Page 2488 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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reducing the lanes for other commuters from three lanes to two. Do the Liberals think that is going to lead to better travel time outcomes for the broader motoring public? It is certainly going to lead to better outcomes for public transport users, but benefits to public transport users are not the only consideration; benefits to the operation of the road network as a whole are also a consideration.
The Liberals’ proposal, if it does indeed involve reducing the number of general lanes from three to two, means worse travel outcomes for the motoring public, who will still make somewhere around 70 to 80 per cent of all journeys to work if we meet our travel mode shift targets. Is that a good idea? No, it is a terrible idea. Public transport interventions should provide for better outcomes for the transport network as a whole, not create winners and losers.
The alternative for the Liberals is to say, “We’re going to use the median, the island in the middle down Northbourne Avenue, to put in a dedicated busway.” This entails building a road down the middle of the median strip of Northbourne Avenue. That is what it entails. That intervention in that landscape corridor is the wrong design outcome for that iconic avenue, an avenue with particular protections under the national capital plan which requires a public transport response that integrates into that landscape—not in a way that would devastate it as a bus rapid transit lane would.
Those are the alternatives. The Liberals are mute on this issue. They are completely mute on this issue. They assert that BRT is better, but they do not get down to the nuts and bolts of what it means on this avenue. Until they do, and until they start making comparisons that are reasonable and projected over time in relation to transit and travel time, their arguments simply do not have any credibility.
This government is focused on this project because it will have significant benefits for the city. We have heard the Liberals say that, for example, the Bob Nairn report should be considered a reasonable assessment of the costs and benefits of light rail in Canberra. Let us have a look at what the Nairn report actually concluded and the assumptions in relation to those conclusions.
The Nairn report uses incorrect cost assumptions, for a start. For example, it assumes that light rail will be based on two divided tracks on either side of the kerb northbound and southbound along Northbourne Avenue. This is the most expensive option. Mr Nairn himself is on the record as saying that an alignment centred on the median strip, as proposed by the government, would yield significant cost savings.
Here we have it: a report commissioned and paid for by the Liberal Party that chooses the most expensive option comes out with an unfavourable cost-benefit analysis. What a surprise! The facts are that the author of that report himself concludes that an alignment that is centred on the median strip, and not the alignment Mr Coe told him to analyse, would yield significant cost savings. This has a direct impact on Mr Nairn’s calculation of benefit-cost ratio.
The figures in Mr Nairn’s report are also difficult to reconcile. It states that a $44.22 million per kilometre figure has been used in the preliminary estimates used in the report and that the estimated construction cost for the Gungahlin line is
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