The ACT Government will face some critical transport decisions in the next few years. Some will be pressing and localised. Some with be of a broader nature. This week the Government issued the Public Transport Options Study _ Stage 3 which concluded that a light-rail system is feasible for Canberra and that the Territory should move to the next stage _ engineering, environmental and detailed costing studies. The Government has made a lot of approving noises about light rail, and perhaps is not showing the degree of detactment and scepticism that it should for such a huge project. Several state-level governments (and their long suffering tax-payers) have had their fingers badly burned by public debt run up by public transport.
It may well be that light rail offers some solutions to Canberra’s public transport needs, but a Government would have to be very confident before it started to sink $400 million of taxpayers money into it.
The Government is clearly right to be looking at transport options and is right to be looking in detail at public-transport solutions. Canberra does suffer somewhat from the blight of car parks and over-reliance on the car. But it should not jump easily from that step to say that light rail is the answer to its prayers. It has many things going against it. It requires large capital costs to start; unlike buses its route is fixed; it can only serve the main trunk routes; it will take much of its clientele from existing bus customers. In the Canberra context it would be a bold experiment indeed. No other city of this size has tried it and others of larger populations have tried light rail and found it an expensive option.
The Government should be sceptical of the “”equity” argument. Light rail on the main trunk routes as proposed is more likely to serve people in permanent work in the central town centres _ professionals and the like on middle and higher incomes. The less well off are more likely to be the people in part-time employment with irregular hours and with dependent children requiring transport at odd times _ in short people who need the flexibility of cars.
The study’s suggestions for the financing of light rail _ partly through extra taxes on cars and contributions from Gungahlin land developers _ sound suspect. The thing should stand on its own merit.
The two pluses for light rail are the reduction of greenhouse gases and the lower operating costs. However, before these can be achieved an enormous capital investment has to be made over a long time. In that time bus technology can change altering the equation both on costs and greenhouse gases. Misuse of resources can be very environmentally destructive.
The Government should exhaust other options first. It is running a huge subsidy on the bus system, which augurs badly for light rail. It allows a highly regulated, inefficient taxi system. The licence system restricts the number of taxis and increases charges because the $250,000 cost of a taxi licence is passed on to passengers. Thus taxis are less attractive. In turn this makes buses less attractive because people do not want to feel “”stranded” or at the mercy of an expensive taxi system.
The danger of rushing in to light rail far outweighs the minor cost advantages of getting in quickly for the cost advantages of laying track before development. In any event, there is enough space on much of the trunk routes now which is unlikely to be compromised in the future.
Starting it in a decade’s time if the proof of its need solidifies might make more sense than leaping in now and tying up the ACT’s finances on what may prove to be an unwise fixture that cannot be easily removed.