$228m wasted on soon-to-clogged freeway

THE people of the ACT are being duped by the Territory and Federal Governments over the Majura Parkway. The case is another example of a poor thinking in Australia’s transport system.

The independent federal body, Infrastructure Australia, listed the parkway as one of 10 priority projects last year. The less independently minded Federal Government decided not to fund it that election year – the two ACT seats are solidly Labor so why waste money on infrastructure here.

As a result, the ACT said it would stump up half the money. Infrastructure Australia, perhaps sensing a too-eager Territory, then changed its tune earlier this year and said its support was conditional upon a toll being imposed on the road.

This week the Feds agreed to drop the toll after Chief Minister Katy Gallagher ruled out ACT funding if it were to be a tollway.

She should have ruled out ACT funding full stop. A toll would have just added insult to injury for the people of the ACT.

The parkway has very few benefits for the ACT (and even fewer with a toll) and quite a few disadvantages. It has major advantages for the Federal Government.

The parkway may well be totally within the ACT but it essential role will be to link two significant pieces of national infrastructure – Canberra “International” Airport and the Federal Highway.

Ultimately it will play a big role in relieving pressure on Sydney Airport. Sydney Airport is under an immovable curfew and is coming under almost impossible pressure. Something has to give before long.

Thirty years of dithering has proved the Federal Government is not interested in building a new Sydney Airport, or even a new second Sydney Airport to supplement the existing one. Political pressures are too great. Marginal seats and whingeing residents abut every proposed site. Moreover, the resident airlines (especially Qantas) are not interested in a costly move from the existing airport.

The obvious answer is to move a lot of the freight flights to Canberra, which does not have a curfew. Fly into Canberra at 3am and the freight trucks are into the Sydney CBD before freight trucks meeting 6am flights into Sydney. Some buses with international passengers could join even the freight trucks.

But the proposal will be almost certainly dependent upon a high-quality Canberra bypass to the Federal Highway.

In short, the Majura Parkway will save the Federal Government hundreds of millions by enabling the almost indefinite postponement of a second Sydney Airport.

So the big beneficiaries will be the Federal Government and the Canberra Airport. The latter, no doubt, will charge the trucks and buses access fees to the airport, current form suggests. Why should ACT ratepayers kick in? And why should they be slugged with a toll for using a road they paid half of?

With the parkway easing the freight proposal, Canberrans will also endure sleep-destroying aircraft noise. Human tolerance of noise depends not merely on its absolute level, but its timing. Noise in the middle of the night or early morning is much worse than in the middle of the day.

What are the advantages for Canberrans? Not many. The four-lane parkway might entice some trucks which might otherwise go through the city in the middle of the night rather than the existing two-lane Majura Road, but that could be stopped with load limits.

As for its use as a Canberra artery, the prospects are limited.

Canberra is not immune from the fundamentals of traffic that apply in other cities in the world: you can build roads to the limit of your financial capacity but before long they will fill up at peak times.

Cars take 2500 people per lane per hour; buses about 20,000 and trains about 50,000.

As Gungahlin grows and the pressure on Northbourne Avenue causes gridlocks, many Gungahlin residents will see the advantage of using the parkway, sweeping round and entering the city from the south – clogging other roads. It will benefit Gungahlin residents working in Hume, Woden and Tuggeranong, but that’s about it, and only if the parkway does not get clogged with other traffic.

The fundamental problem is that successive governments have fallen victim to business growth lobbies. Worse, ACT Governments have abandoned the sensible policy of five equal towns (Centre, Woden, Belconnen, Tuggeranong and Gungahlin) and allowed employment and commerce in the centre to grow with higher buildings, at the expense of the towns.

So Canberra is beginning to get all the problems of congestion at the centre, like other cities. These could easily have been avoided with better planning and encouragement of government offices in the towns which would have attracted other activity. But, of course, that would not have been as profitable for property and business interests who can charge higher rents for the same built space in a high-demand central area.

But this comes at the cost of more restrictive and/or expensive movement through the city. As Canberra’s population swells to half a million, the proposition that to transport an 80 kilogram person to and from work each day requires 500 kilograms of plastic and steel to go with them becomes an impossible quest.

The big policy makers and people who head the major business and property interests have their paid parking spots and it is no concern to them. But if you are paying off a mortgage in Gungahlin on even double average weekly earnings, parking costs in the city and the congestion on Northbourne Avenue are going to make car journeys to work prohibitive.

So a sensible government looking a the longer term would start looking at that rather than offering to pay half of the ludicrously named Majura “Parkway” – at an ever-increasing cost, now at $288 million for 11.5km of road.

It may seem a minor point to object to the Orwellian naming of a ribbon of concrete and steel a “parkway”, but the naming illustrates the mindset. If I want to go somewhere, I get into my car and motor down a “parkway”, like going for a care-free, innocuous country drive in the days when oil was cheap and space was plentiful.

For governments, though, the transition is difficult. People want more roads and cheap parking now, so they can drive to work because public transport is not frequent or reliable enough.

So governments succumb, building ever more “parkways” and “freeways” which eventually get clogged. The lead time for public transport investment, particularly rail, is too long. That’s what has happened in Sydney with terrible results for its residents. Canberra should not go that way and should start by not throwing $144 million, and rising, at the Majura Parkway.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 09 July 2011.