RACQ opinions

[Gazza]

Its worth googling the RACQs positions on things relating to PT. It's surprising how supportive they are for many things.
I reckon its worth amassing a few of these doucments.
It seems for them, any sort of transport project, road or PT, has its worth measured by how much it reduces congestion.

Not by other factors such as whether it provides a boost in mobility.

Northern Busway
http://www.racq.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/8999/Northern_busway_subnov06.pdf
They say that it is a waste of money and that some competing road projects have higher cost benefit ratios, so they should be done instead.

It seems that most of the extra bus boardings on routes absorbed by the busway will be off-peak, when congestion is not a serious problem.

Eg they seem to be saying encouraging off peak usage of PT is pointless, because congestion isn't a problem.

Will add more tommorow, as it is late now, but this is to get it started.

[SurfRail]

They will have changed their tune in 10 years time when the roads are saturated at all hours...

[#Metro]

The RACQ report is nonsense, and it can be shown that it is very simply.

On The South East Busway

The South East Busway is 16.5 km long and has ten stations between Eight Mile Plains in south and the Brisbane CBD in the north. Services from the south, south- east and south-west of Brisbane are mostly orientated towards the busway to make use of the excellent travel time and reliability benefits provided by the facility. It functions as the spine of Brisbane‟s bus network and has seen rapid patronage growth since its introduction. In fact, it has been so successful that parts of the busway are now "at capacity" with services being re-routed off the busway near the CBD to maintain effective levels of service for all passengers.

So what did the financial evaluation suggest? That no one would use it- Amazing!!!

The evaluation subsequently undertaken showed a Nett Present Value for the project of -$309M and a Benefit-Cost Ratio of 0.35, which lead to the conclusion that the analysis results "show the project to be unviable in economic terms", based on the evaluation tools commonly used to assess transport projects.

That's right- NEGATIVE NPV and BCR WELL BELOW 1.

Why did this come about?

The peak patronage location was just south of Mater Hill Station where approximately 55% of buses are diverted off the busway onto the Riverside Expressway, because of busway congestion issues downstream towards the CBD. At this peak location (using a surveyed peak two hour to peak one hour ratio of 1.65) the busway is carrying the equivalent of almost 10,000 cars an hour inbound, or over five general purpose lanes-worth of traffic. This location also reported 410 buses in the peak hour or a bus every 8.8 seconds.
Any road project of a similar capital cost to the busway project would be expected to receive a very healthy Benefit Cost Ratio with these levels of patronage.

Yes, the Northern Busway will be an utter failure - NOT!!

[#Metro]

The research paper is here ---> http://www.cmsl.co.nz/assets/sm/4473/61/paper152-Bitzios.pdf

It is worth downloading and saving.