Page 852 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 6 April 2022

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I know that Mr Parton will be disinclined to take my word for it, so it is fortunate that there are a range of external sources and recent case studies to back this up. Mr Parton’s original motion mentioned that Tasmania has recently introduced free public transport for a period of time, five weeks. What his motion did not highlight is that since that announcement, Metro Tasmania has faced some very significant challenges in delivering reliable services for existing passengers and any new ones that have joined since the free fares came in.

On the third day of the free bus program in late March, 81 bus services had to be cancelled across Tasmania because of a shortage of bus drivers to run them. I appreciate Mr Parton’s comments around the reasons for that, but this is something that I think has been foreshadowed by other pieces of work. It meant that commuters turning up at the bus stop would face longer wait times or cancelled trips, neither of which help to give people confidence that public transport is a great, accessible and reliable option.

One of the other external sources that I was referencing is that the Productivity Commission has recently considered public transport pricing in great detail, and in fact last year produced an extremely interesting research paper on the topic. To summarise the 214 pages of dense economic analysis, the Productivity Commission found that making public transport free can increase crowding and congestion on buses and trains, unless it is coupled with expensive increases to services, which state transport services do not have the money for when they cut all fare revenue.

Making public transport free does not materially reduce road congestion and can actually decrease rates of walking and cycling. Public transport replaces these forms of transport for short trips. The PC also found that making public transport free is:

… a poor measure to achieve social inclusion and affordability because there are other more important barriers to access and more users of public transport have few financial barriers to using it at current highly subsidised fare levels …

They also found that the most successful free public transport initiatives have been those that offer an innovative, contained approach to fare reduction, such as the Western Australian government’s lottery for free public transport for a year.

The Liberals like to, when it suits them, quote the Productivity Commission, quote numbers from the Productivity Commission’s reports and recommendations, but this particular report actually does not support the motion that Mr Parton has brought on today. I would also like to quote a local stakeholder, and that is the Public Transport Association of Canberra. Their president, Ryan Hemsley, last year told the ABC:

If there is money in the budget to make public transport free, there’s money available to make public transport better.

The financial impacts of COVID-19 on public transport systems around the world have been immense, and the ACT is no exception. Farebox revenue for this year is already projected to be around $20 million below usual levels, requiring a significant additional subsidy from the ACT government to keep services running at their current levels, at their current fare structure.


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