Feedback and discussion invited - Paper Public Transport Reforms

[ozbob]

Tony has made this paper available for your consideration, information and feedback.

Tony's email address is: rlg@eis.net.au

Feedback is welcome direct to Tony or post here as desired

[#Metro]

Thanks for this.
This is just my opinion, note!v   

[ozbob]

Was this supposed to be in the open forum?

Yes, author is happy to have it public.  Author's viewpoint of course, and thanks for sharing.

[#Metro]

2.   Fares must be cheap — and eventually eliminated altogether;

Disagree. Strongly against this actually:

a. Politics
Any government that did this would make it widely vulnerable to having such a policy attacked as a 'free ride'.
The next government to come in may respond by reducing cost by cutting service to an affordable level for it or by re-instating costs.

Secondly, packaging this measure with other public transport improvements may 'poison' the package as a whole and make it unsellable
to the public, even though the other components and reforms in the package may be sound.

b. It's not the problem
There is a difference between costs and prices. A price is what you write on the ticket, it is printed on the ticket - $2.30, for example.
A cost is what someone pays, and must take into account both price AND the cost of waiting time. Even if the price is set to zero, the costs
are still there, in the form of waiting time. It is this 'waiting time' cost that I feel forms the bulk of the costs that people perceive.

People are more than willing to pay more for good service. Discounting or selling 'rotten apple' service for free is not the solution.

c. Not financially sustainable.
Something is sustainable if it meets three goals: social, environmental and financial. Free public transport fails the third criterion.

3.   Major infrastructure projects must place provision of public transport as one of the highest priorities to be considered;

Agree generally. However, there has been much excessive focus on "concrete-only" solutions to the exclusion of all others; It is not necessarily
true that simply building infrastructure will solve the problem. What is needed as well are 'soft' planning solutions, like making buses terminate
somewhere useful like a train, ferry or bus interchange rather than in the middle of nowhere, like increasing frequency on arterial corridors,
like using the current infrastructure more efficiently (e.g. QR needs to boost train frequency, there needs to be feeder buses to stations).

Infrastructure is justified- Cross River Rail is one example. However, building infrastructure everywhere is the most expensive and also
the slowest way to attack the problem. Plans to blanket the city with metro stations or LRT fall into this category. Being selective is key, because
funding is always the limiting resource.

4.   Competition requirements be removed from public transport providers;

It depends. It would be very expensive for the government to buy out all of the private bus operators
and that would probably cost millions or billions. And once you have done that, you haven't even put a single bus
on yet!

Instead, the Government and private operators should figure which roles are best performed by each
player. Government does revenue collection and planning and regulation the best, the private sector
can be left to organise it's day to day operations itself. Indeed, MTR Hong Kong and SMRT Singapore
are private or have private operations overseas (Melbourne). You can get integration, what matters is
that the government retain the strategic focus (see Mees et al in Public Transport for Suburbia)

5.Public transport must be considered as an essential part of the social (rather than the economic) infrastructure in major metropolitan areas and funding provided accordingly.

The problem with PT is that it has been run in welfare mode, and therefore has been left to run down.

The trick here is to get the system up to a level of quality that people are willing to pay for. The best transport systems also happen to have the lowest dependancy
on farebox ratio, it is the transit systems that have farebox ratios closer to 0% that are the ones that have the bad service characteristics.

Certainly, those who have financial difficulty can be extended a discount- currently it is 50%. More funding will be required, but I stress
that only more funding will not solve the problems- the money must be spent properly.

[#Metro]

On current operating revenues, the cost of totally eliminating public transport fares would be around $290 million a year (based on 2009-2010 fares revenue). As services would need to be expanded and new infrastructure provided over the implementation period, further costs would be required, which government must provide for in its budget. It is crucial that the full costs of this proposal take into account the savings of reduced private car usage, lower road maintenance bills, reduced traffic accidents and related hospital and medical costs, reduced greenhouse gas pollution; reduced ticketing costs. Additionally, there would be massive savings from stopping the construction of tunnels and bridges for private vehicles that at best effectively move traffic jams from one point of the road network to another.

I support PT on the basis that it increases mobility. I feel that future traffic growth should be accommodated by PT, and certainly the PT option would be more effective than
road construction programs of a similar cost (example: $770 million on Clem 7 could be argued to have more benefit if it were spent on more BUZ routes, train frequency or
LRT. Actually a good 2 track rail system, running trains every 2 minutes with good signalling would carry more people in one hour than Clem 7 does on an average day).

I don't believe that Public Transport reduces congestion or takes cars off the road. If public transport takes cars off the road, then those freed up spaces
become attractive to someone else who wants to drive and induced traffic occurs. So an argument based around taking cars off the road is going to suffer here. I feel
a better argument is that it increases mobility. For similar costs, you can get more people to work and more people to where they want to go vs a similar road project.

The second thing is that profit or farebox and benefit are not mutually exclusive. Again MTR Hong Kong and Singapore's SMRT run profits, and nobody there
feels that they are having less impact with their greenhouse gases, or that they are contributing to the road toll. You can have benefits and still charge for
the service.

There are also disbenefits to people from the result of "the burden of taxation" that must be levied on people who have to pay for free public transport
and the upgrades on top of that. That needs to be also accounted for.

[STB]

PT shouldn't be free IMO, it's a service that is provided and to have some sense of responsibility and ownership to that service that's provided a fare needs to be in place.  It also reduces the impact on Governments to fund these services, although only slightly.

I'm also against reducing the number of zones.  Since this is a fairly large PT system, to reduce the number of zones down to three as this author is suggesting can cause unfairness for those who live near a border of a zone and there would be a greater increase between one zone fare to a two zone fare, the 23 zones we have at the moment cushions that impact of the increases of fares as you travel through further zones.

I also noticed he is using Wikipedia.  Is this an academic proposal?  If so, then he has broken every rule in the book when it comes to using Wikipedia to produce an argument.

[#Metro]

This proposal would seek over time to implement such a policy, using a range of vehicle types and sizes operating on localised pick-up services which delivered passengers to a major urban transport hub (tram, bus or train).

Strongly agree. This sounds like a feeder-and-trunk core frequent network.

Services would be frequent and run around the clock, catering for shift- workers and people out for social activities.

Strongly agree. The single fastest cheapest way to increase patronage is to increase the FREQUENCY! The revenue collected
might be more than enough to offset the original investment  

Other initiatives would be to re-open closed rail tracks (e.g. to suburban Pinkenba and some country lines) and to begin planning and construction of light rail (tram) facilities.

Strongly agree. Not everything old needs to be re-opened. I would extend the Doomben line to Hamilton rather than re-open the line all the way to Bulwer island.
The other thing- you are missing BRT here. BRT is a legitimate transport mode, and it has a place in most integrated transport plans. Ferry/CityCat is also missing- in a place like Brisbane, that should be in there too...

[#Metro]

I also noticed he is using Wikipedia.  Is this an academic proposal?  If so, then he has broken every rule in the book when it comes to using Wikipedia to produce an argument.

I don't mind using Wikipedia, the argument will be looked at on its merits, whether or not the information came from wikipedia.
And wiki is actually not that bad either.

[#Metro]

State Governments should urge the Federal Government to defer any further subsidies to the car manufacturing companies unless they agree to tool up to produce efficient and economical public transport vehicles in a range of types and sizes.

Agree. There have been all sorts of "backdoor" subsidies for "research" and "green cars".
The industry is so profitable, why do they need government assistance to do these things?

[STB]

I also noticed he is using Wikipedia.  Is this an academic proposal?  If so, then he has broken every rule in the book when it comes to using Wikipedia to produce an argument.

I don't mind using Wikipedia, the argument will be looked at on its merits, whether or not the information came from wikipedia.
And wiki is actually not that bad either.

Yeah, I've just become quite sensitive to those who use Wikipedia nowadays with thanks to university, since discovering just how dodgy it can be when it comes to research.  It's a big no no in the academic world, except to guide you to finding articles to support your argument.  And for something like this I'd prefer proper research done rather than hearsay.

[#Metro]

Discussion about free public transport must include all related costs (e.g. the cost of NOT providing it), including road construction and maintenance, the various costs of pollution (health, greenhouse gas, etc), time wasted (people sitting in grid-locked cars), as well as the benefits (social and financial)

The problem with a transport policy centred around free public transport is:

* It tackles the wrong issue- the problem is access, connectivity, frequency and scope of hours, not fare prices.
* It erodes the revenue base
* We tried a week of free PT in Brisbane, and I was very unconvinced that it would do anything for this city.
* I feel that you can get all the benefits of PT and charge for it too, so it is not necessary to make it free anyway.

[treeves]

I also noticed he is using Wikipedia.  Is this an academic proposal?  If so, then he has broken every rule in the book when it comes to using Wikipedia to produce an argument.

This is not intended to be an academic paper: it's floating ideas. There's nothing wrong with using Wikipedia as long as you know that it the source, and is not always 100 per cent reliable. But let's not throw out a whole discussion paper on PT because there is some Wikipedia content in it!

[STB]

I would also like to add that the Author conveniently forgets that the people would still be paying for 'Free' public transport anyway through, mostly through taxes.  For those who don't use it or can't use it for whatever reasons, then those would be crying foul at having to pay for something that they don't use, although I guess that happens with most taxes anyway.

I think people need to come to realise that there will always be traffic jams even if every single bus route, train route and ferry route operated every 5mins everyday of the year, 24/7 and it was free.  Public transport works for some instances but it's not the be all end all solution.  Myself for example, I'm going to have to learn to drive for my new career (shock horror!) due to the type of work that I'll be doing, production work, and that would mean attending locations quickly or taking heavy expensive equipment such as cameras or sound equipment.

[#Metro]

Selections from Public Transport Users Association, Victoria:
Myths about public transport
Fact: There are enormous economies of scale in public transport. To carry each additional passenger costs virtually nothing, whereas to put each additional car on the road system adds to congestion and pollution. What's important is to ensure public transport is of high enough quality to attract passengers throughout the day, so that operating costs aren't wasted running empty vehicles. Running good public transport does require real money, but on the whole it costs much less to run public transport well than it does to run it badly.

The problem here is that the relationship between more passengers and lower cost per passenger becomes broken if you make PT free.
Also from the PTUA website:

(Adelaide was also in the early 1990s the first city to experiment with free public transport for students, as was proposed by the Victorian Liberal Party in the 2006 state election. This did not help arrest Adelaide's steep decline in patronage, and is best seen as a policy that may or may not have benefits for education but probably doesn't for transport.)

So, if the objective is to maximise public transport patronage, eliminating fares on its own is a rather ineffective strategy. As it is also the most costly strategy (even taking into account the savings from eliminating fare collection), it is probably not the first we should consider.

An Age article in March 2006 estimated that free public transport would cost about $340 million a year. Logically, this has to be weighed up against the alternative, which is to spend an additional $340 million a year on improved services. This would likely boost patronage more than free public transport would, and because more passengers means more fares collected, there would be increased revenue allowing services to be improved further still.

On the other hand, once you've made public transport free, the money for any additional services has to be found in government budgets. So does the money to employ staff, that are needed for passenger assistance and security even if they're not selling tickets. This means that the more well-used the system is, the more it costs the taxpayer - quite the reverse of the world's best public transport systems, which come close to covering their costs (often despite relatively low fares) because they attract high patronage and hence high fare revenue.

They money spent on free PT would be better used on funding more services and boosting frequency. It would pull more passengers that way IMHO.

[#Metro]

This is not intended to be an academic paper: it's floating ideas. There's nothing wrong with using Wikipedia as long as you know that it the source, and is not always 100 per cent reliable. But let's not throw out a whole discussion paper on PT because there is some Wikipedia content in it!

Yes I agree. Thanks for sharing this with us!  

[STB]

Something else I just thought of, and this may seem strange but it's true!  When there was that week of free PT across SEQ for the flood relief effort, I felt a bit 'welfare-ish' for using something that had no cost to me.  It felt like it was something you would use as a last resort if you had no money and had to get somewhere.  Purely subjective I know and the free PT wasn't even in that sort of context, not even near it.  But that's how I personally felt when using free PT.  During that week I actually almost felt like I would've preferred to drive, if I knew, as I wasn't spending my money on anything and it didn't feel right to have money but use a public service for free.

[#Metro]

My Summary:

Good Bits
* Frequency, access, and scope of hours
* Actually feeding passengers into a trunk system (there was a mention of hubs)
* Higher quality transport discussed (LRT, tram)
* Local feeder services- not everywhere has a big enough car park

Things that didn't sit well with me:
* The central problem is assumed to be fare levels, and I disagree with this, this is the least of the problems in PT, I feel
Car users already have to pay $20 000 upfront for a car, if fares really were the problem, everybody would be on the bus by now!  

* Burden of taxation to fund services and also competition for that money vs other uses (education/health)

* I don't believe that PT reduces congestion, anymore than lane capacity increases "reduce" congestion.

Thanks for sharing this with us. You've gotten further than any government has ever come with actually detailing
things! I think your proposal has more chance of being implemented (as much as I disagree with many components of it, such as free fares and
fiddling with the zones) than everything in CON SEQ 2031 has of becoming reality!!!  

[STB]

My Summary:

Good Bits
* Frequency, access, and scope of hours
* Actually feeding passengers into a trunk system (there was a mention of hubs)
* Higher quality transport discussed (LRT, tram)
* Local feeder services- not everywhere has a big enough car park

Things that didn't sit well with me:
* The central problem is assumed to be fare levels, and I disagree with this, this is the least of the problems in PT, I feel
Car users already have to pay $20 000 upfront for a car, if fares really were the problem, everybody would be on the bus by now!  

* Burden of taxation to fund services and also competition for that money vs other uses (education/health)

* I don't believe that PT reduces congestion, anymore than lane capacity increases "reduce" congestion.

Thanks for sharing this with us. You've gotten further than any government has ever come with actually detailing
things! I think your proposal has more chance of being implemented (as much as I disagree with many components of it, such as free fares and
fiddling with the zones) than everything in CON SEQ 2031 has of becoming reality!!!  

I slightly disagree that it has a chance of being implemented, especially the free fares suggestion.  

I just took a look at one of those places that was mentioned in the paper, the Mandurah (WA) free bus from the railway station to the foreshore and I've realised that technically you've already paid for it anyway.  That is, you've paid for a fare from the city to Mandurah railway station for example (zones 1 to 7) and then you board that bus (Zone 7).  You've already paid for zone 7 even though it's 'free'.  

Same would be the free buses in the city, now, not everyone would be catching PT to catch those free loop services but there would be enough catching a train or a bus from their local area to the city where you have technically paid for zone 1 anyway, so it wouldn't cost anymore regardless to catch the free loop.   You've already paid for zone 1, so in turn you've paid for those zone 1 only free loop buses.

So overall, those services aren't technically free anyway, unless you don't use PT beyond those services.  Even then, you would pay taxes that would be used to fund those free bus services.

Now you can see why I dislike Wikipedia.  Drilling down into the information and being more critical about your argument is more productive than rattling off 'free' services already existing.

[somebody]

I'm also against reducing the number of zones.  Since this is a fairly large PT system, to reduce the number of zones down to three as this author is suggesting can cause unfairness for those who live near a border of a zone and there would be a greater increase between one zone fare to a two zone fare, the 23 zones we have at the moment cushions that impact of the increases of fares as you travel through further zones.

Hear here.  And presumably the minimum fare would have to be increased.

It's all worked out by the computer now.  Why mess with it to make it simpler, when it's pretty simple already.

I'd actually prefer a distance based charging model. i.e. a flag fall + rate per km for the first N kms, with perhaps a slight discount on the per km charge for kms beyond 10km, 25km and 50km.

[Gazza]

^I reckon in the future they could just calculate it by the GPS locations of your touch on and off, and then calculate the distance as the crow flies between those two points.

The first stage of reforms would seek to reduce the relationship between fares
and distance travelled within the Translink network.

No.
With any other form of transport you pay according to distance....You go further in a taxi, your fare is higher. You drive further, you pay more in fuel. A flight to London costs more than a flight to Perth etc.
If you have to go further each day compared to someone else, then stop being a friggen tightarse and just pay the fare!

I don't think the Government can be expected to root out every single inequity that can occur as a result of geographical location. I used to live in the country, so food and fuel was more expensive. At the same time our house was cheaper than one in the city. Should the government have been giving me cheaper food? And at the same time give city dwellers cheaper houses?
Equally priced hospitals and schools/other beneficial things are one thing, but you have to draw the line somewhere outside these core needs and accept there will be variations in costs for different people.

This would ensure that people are not penalised for living in outlying areas,
and would encourage greater numbers of these people to use public
transport.

But I see it as a choice to be living in outlying suburbs, because they want a big backyard etc for the same money. I mean, if uni students (who one of the poorest social groups) are able to live in inner suburbs like Toowong and St Lucia, and make it work, then I think most people could actually do it. There's nothing stopping people from doing the sums and working out where the most cost effective place to live in their personal situation.
So in conclusion this whole "stopping people from being penalised" is not a good enough reason (Especially when you consider people in inner areas who need higher frequency/capacity services as a result of the population density/congestion in their areas, would have money being sapped away for the benefit of those in outer suburbs.)

People are more than willing to pay more for good service. Discounting or selling 'rotten apple' service for free is not the solution.

Agreed.
An analogy I have been thinking about. Remember when broadband internet first started coming out. Many people went from paying say $20 a month for dial up, to $60+ per month for broadband...Proves the point that people will pay more if something is good and it increases convenience....They actually managed to get people to triple the amount they were previously spending.

The price of tickets has nothing much to do with it, (except perhaps in the case of very low income earners who need to watch every cent, and don't necessarily value their time highly)...But for the most part we are a wealthy developed country, so most people have the power to choose how they want to travel. At the same time, people are rational. In places like Melbourne, PT has the lions share of peak hour trips to the CBD because in that situation PT provides the best way to travel.
Clearly there is something that can be seen from this.

Even with ticket price hikes, PT tickets are still a very cheap thing in the scheme of things today...Cheaper than a cup of coffee or a burger in many cases.
This is why debates about percentage discounts for PT here on RBoT really annoy me....The price levels we are talking about are just too low for any further discounts to have a meaningful impact, because they're cents in the dollar.

Sometimes I do feel that when people demand free/cheaper tickets than what they are now they are perhaps acting a little self entitled...."Oh, but we're saving the environment, the government should be giving us free travel for being such a good puppy, touch me. Cheaper tickets would mean more riders!!!"

Umm, no, cheaper tickets would benefit you, but would not actually magically make the system attractive for the 90% of people who don't use it.
At the same time, I reckon there's gotta be some component people pay, always. After all, you're being whisked somewhere in the city, and that in itself is something that bears utility to you (Eg it allows you to get to work, or allows you to go out and have fun, or see friends etc) Society as a whole doesn't need to be paying for that side of things do they?

I see the subsidy mix like this:
-The bit you pay is for the benefit you get from travelling.
-The bit the government pays if the benefit from reduced pollution/congestion/accidents/deferred road spending etc.

3.   Major infrastructure projects must place provision of public transport as one of the highest priorities to be considered;

I do agree with this point of his. Legacy Way is a prime example of how useful PT infrastructure (Connection to the busway) could have been incorporated at a tiny fraction of the total cost, yet it didn't happen.