[Peakoil] Sydney public rail transport

[Alex Pollard]

Apparently passenger car travel has been static in Sydney since 2005
- coincides remarkably with Kenneth S. Deffeyes' date for Peak Oil.

from Crikey:




    
        
            13. Barry O'Farrell should get on
board public transport expansion 
        
        
            Gavin Gatenby, convener of EcoTransit Sydney,
writes: 
        
        
            BARRY OFARRELL, KRISTINA KENEALLY, NSW ELECTION, PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM 
        
        
            
            
A Barry O’Farrell government, almost certain to be
elected in NSW next year, will inherit a public transport
infrastructure crisis. Demand is rising relentlessly. To grasp
the pace of change, all you need to do is check the streets
surrounding Sydney suburban railway stations on a working day.
You’ll see that unrestricted parking within hundreds of
metres has been taken by new rail commuters. It was not like
this even three years ago.
            
According to the Commonwealth Bureau of Infrastructure,
Transport and Regional Economics’ 2009 yearbook,
passenger car travel in Sydney has been virtually static since
2005 (these statistics pre-date the onset of the global
financial crisis in late 2008 after which passenger car travel
certainly declined). In the same period, rail travel grew by
almost 9%.
            
This is a global phenomenon that reflects the reality of
oil production sliding from a bumpy plateau into accelerating
decline. We are in a classic vicious circle. Any substantial
reflation of the world economy will increase demand for
petroleum fuels and gas, causing a new price surge that will,
in turn, cripple the recovery.
            
In these difficult circumstances there will be huge public
pressure for a NSW Liberal government to push ahead with a
public transport renaissance that goes against the market
fundamentalist drift of recent decades, but we should remember
that things were not always seen from the same ideological
standpoint.
            
Until the 1970s, public transport was regarded by most
political conservatives as a "natural monopoly".
Experiments with outlandish forms of privatisation and
pseudo-competition date only from Margaret Thatcher’s
time and have proved a dead end. Robert Askin -- NSW’s
longest-serving Liberal premier -- may have been personally
corrupt in a quaintly old-fashioned way, but in the light of
the past 20 years, his record on public transport looks very
reasonable. Askin regarded the Eastern Suburbs Railway as one
of his greatest achievements and he could not have imagined
the core public transport task as anything other than a state
responsibility.
            
In the new circumstances it would be the height of folly
for a Liberal government not to break from the transport
planning assumptions -- the priority of road over rail
infrastructure and the dominating role of public-private
partnerships -- that have been championed by Treasury since
the Greiner-Carr era.
            
With traffic static or declining, Opposition roads
spokesman Andrew Stoner’s half-hearted endorsement of an
industry plan for an overarching PPP to operate Sydney’s
toll roads -- with the government taking all risk and tolls
used to fund more motorways -- would be a fruitless
exercise.
            
Until a few short years ago, the problem was that big new
roads quickly reached capacity and the additional traffic
generated clogged the rest of the road network. It was all
counterproductive, but good news for toll road profits. In the
post-energy crisis world, things, increasingly, don’t
work this way, as has been proved by the spectacular failure
of recent toll-road projects. Now, every dollar spent on roads
is a dollar not spent on sustainable transport solutions.
            
Under Kristina Keneally, the Labor government finally took
some halting steps in the right direction, cancelling Nathan
Rees’ ill-conceived metro rail adventure, committing
(hopefully, finally and seriously) to heavy rail expansion
and, perhaps most notably, kick-starting the expansion of
Sydney’s minuscule light-rail system.
            
A sustained light-rail program is critical for Sydney. Not
only can light rail at least double capacity on trunk routes
where bus services have reached capacity, it’s also very
cheap to build compared with heavy rail or underground metro.
With light rail we can therefore afford to lay down many lines
to service suburbs we could never otherwise afford to
cover.
            
Unfortunately, unlike roads, heavy rail, and buses, light
rail has no permanent bureaucratic champion and the current
response to demand for it is ad-hoc. The remaining
institutional opposition to the mode within Transport NSW and
Treasury must be swept away. Sydney urgently needs a
light-rail planning and construction authority staffed by
experts who will mostly have to be recruited in Europe.
Without this, the slew of light-rail projects now being
proposed by MPs and local government cannot be properly
assessed, costed, prioritised and planned for.
            
It is also critical that Sydney unlocks the enormous
potential capacity in the existing suburban rail system.
CityRail moves a million people every day but it could easily
move a million and a half. With two extra rail tracks under
the CBD and across the harbour, it will be possible bring more
frequent services to 250 stations. A new underwater harbour
crossing might be required, but with road traffic levels
static and plenty of capacity remaining in the harbour tunnel,
the option of reclaiming the two lost rail tracks on the east
side of the bridge should be seriously and rapidly
assessed.
            
But if Sydney never builds another new road, what will we
do with all those RTA road builders? They should be
systematically given the new skills necessary for a sustained,
long-term, expansion of rail, light rail and cycling
infrastructure and the renewable energy resources needed to
power the new and existing services. Failure to think in these
terms and act urgently will cost Sydney and NSW dearly.
            
*Gavin Gatenby is convener of EcoTransit Sydney, a
not-for-profit public and active transport advocacy
group.
            
        
    

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