Courier Mail Editorial - All show on infrastructure

[ozbob]

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All show on infrastructure

All show on infrastructure
Article from: The Courier-Mail

May 29, 2008 12:00am

PREMIER Anna Bligh's signature hard hat has been getting quite a workout in the lead-up to the State Budget.

Hardly a day has gone by over the past few weeks without Ms Bligh or another Government minister parading about a worksite in safety vest and boots, sweeping their hand over the vast efficiency of it all for the accompanying camera crews.

The message the Government hopes Queenslanders will heed from all this activity is that the state's public infrastructure is in safe hands, and that those in charge are building enough roads, tunnels, pipelines and busways to ensure the region is more than able to cope with the pressures brought on by its phenomenal growth. That, however, is a fiction. Even a minor mishap on one of the region's major arterial roads carries the threat of bringing most commuter and freight traffic to a halt or, at best, a slow crawl.

The sheer necessity of having to build so much extra transport capacity so quickly has put more trucks and other traffic on the road, leading to more delays. The result is that traffic gridlock is rapidly becoming the southeast's most intractable economic problem.

The antidote to chronic road congestion is a good public transport system. But, as any trip on a peak hour train or bus would attest, southeast Queensland's public transport network is bulging at the seams.

Years of poor planning has left the region without enough buses or rail capacity to serve the people who want to do the right thing and leave the car at home.

Moreover, those in charge seem intent on coming up with new reasons to discourage people from using public transport. The Go Card is so full of glitches that the only part of the system operating according to plan is the regime of penalties imposed on people who fail to use it properly. A multimillion-dollar attempt at providing showers, lockers and other services in a purpose-built centre in the city to encourage more people to cycle to work has been marred by the decision to charge cyclists $5 a day to use it.

The Queensland Government is not alone among those in public administration who have failed to appreciate the economic benefits of investing in a reliable, convenient public transport system. But the region's continued growth has ensured the consequences of this mistake haunt everyone with a need to get around the place.

The unprecedented infrastructure investment that has turned major areas of Brisbane and the Gold Coast into building sites is being achieved at a cost many times more than would have been the case if this and previous governments had shown proper interest in urban planning. But the obvious burden this has put on the state's coffers is only the most obvious consequence. One of congestion's biggest problems is its theft of an individual's time, which eventually carries a social as well as an economic cost.

Commuting times grow longer at a time when the benefits of a balance between work and family life have never been more appreciated. Simply put, the region's transport congestion problems are the result of one of the biggest failures of public administration in the state's history. No amount of walking about in hard hats is going to erase that fact.

[ozbob]

The editorial is spot on IMHO.  To transport add power, water and health.

The situation is not looking good folks. 

[Huggies]

This is a very good editorial. It reflects what Pollies worry about the most and that's their own seat.