Epping-Rouse Hill section has also passed through all the environmental and planning hoops and could be easily integrated with the Epping to Chatswood line.

Similarly the planning for South West Rail Link is also complete. There is however a question about the timing of this project, given the economic downturn and the slowing in the rate of residential development. The third potential project, the Parramatta to Epping rail link is also a priority for the region and would make a major contribution to reinforcing the role of Parramatta, but some of the original environmental impact assessment and subsequent approvals may have to be updated.

Whilst my personal preference is for the North West Rail Link, any of these projects would have done more to meet Sydney’s transport needs than the proposed Metros, especially the CBD metro. Yes, the capacity problems in the CBD need to be addressed, but it is far from clear that the CBD metro in its current form will really address this issue – and the heavy rail projects are all a lot more shovel-ready!

My last post discussed how NSW had fared relative to the other states in attracting transport infrastructure funding, particularly for public transport, in this week’s federal budget – which, in summary, was not very well.

 It’s useful to look at the five public transport projects which did receive substantial funding to see what characteristics they have in common. First cab off the rank and the project to receive by far the biggest allocation was the Regional Rail Express, which will provide a 40 kilometre link from West Werribee on the Geelong line to Southern Cross Station in Melbourne, joining the Baccus Marsh line near Ravenhall.

According the Federal Government, it will segregate V/Line regional rail services from metropolitan rail services allowing regional trains from Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo avoid being delayed by suburban trains. It will also provide additional capacity for suburban services from Werribee, Sunbury and Craigeburn in the western growth corridor, delivering capacity for an extra 9,000 passengers in peak hour. 

The next largest public transport project is the 13 kilometre first stage of a light rail system on the Gold Coast, running from the Gold Coast campus of Griffith University to Broadbeach via Southport, which will receive $365 million. Further investment will be provided by State and Local Governments and the private sector with the line ultimately linking to the heavy rail network at Helensvale in the north and extending south to Coolangatta. The Federal Government comments that when completed this project will remove up to 40,000 cars from the road network. 

The next two largest projects are both located in Adelaide. The 42 km Gawler line to the city’s north will receive $294 million for resleepering and electrification to improve services, whilst the Noarlunga line receives $291 million for a 5.5 kilometre extension south to Seaford. Both projects complement SA Government plans to modernise Adelaide’s rail network. The final “big five” project is a $236 million investment to sink the central city section of the Perth to Freemantle rail line, releasing 50,000 sq metres of land for urban redevelopment.

There is quite a step down to the final four projects worth under $100 million each. One of these involves direct capital works – the O-bahn track extension in Adelaide, which receives $61 million for a 4.5 km link from the existing terminus to the CBD. The other three involve preconstruction works or feasibility studies for inner-city rail proposals, with the Sydney West Metro receiving $91 million, the East-West Rail Tunnel $40 million and the Brisbane Inner City Rail feasibility study $20 million.

A few things become clear from this analysis. First, the Federal Government appears to have prioritised well thought out projects providing extensions or improvements to existing heavy rail services that link to outer suburban growth areas, such the western growth corridor in Melbourne and the southern and northern suburbs in Adelaide. It is also prepared to invest substantially in new projects in outer suburban areas such as the Gold Coast light rail. 

Second, where it has funded these projects it has done so substantially and obviously with a view that they will be delivered comparatively quickly. The top five projects received enough funding to complete major stages of work and to be in operation within five or six years. 

Third, the Federal Government does not seem inclined to throw large sums of money at the inner city metro and other rail projects put forward by the various State Governments, especially if they are not shovel ready. The only inner city project to receive substantial funding was the undergrounding of the east-west rail line in Perth – and it can be argued that the (former) WA Government had already wisely invested some of the proceeds of the (former) mining boom in building two complete new rail lines to outer suburban areas in the north and south of the city. 

This caution reflects the view put by IA in its Report to the Council of Australian Governments in December 2008 regarding metro and other “new technology” transport proposals. This is worth quoting in full:

The strategic policy choice facing Australian governments is whether, and under what circumstances, new urban rail systems should adopt such technologies. However, a move towards these technologies raises many issues. To avoid a repetition of the rail gauge problem from the nineteenth century, decisions on these matters need to be made with national input and intergovernmental collaboration. The network that exists today represents more than 40 years of consistent long term planning and investment. An equivalent national commitment to such planning and investment is required in Australia if new technologies are to be applied to the public transport sector.

However, even if a decision is taken to make such a strategic shift, the existing rail networks will be a fundamental part of Australia’s urban transport networks for decades to come. Sensible investment in the capacity of those systems and in life-cycle replacement of assets will continue to be required.

In seeking Federal funding, NSW chose to put all its public transport eggs in two very big baskets– the CBD Metro and the Sydney West Metro – and received only $91 million towards preconstruction works for the latter. Clearly, neither project was assessed as being ready enough to meet IA’s criteria, nor indeed do they reflect the Federal Government’s predisposition (no doubt influenced by the IA perspective quoted above) to fund projects in outer urban areas mostly based on the “old technologies”.

The irony is that NSW did have three shovel-ready projects that met IA’s criteria but did not put them forward. I’ll consider these and some of Sydney’s strategic transport planning issues in my next post.

Much has been said in the media and elsewhere about the shortfall in the Federal Budget infrastructure allocations for NSW transport projects, but it is worthwhile examining its dimensions in more detail.

Just how much (or little) will NSW receive? There are a few ways to look at this – relative to the allocations to other states, relative to population (or some other measure of demand) and relative to the total value of the project proposals lodged by the State Government.

In summary, NSW will receive $2.1 billion for two “shovel-ready” road projects and preliminary works for a single public transport project. By far the largest portion goes to the Hunter Expressway between the F3 and Branxston, which receives $1.5 billion. The Pacific Highway Kempsey Bypass has been allocated $618 million and the proposed Western Metro will receive only $91 million for “pre-construction work”.

Even with the substantial roads allocation, NSW is underweight compared to the other states, receiving only 25% of the total transport allocation (see graph 1). Victoria is the clear winner with 38% of the funding.

Take out the roads allocation and the picture is even more stark. Of the five states to receive public transport funding, NSW has the lowest allocation at just 2%, whilst Victoria receives a whopping 71% of the total public transport budget vote (graph 2). Whilst public transport related projects receive nearly 55% of the national transport infrastructure allocation, in NSW the proportion is only 4.6%.

On a per-head basis (using 2008 population figures), NSW receives just under $13 per resident, whilst the average across the five States to receive public transport funding is $225.80. Victoria will receive $611.39 per head (graph 3).

The most interesting comparison is with the total projects submitted for consideration by Infrastructure Australia. Now, it is unlikely that any State Government would have expected a Federal contribution to every project on its wish list, nor would they have expected any projects that did attract Federal support to be funded in full. It is also hard to get an exact figure for the total allocations sought by each State given the “blue sky” nature of some of the figures supplied, but however you look at it NSW has done extremely poorly.

Just 1% of the total value of NSW public transport project proposals submitted to Infrastructure Australia has been funded, compared with around 19% in South Australia, 43% in Victoria and 90% in Western Australia.

Queensland received only 2% of the total value of its public transport wish list, but that state’s figure was inflated by the $14 billion estimated cost of the Brisbane metro proposals. Queensland’s allocation of $385 million was actually four tines the amount NSW received and will enable the construction of the Gold Coast Light Rail project to commence.

What does this tell us? First, that the Feds appear to have been interested in funding only genuinely “shovel-ready” projects that meet all the IA criteria, at least in this round. The successful projects also address major transport needs as part of a coherent transport strategy and, significantly, there has been an emphasis on extending and improving rail services in outer suburban areas. In my next post I will examine some of the individual public transport projects that were funded and the conclusions that can be drawn from these allocations.