Independent MLA Michael Moore accused the Government yesterday of underplaying a detailed report which he said had come out against light rail.
He wants the $500,000 extra study on light rail delayed pending an Assembly committee study of the detailed six-volume report. He said the Government had prevented people making an informed judgment about light rail by underplaying the DJA Maunsell and Partners report and making much public noise about reports which favoured light rail.
Mr Moore wrote to the Minister for Urban Services, David Lamont, yesterday asking that the DJA Maunsell and Partners report be made more publicly accessible and that it be more carefully considered before $500,000 were committed to studying the next step.
He described the Government’s decision to spend the money as an election stunt.
“”They have not got beyond their Hornby model railway sets or they haven’t overcome their nostalgia,” he said.
However, Mr Lamont said the report had been available since August 1993 when it had been released by the Government for six weeks for comment. It was available at Government shopfronts.
Mr Moore said the Johnson report had made it clear that light rail was not appropriate for a city Canberra’s size and plan. The capital cost would be $500 million, or about $50 million a year. At present, $70 million a year of community money was spent on ACTION.
It meant money would have to come from higher rates, increased parking fees and fines and increased traffic fines. That amounted to more difficulties for Civic businesses.
The $50 million would be spent on unnecessary rail when there was a good road system that had to be maintained anyway. The rail would service only the choice trunk routes undercutting the only profitable bus routes. This in turn would reduce the buses’ capacity to service the intra-suburb branch routes which were the most important from a social-justice point of view.
Once a Government started to build light rail, no future government could undo it. Their only way to reduce public-transport costs would be to cut the intra-suburb services.
“”Light rail would undermine the integrity of a unified bus system,” he said. “”ACTION is not perfect but this will make it worse and more expensive instead of making it better.”
It would increase traffic congestion because it would reduce traffic lanes and clog intersections.
Mr Lamont said the Johnson report had said light rail was viable in the longer term. However, a later report, the Stage 3 report report by Booz-Allen and Hamilton had said it was viable now. The Government wanted to further test some of its assumptions and had ordered further work as any responsible government would.
The Booz-Allen report had found that light rail “”would result in considerable benefits for the Canberra community over other long term options”.
Mr Lamont accused Mr Moore of making cheap political milage out of the costs involved in taking informed steps along the path for advancing such major works. The ACT had to make major decisions from which they had been shielded by a paternalistic Federal Government.
A recent paper by Ian McAuley, a lecturer in public-sector management at the University of Canberra, argued that environmentally it would be more destructive to misallocate resources in the construction of an economically indefensible light-rail system than it would to continue with buses, implementing improvements in bus technology as they arose, even though in other cities with other passenger loads light rail might be less environmentally sensitive.
Mr McAuley argued you could not say one form was better environmentally than the other; it depended in what circumstance they were being used.
Mr McAuley’s paper backed up Mr Moore’s comment about toy trains. Mr McAuley said light rail favoured commuters with regular travel patterns _ people with steady jobs in the town centres, mainly professionals and proportionately more male. People with part-time jobs and irregular travel needs _ more often women with children who move between part-time jobs and child-care and shopping needs _ needed the flexibility of a car. The latter would be inequitably cross-subsidising the former with light rail.