18 Dec 2023: Stopping Self-Defeating/Questionable Road Projects No.1 Priority ..

[ozbob]

Stopping Self-Defeating/Questionable Road Projects No.1 Priority for New Transport Minister

18th December 2023

With a new Transport Minister on the way, and Ms. Stannard recently appointed as Director-General DTMR, there is no better time to pause "congestion busting" road projects around Brisbane and SEQ,  which have been described by Engineers Australia as "self-defeating" and "questionable" investment.

RAIL Back On Track has been campaigning over the last 18 years for a change in the direction of transport planning and the way the State, Local and Federal Governments prioritise their transport budgets.

As highlighted in April this year, the Queensland Government updated Measures that Matter for 2022 https://planning.dsdmip.qld.gov.au/mtm?theme=connect (Figure 1) clearly shows that transport planning, investment and operations in SEQ is simply making a bad situation worse.

SEQ Transport and City Planning by all levels of Government has failed to deliver any change towards the 2031 Targets for car usage (Figure 2) and actually increased car use from the 1996 IRTP Trend (Figure 3).

Many cities around the world saw dramatic declines in car use due to COVID so the fact SEQ has remained the same is an utterly damning indictment of the current transport/city planning policies and political name calling.

And the people of Queensland are paying the price with each trip by car that was targeted to be by active or public transport is costing the tax-payer up to 6 times more in subsides.  Most of this subsidy is in the health budget. (Figure 4)

Whilst there are some big public transport projects like CRR, Gold Coast Light Rail and Faster Rail to the Gold Coast underway. Others, like the North and Sunshine Coast rail lines are decades behind schedule and BCC is just doing it's own thing and thumbing its nose at the former Transport Minister.  Meanwhile the majority of the transport investment is still being poured into "congestion-busting" road projects. The same projects which Engineers Australia concluded in their Urban Transport Systems - A Transport Australia Society Discussion Paper with "This makes attempting to "bust traffic congestion" through road construction, self-defeating".

https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/sites/default/files/2022-01/Urban-Transport-Systems-TAS-Discussion-Paper-December-2021-revised.pdf

RAIL Back On Track is confident that an analysis of freight by rail in SEQ will be equally damning if not worse!

Now is the perfect time to shake up Transport Planning across Queensland and the move to the prioritisation of active and transport in transport budgets at all levels of Government.

The new Transport Minister and Director-General must lead this change, and establish collaborative, productive, politics-free working relationships with local Governments particularly BCC. BCC also needs to drop the political game playing and let the Transport Department and Translink lead the planning and operation of active and public transport across SEQ.

It is also time to drop 'Main Roads' from the Department title as no single mode of transport is more important than the others!

Figure 1 - Measures that Matter SEQ Mode Share
https://backontrack.org/docs/media/mrdec23/figure1.jpg





Figure 2 - Connecting SEQ 2031 Target Mode Share
https://backontrack.org/docs/media/mrdec23/figure2.jpg





Figure 3 - 1996 Integrated Transport Plan Trend and Target
https://backontrack.org/docs/media/mrdec23/figure3.jpg





Figure 4 - Cost of Your Commute
https://backontrack.org/docs/media/mrdec23/figure4.jpg




Robert Dow
Administration
admin@backontrack.org
RAIL Back On Track https://backontrack.org

[ozbob]

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