Article: The great disconnect

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

The great disconnect

The great disconnect
Clay Lucas
November 2, 2010

IT'S a Thursday afternoon in Footscray and Daniel Bowen is watching the trains, trams, buses, cars and taxis converge on the busy shopping centre. At the train station, Bowen points out the many transport planning issues that create problems for commuters.

Bowen is president of the Public Transport Users Association. He says the station is emblematic of Melbourne's wider public transport malaise and part of the reason his politically unaligned group is calling for major changes, including the establishment of a public transport authority. Coincidentally, the Greens last week proposed the same thing. (The Brumby government says such a body is not needed and the opposition will not comment.)

Bowen is standing on the new $15 million rail footbridge, named after indigenous activist William Cooper. Even though it was opened just six months ago, soon half of the bridge will be torn down and rebuilt to accommodate a rail project through Footscray that received federal funding last year.

Bowen nods to a sign on the bridge indicating where to catch buses. The sign points north-west. ''That's the theory,'' he says. In fact, there are some bus stops on the east of the bridge, some straight ahead and others elsewhere.

Footscray is one of the government's six designated ''central activity districts'' and is promoted as having high accessibility for public transport users. Yet no one appears to have thought about how to connect the many trains arriving there with buses and trams.

Three bus services and one tram route leave from Footscray for Highpoint from separate stops. ''It becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly that you are looking at a less than ideal situation,'' says Bowen.

Welcome to Victoria's multi-modal transport system. For four years now, it has not been possible to get a map of where the trains, trams and buses all knit together. Indeed, such a map hasn't existed since 2006. This is a telling symptom of the disjointed, and at times Byzantine, maze that is Melbourne's public transport system.

The Public Transport Users Association has outlined the extent of this maze in a diagram showing the many agencies, quangos, private companies and safety bodies running the state's public transport.

''And we don't think we've included every single body,'' says Bowen.

Money is being poured into public transport in Victoria at a rate not seen for decades, yet while the Transport Department is in charge of delivering a co-ordinated system, there is no single public face for the service.

For several years, a growing number of academics, commentators and transport experts have argued that so many bodies are now in charge of planning, marketing, operating and maintaining public transport that no one is truly responsible.

These groups - ranging from the usual suspects to think tanks such as the Committee for Melbourne and the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, all the way to the Australian Senate - believe Melbourne should follow the world's leading cities and establish an autonomous public transport authority.

Unlike the Transport Department, the authority would be free to highlight problems, and openly weigh up the costs and financial benefits, say, of building a new rail line to Rowville or Doncaster versus a new underground rail tunnel. And it would recommend action unencumbered by conflicts with political interests - although politicians would still decide what is built.

It would be charged with co-ordinating Melbourne's disparate train, tram and bus systems, to plan timetabling so trains always meet a bus. And it would devise infrastructure in a way that allows real community input into major projects - not the sham consultation that the Brumby government is accused of.

The government doesn't believe Victoria needs such an agency and the opposition's position is unclear. Coalition transport spokesman Terry Mulder says little about what he would change if he found himself in the minister's chair in just 25 days. Asked about the idea of a public transport authority, Mulder says The Age is ''seeking policy announcements'' he claims he is powerless to give.

Public Transport Minister Martin Pakula says the government has already taken action to better co-ordinate Victoria's public transport, and that a new authority is not needed.

When the Greens last week proposed a public transport authority with a staff of just 60 people Pakula savaged the idea. "Their plan for another agency is nothing more than another layer of bureaucracy on top of government departments, existing authorities and public transport operators.

''The Brumby Labor government has already taken action in this area to ensure that we have an accountable public official [Transport Department director of public transport Hector McKenzie] who can undertake all of these functions empowered by legislation.''

Under the Greens model for a public transport authority, McKenzie and his 370 staff would be sacked, and the Transport Ticketing Authority, the marketing agency Metlink and the Public Transport Ombudsman would be dissolved.

Their powers would shift to a new authority which, Greens MP Greg Barber says, would scrap the private operation of Melbourne's trains and trams, and extend rail lines to Doncaster, Rowville and Melbourne Airport. The Greens did not cost the promises in any meaningful way.

While the proposal has created a pre-election political storm, the idea didn't seem at all radical to the Senate last year. In a cross-party report into federal investment in public transport, it found that Melbourne's method of running public transport was ''largely passive'', leaving solutions to private operators.

Victoria's public transport network was fragmented decades ago, when the day-to-day running of trains and trams was divided up. The Cain government's Public Transport Corporation then reunited them, but accountability for public transport was clouded by the privatisation of trains and trams in 1999. For a while, the two train companies, Bayside and Hillside, even produced maps showing only their parts of the network.

Melbourne's transport infrastructure is impressive: the world's biggest tram system, a sprawling 830-kilometre train network, and a network of buses the government has significantly extended in recent years.

But trains are often late and overcrowded, trams run at an average speed of 16km/h, and the government relies on bus operators to ''self-regulate'' - meaning no one really knows whether they run on time, or in some cases if they run at all.

Worse though, is the lack of successful long-term planning. Melbourne's fleet of old, silver Hitachi trains, for instance, was scrapped seven years ago - just as rail patronage increased dramatically. Now, as the 38 new trains the government bought in a hurry start to come online, patronage growth is levelling off. Meanwhile, projects such as myki have become both a practical and public relations disaster for the government.

Metlink is a company owned by Yarra Trams and Metro but 70 per cent funded by the government. Established under the contracts let in 2009 by the government to both operators, it is there to better market and integrate the system. Through Metlink, Melbourne's train, tram and bus companies are now promising to better co-ordinate public transport services. Metlink chief executive Dale Larkin has set up a ''connectivity committee'' through which operators will try to link their services, before getting their plans signed off by the Transport Department.

Larkin agrees with Pakula that there is no need for a public transport authority. ''All that does is replace one government department with another.'' He says operators should be left to improve the performance of the public transport network.

''If you [better] co-ordinate their services, they will increase their profits. The more they build the network the better their profits,'' he says.

Since 2003 Melbourne University academic John Stone has written widely about Victoria's public transport co-ordination problems. Stone, who advised the Greens on their proposal for a transport authority, isn't impressed with the ''connectivity committee'' idea, or the government's commitment to a hands-off approach.

''It still just says, 'If you want, we will help,' rather than the government demanding, 'We will require you to do this,' '' he says.

In August, Stone, along with fellow academic Kathren Lazanas, released research showing that not even the managers and former chiefs of Melbourne's tram, train and bus systems believed anyone was in charge of the overall system.

Stone believes Melbourne is crying out for a transport authority with the clout to force operators to act in the public's interest rather than their own financial interests. He points to VicRoads as an effective planner and manager that runs the roads system in a way that leaves drivers in no doubt about who's in charge.

He and many others point to Western Australia's TransPerth public transport authority. Established in 2003, it is now recognised by planners as ''best practice'' in Australia. It acts like a North American or European transit agency, taking responsibility for planning and procuring services and ticketing. Most importantly, it presents the system to the public as a single system - unlike in Victoria, where the government allows pressure to be taken off it by having a range of separate transport providers as frontmen.

TransPerth has ''about 80 people, right down to the guy responsible for letting contracts to build bus stops'', spokesman David Hynes says.

It is a much leaner body than Melbourne's: when Perth decided to buy a new smartcard ticket system, six people were put in charge of buying and overseeing the $35 million project, Hynes says. In Victoria, the Transport Ticketing Authority is in charge of the $1.35 billion myki project and its most recent organisational chart showed it had 161 staff.

In 2007 TransPerth opened the 71-kilometre, $1.3 billion Mandurah rail line; its route changed several times following community feedback. Contrast this with Melbourne's $4.3 billion, 47-kilometre Regional Rail Link.

In July, John Brumby announced to a business lunch the route of the train tracks through the western suburbs. So secretive had planning of the rail line been that residents who lived in its path were renovating their houses right up to the day the Premier announced their homes would soon be bulldozed. Unlike Perth, where changes to the project were overseen by TransPerth, which sits at arm's length from the government, any change to the Regional Rail Link would be seized upon by the opposition as a ''backflip'' by the government.

One government transport planner this week observed that Victoria's system was overly politicised. ''When we write a plan, it just becomes a political football, and it gets thrown out, and three years later we write another.''

Since coming to power this state government has produced four major transport plans, all prepared in secrecy, with political operatives overseeing them. Each has been launched with a forceful public relations campaign to spin the government's ''mega projects'', to win the support of big business and public approval.

By comparison, consider this year's annual general meeting of Vancouver's TransLink, attended by 400 members of the public and held on one of the city's ferries. The board gave an outline of what was planned for the year ahead, and gave attendees a chance to demand changes. TransLink meets in public, in a similar fashion to a Victorian local government council, and allows anyone to address the board.

While Melbourne has problems, Sydney's disparate and poorly co-ordinated public transport network is even more dysfunctional. Last year an independent inquiry into the system recommended a public transport authority to present a single organisation to customers even though separate firms would run trains, buses and ferries behind the scenes. The inquiry highlighted other cities - London, Vancouver, Toronto and Zurich - that had dramatically improved their public transport by introducing just such an authority.

Back in Footscray, Daniel Bowen is listing more problems in and around the railway station, which he passes through regularly. ''I have been on the train, seen someone walk out the train door, run across the bridge, and then sprint round this corner obviously trying to make a bus connection. For most people, expecting them to do that just to catch a bus is a bit much to ask.''

[#Metro]

When the Greens last week proposed a public transport authority with a staff of just 60 people Pakula savaged the idea. "Their plan for another agency is nothing more than another layer of bureaucracy on top of government departments, existing authorities and public transport operators.

''The Brumby Labor government has already taken action in this area to ensure that we have an accountable public official [Transport Department director of public transport Hector McKenzie] who can undertake all of these functions empowered by legislation.''

Under the Greens model for a public transport authority, McKenzie and his 370 staff would be sacked, and the Transport Ticketing Authority, the marketing agency Metlink and the Public Transport Ombudsman would be dissolved.

I too was initially skeptical, but its true. Mr Pakula seems to be hesitating because "it would be adding another layer of bureaucracy". He does not see that his PT system is already highly inefficient because it cannot co-ordinate itself properly and therefore efficiencies in both cost and journey time leak away. The lack of clear lines of accountability also encourage inefficiency, and the need for multiple agencies is also, by definition, inefficient. The need for every agency to talk to every other agency introduces high transaction costs between organisations, so it is little wonder that they DON'T talk to each other.

Time to start abolishing things, slim things down and get an Authority. Not sure if de-privatisation is really required. So long as the regulation and proper oversight is there, I don't really see why it is needed.

[colinw]

IMHO privatisation is fine, as long as it is accompanied by strict regulation & performance monitoring.  Otherwise you end up with private operators cherry picking (e.g. Airtrain), rather than running a genuine service.

[somebody]

I thought privatisation has been a big success in Melbourne's train system?

Worse though, is the lack of successful long-term planning. Melbourne's fleet of old, silver Hitachi trains, for instance, was scrapped seven years ago - just as rail patronage increased dramatically. Now, as the 38 new trains the government bought in a hurry start to come online, patronage growth is levelling off. Meanwhile, projects such as myki have become both a practical and public relations disaster for the government.

Is that what caused Melbourne's overcrowding problems?  I remember when they tried to get rid of Sydney's red rattlers, it caused the same effect and they had to bring them back for a brief period.

[#Metro]

Merely shifting the operators from private or public sector will do nothing to address the issues surrounding the need for better co-ordination that a proper authority will bring. Anything that is not a PT authority will be simply re-arranging the deck chairs.