Freeways just get clogged

THE time for public submissions into the environmental impact of the Majura Parkway expired this week.

But the trouble with the parkway is not environmental – it goes through a bit of clapped out kangaroo and cattle country. The problem is more an economic one and one of federal-territory relations.

Incidentally, isn’t it pitiful that road authorities can give the name “parkway” to a belt of harsh concrete containing cars belching out noxious gases and tyre noise. I can’t imagine anything further from the meaning of a park.

The background documents for the new freeway all suggest that its construction is a foregone conclusion. Further, Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said that the corridor would also contain a very fast train if it were constructed.

I hate to use the cliché crossroads, but perhaps it is apposite here. Canberra’s transport system is at the crossroads. Do we continue to go down the route (pardon the pun) of Sydney and Los Angeles and assume that constructing ever more expensive freeways will solve all traffic problems?

Canberra as a planned city was supposed to avoid traffic congestion. It was supposed to have four or five roughly equal commercial-residential centres, instead of the high-density centre that other cities have. But development interests over the years wore away that principle in favour of a high-density centre because that’s how developers make money.

The trouble is, Canberrans still wanted to drive to work and park easily, and transport planners bowed to the demand. Tuggeranong “Parkway” and Gungahlin Drive were built, and even in a small place like Canberra instantly became clogged at peak times.

It is economically foolish to continue this way. We have wasted $200 million on Gungahlin Drive and we will waste another $250 million on Majura Parkway. And no doubt another several hundred million on a Molonglo Parkway. We do this because we stupidly think that it is efficient and convenient to have a transport system that in order to take an 80 kilogram body to the centre of the city requires 500 kilograms of metal and plastic to go with it.

We do it because no government is prepared to bear the opprobrium of going through the hiatus period in which people are weaned off their cars on to a public transport system which initially is not very attractive.

The present bus service is nowhere near reliable or frequent enough to allow most families to ditch one or more of their cars. Nor is it frequent enough for people to duck out of work during the day for personal matters – across town to the dentist or back home to meet a plumber or whatever.

It can only become more reliable, more frequent and cheaper to run and use if more people use it. But that will not happen while governments go on providing cheap, long-term parking (directly, or indirectly through development conditions which require parking spaces) and ever more freeways.

In the short term, freeways and masses of parking will appease the masses, but in the long term the masses have to pay – one way or the other — for the obvious inefficiency of carrying 580 kilograms per person per journey. Cars can only move 2500 people an hour in each lane. Buses can move nearly 10 times that and rail 20 times. Once you get a population the size of Canberra’s you simply cannot provide enough roads if everyone wants to go to work by car. The Majura Parkway will get clogged at peak periods fairly quickly.

The costs come in congestion; pollution; poor-returning land use in the form of parking, freeways and personal garaging; and high fuel costs.

The Parkway will benefit some in the long term, though – the airport for example. For the airport, VFT does not stand for Very Fast Train but Very Fast Trucks.

The only danger for the airport in the Majura Parkway is that it might open a corridor for a very fast train. The road on its own would be fine for the airport because trucks, unlike trains, do not carry passengers.

But cutting the time a truck gets to Sydney from the airport would be a boon. From the time the curfew stops flights in Sydney at 11pm to around 4am freight coming in to Canberra by air could be in Sydney CBD before any freight arriving in Sydney after the curfew lifts at 6am.

The Majura Parkway will also solve a lot of traffic problems near the airport caused by poor federal-territory co-ordination on planning that allowed a major commercial centre to be built at the airport site. No-one can live near this commercial hub because of the noise so people have to commute at peak times.

The $250 million for just 11.5 kilometres of road will not be well spent. That same money could go a long way to improve bus frequency – a more efficient use of existing roads. Or to start light rail which will move people more efficiently and reap revenue from increased land prices around railway stations that come with the permanence of a rail.

Alas, however, nearly all the $250 million will be coming from the Federal Government, so it is hardly likely the ACT Government will refuse it, no matter how much better it could be spent elsewhere.

The two governments should be co-ordinating better transport options for Canberra not squandering $250 million on just 11.5 kilometres of road that might help the airport and temporarily relieve a few Gungahlin-Fyshwick-Tuggeranong commuters but will be of little benefit to the great majority of Canberrans.

As for the Very Fast Train, it should not be part of the equation. The train could use the Majura corridor with or without the parkway and the parkway could use it with or without the train.

And in any event, one of the prime efficiencies of trains is that they take people from central to central, and so any VFT should have a station at Parliament House and Civic.

We should go back to the drawing boards.