Page 2494 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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The Centre for International Economics made comments about the potential risks of the capital metro project and the uncertainty around costs. Again these are valid comments but ones that are perhaps part and parcel of a very large and complicated project like light rail. There are indicative costs which are being refined, and more and more information is being released as it becomes available. I do not take the centre’s comments as a condemnation, merely as a highlighting of the need to continually release accurate information and minimise risks as much as possible. This is, of course, the ongoing work of the Capital Metro Agency, and the funding provided through this year’s budget will allow that work to occur.
Associate Professor Dobes’s comments in the Canberra Times are interesting, and in my view are primarily a call to government to use and present cost-benefit analyses properly. His July article highlights important points for people to consider, such as how much Canberrans value a public transport project compared to other potential projects—and he uses health as an example. He also makes comments on the accuracy or not of presenting jobs data as a social benefit.
His article from today’s paper is primarily a warning about optimism bias. That is a well-known concept in the transport planning world and one that has been studied from reviews of previous projects. Interestingly, optimism bias also occurs on road projects in forecasting traffic. The potential for optimism bias is not a reason not to do a project; it is something to be very careful to avoid. The government is aware of the potential for optimism bias, which is why it has expert and reputable people working on all of the assessments and modelling for light rail to ensure they are as robust and accurate as can be.
Again these are all fair comments, and I expect there will be ongoing differences between people who work in and study these academic disciplines. Professor Dobes, of course, has a variety of views on transport, which he raises in his article, some of which I am sure the Liberal Party would actually disagree with. For example, he notes that toll-free freeways will fill up quickly with cars when they are built—referring to the concept of induced traffic, which I know Mr Coe has ridiculed in the past. He goes on to write that congestion tolls might be a better way of achieving reduced congestion and increasing public transport use. Given his enthusiastic endorsement of Professor Dobes’s comments, I would be interested to hear Mr Coe’s views on that policy.
There is, of course, plenty of other debate going on. I note Professor Dobes has presented a more critical view of light rail, but Professors McMichael, Steffen, Newman and Norman have strongly argued the positives of the project. They wrote in the Canberra Times about how the light rail system will deliver major climate benefits through significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and that it will improve accessibility and significant social benefits, and allow land uplift in a way that bus rapid transit cannot.
The way I would characterise the commentary and criticism that Mr Coe is quoting is to say that it primarily highlights questions, risks and uncertainties and some specific criticisms about aspects of the project or the government’s explanation for them. But it is not the searing condemnation of the entire light rail project that the Canberra
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