Page 2744 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 16 August 2017
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The Canberra Liberals were quite willing to try to negotiate on this motion by moving an amendment that would call on the government to put together some evidence to support the overall light rail strategy. It is all very well to put out a master plan with lines on a map, but it would be good to have that substantiated with evidence. I note that the 2003-04 KBR study and the 1994 Booz Allen Hamilton study did some thorough work regarding projections for the next 20 years. The 1994 Booz Allen Hamilton study made assumptions with low, average and high scenarios about populations and patronage and drew some conclusions based on those assumptions. Of course assumptions can change, but they at least give some evidence or some perspective as to the optimal rollout for light rail.
If we are going to have a light rail rollout, the staging is extremely important. If the staging is done appropriately you should be able to maximise patronage on the earlier stages as well as the stage that you are adding to the network. For example, by adding stage 2 to Woden you are increasing demand from Woden to the city, but hopefully you are also increasing demand from Gungahlin through the city and on to somewhere on stage 2. That is why that staging analysis is so important and that is why we are disappointed that there has not been appropriate analysis published about the benefits of Belconnen to the city and also city to Russell or city to the airport. It is my hunch—there is no evidence so hunches are all we have got—that the Belconnen to the city leg would probably do a considerable amount for stage 1 as well, but without the evidence it is very hard to make a definitive call. Whilst the government may have that in house it certainly has not been released publicly, and it certainly was not released before they committed to stage 2.
How do we know that the optimal route for stage 2 was to go from Woden to the city as opposed to city to the airport or city to Belconnen? Without the evidence we simply do not know. I imagine that the government has done that work, and therefore what we were proposing to move through an amendment was common sense and would be the best case scenario in terms of providing evidence. But it seems the Greens are not willing to support replacing number (5) with a call on the government to undertake and publish staging analysis for all stages identified in the 2015 ACT light rail master plan as per the 1994 Canberra light rail implementation study and that the analysis should include but not be limited to estimates for demography, patronage, possible route alignments, capital costs, operating costs and finance operations.
We are happy to either replace (5) or add this as a new number (6), but it seems that neither the government nor the Greens are willing to entertain that, which is disappointing, so there is little point in moving that amendment. We are disappointed that the government seems so reluctant to provide an evidence-based approach to the staging of light rail. Where is the analysis which demonstrated by comparison that Woden to the city was the optimal route for stage 2? Where is the analysis to show the optimal stage 3 and optimal stage 4 and optimal stage 5 routes? It is so important to reaffirm the investment of past stages to get the next stage right, but the fact that the government will not do this work despite similar work having been done in 1994 and in 2003-04 is frustrating.
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