Article: Public transport suffering from investment in roads: report

[ozbob]

From the Brisbanetimes click here!

Public transport suffering from investment in roads: report

Public transport suffering from investment in roads: report
January 11, 2013 - 12:01AM

Brisbane's public transport system has fallen behind its counterparts, according to a major national report that praises Perth and Sydney as models for best-practice.

The RMIT report, released late last month, concluded investment in rail – coupled with significant road congestion – had led to strong use of public transport in Sydney, while a "remarkable turnaround" of public transport use in Perth could be attributed to effective integration of the different modes of transport, as well as infrastructure investment.

By contrast, the report blamed Brisbane public transport's lacklustre patronage on years of heavy investment in tunnels, bridges and motorways.

Using data from the past three censuses, the report Transport Policy at the Crossroads: Travel to work in Australian capital cities found Perth's trains carried 63.0 million passengers to work in 2011-12 compared with Brisbane's trains' 52.8 million – a difference of 10 million passengers despite Perth having a substantially smaller population.

"Part of the explanation has been the relative neglect of rail [in Brisbane] in favour of substantial investment in busways, which have drawn some of their patronage from parallel rail services," authors Dr Paul Mees and Dr Lucy Groenhart wrote.

"A redirection of funding to more sustainable modes, combined with an aggressive plan to integrate and improve services across the different public transport modes, is required to get transport in Brisbane back on track."

The report's conclusions add to the debate surrounding Brisbane's Translink network, which has been fuelled by the latest round of fare hikes making train travel in the city more expensive per kilometre than Sydney and Melbourne.

Public transport experts have criticised the network's zoned ticketing system, while local commuter advocates say it is time the state government considered a fare review.

An Opposition spokesman told Fairfax Media on Thursday a review "may identify room for improvement" in an imperfect system.

"A review of the Translink zonal system is a matter for the government to consider," he said.

"We would have no objections to a review as long as any proposed changes could be guaranteed to deliver genuine benefit for commuters."

A spokesman for Transport Minister Scott Emerson said he would issue a comprehensive response to the matter on Friday.

Translink, the state body that delivers bus, train and ferry services across southeast Queensland, calculates fares according to how many zones a customer travels. The whole network comprises 23 zones.

Under the integrated system, a single adult ticket costs $4.80 for a trip on any transport mode within one zone, with the price rising to $30.40 for travel through all zones.

Travel is cheaper if a customer uses a GoCard, travels off-peak, or uses a recognised concession card.

However there are minor price discrepancies between zones depending which mode of travel is used. For instance, a train journey from the CBD to Toowong counts as travel within one zone, while the same journey on a bus counts as travel within two zones.

A single adult ticket for that journey costs $4.80 on a train, but $5.60 on a bus.

Prices on Sydney's public transport network, meanwhile, are different for rail, bus and ferry journeys.

Rail journeys are charged across five zones, beginning at $3.60 for the first zone (0 to 10 kilometres from the city), and rising to $8.40 for a single adult fare to a zone five stop 65 kilometres from the city.

Meanwhile Melbourne and Perth have integrated ticketing systems.

Melbourne has two zones (see below), while Perth has nine, and like Brisbane fares, prices are calculated the number of zones a passenger travels through.

A full adult single fare for a Melbourne MyKi user is capped at $3.50 for travel within zone one, $2.42 for travel within zone two, or $5.92 for travel anywhere within the system.

Travel across all of Perth's nine zones is capped at $11, with Mandurah being the furthest train stop from Perth city at roughly 70 kilometres.

- additional reporting by Tony Moore

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/public-transport-suffering-from-investment-in-roads-report-20130110-2cj8x.html

[ozbob]

Blog comment:

Well done Kat and Tony.  Exactly what we have been suggesting for some time now, rail has been neglected and we are paying a high price.  Still time to turn it around.  The fare price table in SEQ is absurdly unbalanced and overpriced, the free after nine is a rort and is bleeding money from the system.  Which in turn is forcing up base fare prices which is making public transport in SEQ increasingly unaffordable for many.

A proper fare review is needed to reposition the fare structure and price table that supports the community and drives public transport patronage.  The rail system is starting to be improved, for example Springfield, and Queensland Rail is performing a lot better now, but we need to look at new trains. Our fleet is starting to age and will need augmentation sooner than later, as well as to provide the much needed capacity and ongoing reliability  on the existing network.

The bus review will improve the efficiency of the bus network, with more focus on eliminating the costly duplication and competition with rail, provide better feeder bus networks and optimise connections.

Our petition calling for a fare review is receiving strong support. Time the Government listened and grasped the moment.

Petition --> http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/fare-review-for-translink-south-east-queensland-now.html

[Stillwater]

"A spokesman for Transport Minister Scott Emerson said he would issue a comprehensive response to the matter on Friday."  Comprehensive eh.  Let's hope the response is not comprehensive with political blame-shifting, which is Mr Emerson's preferred stance.

[#Metro]

What will the minister say?

"Even though we provide HALF the service that Perth does, but charge full price and in fact will increase the price even more, because we're Queensland, it is all Labor's fault, we're a great state with great opportunity, and our focus will be on improving state finances, improving state finances did I mention improving state finances, and not only that our cupboards are bare, bare cupboards, bare cupboards. I should also mention Caltabiano is suspended on full pay, and we have decided to roll out a network of 9 new Maroon CityGliders, P44 Carindale to Chermside, P22 Carindale to 8 Mile Plains as improvements to our network"

"Oh, and just remember, it's all labor's fault - even though we were elected almost a year ago and are actually in charge, anything I do or anything that's bad - I'm not responsible, Labor is."

I will just add as a footnote here:

Blame is the avoidance of responsibility. Labor may well have been booted out for failing on trains (hardly any new high frequency services) but now that the blue team is elected, it's their RESPONSIBILITY NOW.

[Stillwater]

Mr Emerson is yet to flick the switch from election mode, TT.  More than likely, he will restate more comprehensively that Labor would have increased fares by 15 per cent and he has put them up by only 7.5 per cent.  Labor offered free travel after 10 journeys, LNP after 9 .... same ole, same ole

I wonder if he will come up with the line that the LNP held a fare review before the election?  In that case, the review, no doubt, would have looked at the rort of a single-journey disposable go-card allowing for $10 trip from Zone 23 to the airport, and found that to be perfectly acceptable.

Of course, what's needed is a root and branch review of the fare structure, but is Mr Emerson up to the task?  Let's not pass judgement until he makes his 'comprehensive' statement.

[Jonno]

http://mams.rmit.edu.au/ov14prh13lps1.pdf

CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The census findings suggest that Australia's major cities are at a crossroads. Although car use has increased rapidly, there has been a revival of public transport – tentative to begin with, but strong in the five years to 2011. In past decades, governments which gave priority to road investments could claim to be acting in accordance with the wishes of the public, who were 'voting with their feet' for car travel. Now, public transport is gaining ground at the expense of the car, but most state and city governments remain wedded to road-based solutions.

The time has come for a radical reversal of transport priorities. If public transport can rebound with the modest levels of support received to date, serious pro-public transport policies have the potential to create very significant mode shifts, as the experience of Perth has shown. Public transport can be reconfigured to serve non-central and off-peak travel, as well as its traditional role catering for peak-period city centre work travel (Mees, 2010).

Australian cities should be planning for European-style public transport service quality and European-level mode shares. Achievement of these objectives would make virtually all planned major urban road investments redundant. Importantly, the success of public transport to date has already provided evidence that we do not need to wait until planning policies deliver European-level urban densities – something that is probably impossible, and would take many decades to achieve – before we can have European-style public transport (see also Mees, 2010).

Achieving European-style public transport in Australian cities will require more than just changes to funding priorities. The 72-kilometre Mandurah line in Perth, which included a tunnel under the CBD and two underground stations, cost $1.2 billion in 2007 (the higher figure of $1.6 billion sometimes cited is the cost of the entire New Metrorail project, of which the Mandurah line was only one element). Significantly smaller projects in east coast Australian cities have been costed at many times this figure (e.g. Mees, 2010b). Concerns have also been raised about the high operating costs of east-coast public transport systems: Infrastructure NSW (2012, p. 108) notes that City Rail operating subsidies are high by international standards and rising steadily, while the Victorian Auditor-General (2012, p. 29) points out that subsidies to Melbourne's private rail, tram and bus operators, which were already much higher than under public ownership, grew by 65 per cent in the five years to 2010-11. These issues underline the importance of effective governance, management, planning and research in public transport, areas where most Australian cities currently perform very poorly.

There is some evidence of a shift in thinking at the national level. Infrastructure Australia's 2011 report to the Council of Australian Governments notes that '[t]he international movement is to dramatically improve the provision and utilisation of public transport', and proposes the development of a national public transport strategy (IA, 2011, p. 32). However, IA's own record to date (see Mees, 2010b) suggests that the organisation has some way to go before it transcends the 'infrastructure first' approach that has proven so unsuccessful at dealing with the transport problems of Australian cities. Indeed, the very next section of the 2011 report discusses the high cost of major new urban roads without considering the prospect that the need for such roads can be reduced through a major shift to public transport, or that their construction would reduce the likelihood of such a shift occurring (see IA, 2011, p. 34). IA does, however, argue that there is a need for a national debate about public transport: we agree, and hope that this report can make some small contribution to that debate.

A renewed focus on public transport is essential, but will not be sufficient. Australian transport policy makers must also lift their game in the field of active transport, particularly walking. Walking requires little in the way of public funding: the most important measures


are reorienting the allocation of road space, and road rules, to give pedestrians priority over motor vehicles. Since every public transport user is also a pedestrian (Mees, 2010, chapter 11), walking and public transport can create a 'virtuous circle', in which improvements in one mode increase the usage of both modes. Improving pedestrian amenity encourages public transport use, while provision of high-quality public transport reduces car ownership and usage, increasing walking rates.

Cycling currently plays only a minor role in reducing car use in Australian cities. Although it is important to provide safe, convenient facilities for cyclists, some of the extravagant rhetoric currently circulating about cycling needs to be given a rest. Policy-makers need to pay attention to the extremely restricted constituency that currently dominates the cycling 'market' (mainly male, inner city professionals), and develop measures to make cycling a viable option for a wider section of the community, as is the case in the best European cities. This should mean an end to policies such as the recent trend to combine bike and bus lanes in such a way that buses must weave back and forth across cycle lanes to reach stops, which endangers cyclists, delays buses and adds to driver stress.
Unfortunately, car-pooling is unlikely to make a significant contribution to reducing the demand for car travel at any time in the foreseeable future.

Although Australian cities look very different from the European cities where public and active transport play major roles in reducing dependence on the car, the evidence from the census suggests that with the right transport policies in place, we can begin to match the Europeans' performance.

[ozbob]

End point of failure:


http://www.retronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/115-598x401.jpg

[Jonno]

I especially love this bit

Australian cities should be planning for European-style public transport service quality and European-level mode shares. Achievement of these objectives would make virtually all planned major urban road investments redundant. Importantly, the success of public transport to date has already provided evidence that we do not need to wait until planning policies deliver European-level urban densities – something that is probably impossible, and would take many decades to achieve – before we can have European-style public transport

[ozbob]

Transport use changing

--> http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/consumer/article/-/15923380/transport-use-changing/

[somebody]

Despite reports to the contrary, Sydney's transport system has been hailed as Australia's most sustainable.

Not news.  This has been the case for most or all of our lives.