13 May 2009: Brisbane: Budget 2009, who got it wrong?

[ozbob]

Media Release 13 May 2009

Brisbane: Budget 2009, who got it wrong?

RAIL Back On Track (http://backontrack.org) a web based community support group for rail and public transport and an advocate for public transport commuters welcomes tonight's budget announcements for a number of rail projects  throughout Australia, but has highlighted that fact that all the southern capitals have received significant funding for improvements to their public transport networks but Brisbane misses out.  The fastest growing region in the nation is left to languish with an already overloaded public transport system.

Robert Dow, Spokesman for RAIL Back On Track said:

"RAIL Back On Track welcomes the commitments in the 2009 Federal budget for sustainable, efficient, safe, environmentally friendly  rail transport projects for the future."

"Of concern to our members is the continued distortion to road funding.  Road transport is unsafe, environmentally costly and is already failing badly. South-east Queensland is experiencing very significant road congestion.  More roads is not the answer.  Sustainable rail transport solutions are."

"The Network 1 component of the budget is a waste of tax payers money.  $4.8 billion on less than 150 km of road and $27.7 billion over 6 years.  The inland railway is only $3.6 billion at the worst."

"Why the southern bias with the metro rail funding?  Has the Queensland Government and its agencies been caught napping?  Why wasn't the Eastern busway funded?  Is there a latent political bias against Queensland?"

"The commitment to fund the Gold Coast Light rail is visionary and very welcome.  Modern light rail will become an iconic feature of Australia's premier holiday destination. Sustainable, environmentally friendly, high capacity, safe. It is clearly the optimum mass transit solution for the Gold Coast."

"More needs to be done to further improve public transport capacity in Brisbane.  We are rapidly heading for a serious congestion and overloaded situation.  It is time TransLink and Government bit the bullet and got cracking with incentive fares and other initiatives to help manage peak overloads. It will be a long time before there are significant network improvements based on this budget."

Contact:

Robert Dow
Administration
admin@backontrack.org

[ozbob]

It really is concerning that both Brisbane and Sydney missed out.  Possibly the quality of the submissions was sub-standard.
Sad ...

From the ABC News click here!

Sydney Budget snub: IA tight-lipped on submission quality

Sydney Budget snub: IA tight-lipped on submission quality

Posted Sun May 17, 2009 12:41pm AEST

The chairman of Infrastructure Australia (IA) has refused to be drawn about the quality of submissions presented by New South Wales for consideration by the Federal Government for last week's Budget.

Sydney was effectively ignored by the Rudd Government in its choice of major infrastructure projects for investment.

IA chairman Sir Rod Eddington has told the ABC's Inside Business program that proposals put forward by some states were far better developed than projects put up for funding by others.

"Other states weren't in that same place, either because the projects themselves were a gleam in their eye, or because the work hadn't been done," he said.

"Clearly Sydney has substantial public transport challenges and clearly an appropriate urban rail set-up is key to their solution, but urban rail is very expensive."