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.

MyMulti zero ticket (image from Wikipedia)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Epping Station (from Wikipedia)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.