Article: Figures don't add up when it comes to rail versus road

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Figures don't add up when it comes to rail versus road

Figures don't add up when it comes to rail versus road

    * John Legge
    * June 26, 2009

THE extraordinary costs nominated by the Government for the most modest public transport improvements are more than a matter for amusement: they are the visible signs of a malign culture in the Department of Transport ? a culture that believes public transport is best provided by buses running on freeways. This leads the department to go to extreme lengths to make its proposals look financially respectable and to denigrate fixed-rail proposals.

One strip of land a little more than three metres wide can carry one freeway lane or one track for a light or heavy rail service. Building one lane of a freeway will cost about $6.5 million a kilometre; building a kilometre of light or heavy rail track will cost slightly less. Both costs can be affected by terrain: tunnels and bridges are expensive. If the strip of land is used for private cars it can carry about 2000 people an hour; if it is used by buses, this goes up to about 2500 people an hour; a light rail service can carry 7500 people an hour and a heavy rail service 20,000 or more.

The Monash Freeway serves a busy and growing area to Melbourne's south-east, and was running out of capacity. It did have a median reservation east of Warrigal Road wide enough for a twin track heavy or light rail service, originally designated as the route for a train service to the Waverley Park stadium. The bureaucrats in the Department of Transport persuaded the Government to let them build two extra road lanes on the reservation, guaranteeing further congestion almost as soon as the work is complete.

If an engineer got anywhere near the ear of the minister or the Premier, the decision to tarmac the rail reservation on the Monash would have raised serious questions: why spend $60 million to add two traffic lanes and increase capacity by 33 per cent when spending a little more money on a fixed-rail service (including the cost of making a connection with the rest of the system) would have increased capacity by between 120 and 300 per cent?

When The Age's Mary-Anne Toy found a Department of Transport spokesman prepared to explain the $562.3 million price tag on the Epping to South Morang extension (June 13), she was treated to something that would have made a great script for Yes, Prime Minister. Toy pointed out that a highly respected engineering consulting firm had costed the extension at $44.5 million: the department's spokesman explained that since patronage on the metropolitan train system had grown 21 per cent in the past couple of years, the department had decided to take a "holistic approach".

This turns out to mean that, starting from the $44.5 million that the tracks and new station would cost, the department tipped in $180 million for road works to avoid creating new level crossings. This money does nothing for the train service.

The Government has decided to buy some trains: this means new stabling is needed; but building this is a general expense and has almost nothing to do with the South Morang extension. There are excellent reasons for replacing the 19th-century safe working system between Greensborough and Hurstbridge with modern automatic signalling; but this too has nothing whatever to do with the tracks between South Morang and Epping.

Challenged to explain why the work was going to take three years when elsewhere in Australia railways are built at up to a kilometre a day, the spokesman veered into fantasy. Work would have to be done at night for safety reasons, he assured Toy. But daytime work alongside operating tracks is routine in Australia, including on the Melbourne system. Thirty years ago the track between Macleod and Greensborough was duplicated in under a year, replacing two level crossings with overpasses, building two footbridges and rebuilding two stations, a job comparable in complexity with the South Morang extension. Train services continued normally throughout.

Returning to the use or misuse of the Monash Freeway central reservation. Using it for heavy rail would have cost under $6000 a person an hour of added capacity. Using it for extra road traffic lanes cost more than $30,000 a person an hour of capacity.

To make the road traffic lanes look economically superior, the cost of the rail alternative had to be inflated by a factor of at least five.

The South Morang extension shows how this is done. A $44.5 million project has been presented to the Government and people of Victoria as costing $562.3 million, a multiple of 12.6. Yes, Premier: rail costs so much that it is uncompetitive with new freeways. Poppycock!

John Legge is a Melbourne author, educator and consultant.