Why roads are not suitable for mass transportation

The now departed Napthine government was hell-bent on spending up to $16b on the "East West link" tollway tunnel project, claiming that it would "be the transport infrastructure that Melbourne needs".  They included fanciful claims including that the new tunnel would:

• Reduce commute times by 20 minutes
• Reduce congestion on Hoddle Street

Both claims are patently false.  The Napthine government lost he election held on 29 November and the incoming Premier, Daniel Andrews, has pledged to stop the East West Link road project  proceeding.

Similar claims were made by Jeff Kennet back in the 90s when he claimed the City Link road project, constructed between 1996 and 2000 would "will solve Melbourne's traffic problems". Clearly, it has not.

However, there is another good reason why roads cannot provide a suitable mass transport system for a city such as Melbourne - every driver is a single point of failure.

Nearly every day there is a crash which can close or seriously disrupt traffic on a route.

Six cars and a truck were involved in two crashes on the West Gate Bridge. Photo: Seven News

For example,a crash closed the West Gate Bridge on Tuesday 2 December. Such crashes and closures are now a daily occurrence.

By comparison, trains carry up to 800 passengers with a single driver - and don't have to contend with road intersections and "lane changes".

We need some real political leadership to build more train lines and revise the train network for Melbourne - given that no new suburban rail lines have been built since the Glen Waverley line in 1932.

A dedicated safe bicycle path network should be included too.

Links

• Crash closes West Gate Bridge lanes, The Age  
• West Gate Freeway crash causes delays, The Age 22/11/14
• CityLink, Wikipedia
• East West Link, Melbourne, Wikipedia

Roads, water, smart meters and the 2010 Victorian state election

The phoney campaign for the 2010 Victorian state election is well and truly underway.  Unfortunately, this highlights the failings of politics and government to follow due process, public consultation and make appropriate decisions.  Some examples follow.

Smart meters
The business case for smart meters has not been proven, yet residents are being forced to pay for them whether they want them or not.  Greater benefits at much lower cost could have been obtained by installing simple in house energy meter displays to allow consumers to see real time how much power they are are using and therefore set about reducing it.  Unfortunately, these "in home displays" have been dropped from the mandatory section of the Victorian Government's smart meter specification.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/smarts-on-hold-but-consumers-still-paying-for-meter-20100327-r48y.html

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/smart-meters-another-dumb-economic-idea-20100412-s40m.html

Water
The Brumby government has embarked on a carbon intensive and environmentally damaging water strategy that also has no solid business case.  The north south pipeline steals water from the chronically deprived Murray Darling basin and sends it over the divide to Melbourne.  The desalination plant will consume large amounts of energy, pollute the Bass Coast, and result in high net carbon emissions.  Meanwhile, water tanks, recycling and stopping logging in water catchments are all ignored, despite being more effective, cheaper and better for the environment.

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/brumbys-water-plan-savaged-20100327-r4dh.html

The relaxing of stage 3A water restrictions is a political stunt for the election.  Melbourne's water storages are still too low for this.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/water-restrictions-never-again-above-stage-3-20100316-qcl6.html?autostart=1

The economics of the desalination plan just don't stack up, and due diligence has not been a feature of the business case or the planning/approval process for it.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/water-plans-drift-behind-a-veil-of-secrecy-20100411-s0os.html

Planning
The internal workings of Government - including sham public consultations - is revealed in the media strategy written by Planning Minister Justin Madden's media advisor and accidentally sent to the media.  Madden and Brumby have claimed repeatedly that the document is "unusual" and "irregular: and even that they have "seen nothing like it".  What a load of nonsense.  This sort of spin and manipulation is clearly common.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/madden-media-plan-shows-the-inner-workings-of-spin-20100306-ppts.html

What has Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls and the Brumby Government go to hide? Given a Ministerial advisor wrote at document that indicates planning processes would be subverted (for the Windsor), why should they be "excluded" from giving evidence to a Parliamentary Committee? This has a whiff of corruption about it.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/labor-advisers-may-face-jail-20100412-s47q.html

Public transport
Decades of neglect and inadequate funding for Victoria's public transport by both Labor and Liberal governments have taken their toll.  Trains don't run on time, or at all, and are packed when they do.  Trams in the city are infrequent and now crowded to capacity.  Privatisation is a failure. The new Metro operator is as bad or worse than the previous one.

The majority of funding in the 40b dollar transport plan is still going to roads and freeways.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/brumby-rail-promise-stalls-20100214-nzgk.html

Logging old growth forests
The 2010 Timber Release Plan (TRP) for East Gippland published by the Victorian Government will dramatically increase old growth forest logging in 2010. It deliberately targets old growth forest areas from maps used during negotiations with environment groups about the government's 2006 election commitment to "protect that last significant old growth forest in East Gippsland" Download the letter to get the full story.

http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/Image:2010_VicForests_logging_letter.pdf

VicForests, under the control of the Victorian Government, has been taken to court by Environment East Gippsland to protect Brown Mountain.  The government refused to take appropriate action to protect endangered species such as the Potoroo from logging.   It is to be hoped the judge finds the government should do what the law says and survey for threatened species in forests before logging them.  Currently they don't - because they don't want to find them - which would mean they can't log the forests.

http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/Brown_Mountain_old_growth_forest

This track record is not good.  I think it may even cost them the next election.  Unfortunately, a Liberal/National government would most likely continue with all these flawed policies and practices.

So think about voting Green or independent and choose carefully where YOUR preference goes.

Preliminary analysis of the 2008 Victorian transport plan

Well, the transport plan is now out. I have read the Overview and attended the last part of the GAMUT forum held to discuss it yesterday.

The plan has been issued from a political bunker. Again, politics is really not delivering what people want or what Melbourne needs.

From the “Message from the Ministers”:

The message has been heard loud and clear: Victorians want more trains and better roads, more transport choice in the suburbs and regions, to feel safe when travelling, and to protect the environment by investing more in public transport, cycling, walking, better urban planning and greener vehicle technology. This is what The Victorian Transport Plan delivers.

But it does not deliver this.

The issues I see are:

• No meaningful public consultation process. The majority of public feedback from the Eddington report has been glossed over or ignored.

• $20b is going to roads and freeways - this is well over half of the$38b total budget

• No carbon accounting or analysis of carbon outputs per transport mode/journey

• Ongoing development of the freeway network - through very sensitive green belts (the Greensborough Templestowe connection) - which is pure RACV/Roads lobby agenda

• A secret process - even a lot of the Department of Transport were kept in the dark and only found out about its contents when it was released.

• No long term goals set - passenger journeys by mode, carbon emissions reduction, access to public transport, km of bike paths, km of railway. If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it

• No significant budget increase for bike paths and routes, and no specific commitments, despite the fact that more bikes were sold last year than cars in Australia. $100m over 3 years would have been barely adequate; they have committed to a paltry $100m over 10 years - this will just buy some paint for lane markings

• The real net cost to the economy of roads is not measured by Treasury, yet they continue to claim that “public transport costs more” - when the reverse is the case

• No acknowledgment that more roads and freeways equate to more cars. Remember CityLink was going to “solve all Melbourne’s transport needs for the future”? No the South Eastern freeway/carpark is being widened for the second time since ($2b)

• Unclear need for the Footscray to Domain rail tunnel. The rail tunnel is supposed to “provide more capacity for future train lines to connect in” yet this is not supported by evidence, and none of these train lines are actually on the drawing board (e.g. Rowville, Doncaster). Connex wants the tunnel, not the people of Melbourne.

• Safe seats suffer the impact. Road tunnels through Labor/Green marginal seats have been omitted, but tunnels through safe Labor seats (such as in the Footscray area) have not.

• Melbourne's eastern suburbs have missed out. No Rowville or Doncaster rail lines. Monash University misses out on a desperately needed railway service. Increased capacity on the Belgrave and Lilydale lines is delayed until after 2021.

This is the same bad process as the government’s water strategy. They consult secretly with industry and big business behind close doors, ignore the wisdom and needs of the public, and launch a half baked reactive plan along with an expensive (full newspaper pages) advertising.

Overall, 3/10. At least it is not 95% roads as previous plans have been.

More detailed analysis to follow.

If you live in Melbourne, contact your local MP and ask him to represent your wants and needs.

You can also contribute to 2008 Victorian transport plan, a wiki article on Greenliviningpedia.org

Links

• GAMUT: Australasian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport
• Missing in action: Climate change | theage.com.au
• Cycling funds disappoint | theage.com.au
• The Victorian Transport Plan: Download the plan
• Transport plan? The joke's on us | theage.com.au
• East misses out in transport plan: councils | theage.com.au

A subway system for Melbourne and less secretive planning

Melbourne urgently needs improvements to its train network to make the city more efficient and liveable. The current radial network was laid out in the 1890s and has served Melbourne well, but no new lines have been built in Melbourne this century with the exception of the city loop. Over this period the Kew branch line and the Outer Circle railway have been closed, and others such as St Kilda have been replaced by light rail services. Melbourne's rail network is now smaller than it was in 1930.

Visiting European cities such as London, Paris and Naples, it is apparent that their subway systems work well to improve transport, particularly in and around the city centres. Melbourne could have a similar subway system that connects the busy regions of South Yarra, South Melbourne, Brunswick, North Fitzroy, North Melbourne, Docklands and Richmond. Travelling to these areas by either tram (or train if there is one) can take up to 30 minutes from central Melbourne. These trips would take about 10 minutes on an efficient subway system.

We need a transparent planning process with public consultation to address opportunities for developing the rail network, rather than the secretive and confidential processes of the Bracks government. For example, Operational Double Fault, the proposal to put sections of the Glen Waverley line underground, appears to be driven by commercial opportunties to develop the real estate that would be created above it. Confidential briefings to the premier and behind the scenes lobbying by commercial interests may not address the concerns of Melbourne residents and rail users, or deliver significant improvements to rail services.

Secret plans have also been prepared by the State Government for a $2 billion cross-city rail tunnel linking North Melbourne station with Caulfield station that would also add eight new inner-city underground stations .

The government only allocated a paltry $61.8 million in the 2006-07 State budget for funding rail services on existing tracks and planning for more services in the future out of total expenditure of 2.6 billion for transport related infrastructure. There are no new rail services planned for Melbourne's growing outer suburbs - the Government only plans to provide bus services to them.

To seriously address issues like climate change and pollution, significantly more investment in rail infrastructure and services is required. A new subway system could cost up to $2 to 3 billion, but the social, enviromental and economic benefits would be huge. It is time that Victorians had some say in such important matters for our future.

Links
$4 billion rail tunnel back on track
$4bn plan to convert rail line into a subway
Bracks' $10.5bn transport plan
The incredible shrinking railway lines
Underground revolution - $2bn secret railway plan
Victorian State Budget 2006-07: Budget Overview