Page 4249 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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The case for favouring light rail over bus rapid transit has not been strongly made, especially when the submission itself points to the stronger economic performance of a bus rapid transit option.
I noticed that that bit was missing from Mr Gentleman’s speech. Let us not forget this bizarre statement that Minister Corbell made on 27 July:
The IA submission, which presented the costs and benefits of both BRT and LRT on an equal basis, shows that the LRT benefit cost ratio, when taking into account higher population and employment in the corridor, is 2.34, compared to BRT’s benefit cost ratio of 4.78.
You did not mention that, did you, Mr Gentleman? So even by the minister’s own figures, the return on investment, which takes into account capital uplift; pollution, time and other variables, shows that bus rapid transit will offer a better return than will light rail.
A few weeks ago the ACT opposition brought to the public’s attention through the Canberra Times the fact that the head of Capital Metro would become the second top paid ACT public servant with a package of approximately $390,000 a year. Just a couple of days ago, it was reported that the government will be hiring a director of communications and stakeholder engagement on a salary of approximately $185,000 a year. This is in addition to a media manager on around $125,000 and a media coordinator on about $85,000. So the ACT government will be spending about $400,000 a year on salaries for PR on this project. It seems to me that the government are far more concerned with public relations than they are about the delivery of core services.
The economics of this project are questionable, as are the patronage projections. In Queensland the former Labor government predicted that about 50,000 people a day would be using the Gold Coast light rail once constructed. However, it took an incoming coalition government to do a reality check and to reveal that the figures are actually going to be more like 17,000, a third of what Labor predicted.
At present in Canberra about 3,000 people use the Northbourne Avenue corridor in the morning peak on ACTION buses. However, the government are only expecting 4½ thousand to ride the light rail. So the government will be spending $614 million to get an extra 1,500 people onto public transport each morning. This is in a city of 365,000. Of course, this assumption is dependent on their calculation of 4,500 people being accurate. If this Labor government’s figures are anything like Queensland Labor’s then this 4,500 figure might be an exaggeration and the additional passengers figure might need some reworking.
The government still has not properly made the case as to why Gungahlin to the city was chosen as the first leg for light rail in the ACT. About 10 years ago a comprehensive study was commissioned by the ACT government which demonstrated that Belconnen to the city would be the more appropriate place to start a possible ACT network. Yet the ACT government has conveniently ignored that report and is seemingly blindly going forward with Gungahlin to the city. To date we have not seen
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