Page 4946 - Week 15 - Thursday, 15 December 2005
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or harbours; and there is scope for reconfiguring. But it is apparent that, if we choose any of the substantive definitions of sustainability, a clever city in which everyone gets around behind his or her personal fossil fuel burner is not sustainable.
The obvious answer is a light rail transit system or some rapid transit system. This is an idea which has been resuscitated a number of times over the past 20 years, only to be discarded each time. The recent attempts to pursue the Griffin legacy have ignored the subject altogether. The claims in favour of light rail are strong. Rail efficiency is seven times greater than that of rubber-tyred vehicles on tar roads; a road lane can carry 2,500 people an hour; a busway can carry 5,000; and light rail can carry from 7,000 to 10,000 people.
Everyone will be familiar with the other numerous environmental benefits; yet, to date, we have shied away from doing anything about this, partly because of plain risk aversion and partly because of what some people might call fiscal responsibility, which pushes governments towards short-term incremental options. Ironically, such safe options may fail to capture the public’s imagination as they fail to capture market share, precisely because the options are safe and unexciting. Nor are current initiatives like providing bus interchanges, real-time bus information and a busway between the town centres likely to do much more. The planned busway—unlike Brisbane’s—would make almost no difference to commuter travel times.
It has been apparent for years that sensible public transport could pay for itself, especially in a city where land acquisition needs are few and they are facilitated by the leasehold system. At the last election, the Canberra Liberals undertook to look at the means of funding a light rail system for this territory. The following are some thoughts on the way forward. They are not hard policies; they are ideas for further development. The current government policy of limiting capital expenditure to what can be paid for from the annual budget would clearly rule out a project of this size, so we need to look at other funding options. Ironically, all governments, and especially Labor governments, are now reluctant to borrow in order to fund what any sane person would regard as necessary long-term investment.
Labor governments have burnt their fingers very badly in the not too distant past, especially in Victoria, but the result has not been a more careful approach to public borrowing, it has been an aversion to any public borrowing at all—as though there is no fundamental difference between borrowing for short-term consumption and borrowing to pay for essential infrastructure; as though borrowing cannot be done for good as well as for bad purposes. Just as the average family cannot finance home ownership without borrowing, so the average polity must finance at least some of its wealth-building infrastructure from borrowings.
Of course, it would be preferable if public borrowings could be supplemented by private investment. Unfortunately, given the recent history of public-private partnerships, that option is not looking so rosy these days. However, there is one type of partnership which would avoid the need for direct borrowing. That is based on what is called value capture. As a leasehold city, Canberra is particularly well placed to utilise such a model to help pay for expensive infrastructure through the increasing value of land along any transit route.
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