[Peakoil] from Canberra Times Q&A lunch times today

[Jenny Goldie]

Greens local leader Meredith Hunter was interviewed today:

Mark Crawley asks:  
With the recent discussions about Canberra being a back-up airport for Sydney as well as the horrible traffic experienced coming from Gungahlin everyday, how are we as a community going to get our Governments (both ACT and Federal) to invest in some long-term well needed infrastructure projects like light rail in Canberra and high speed rail between Canberra and Sydney? What are the ACT Greens doing to push this through?

Meredith: These kinds of sustainable transport projects would be fantastic for Canberra and the nation. With issues such as growing congestion, environmental problems and peak oil, we need to look at these new forms of sustainable transport urgently.

We can't keep pushing a business-as-usual approach for transport that sees reliance on cars, roads and airplanes. The first step is to get governments to start acting on their words. Too often, we've seen rhetoric about rail projects, only to see them drop off the agenda once the moment has passed. There are various ways to fund these big projects, including cooperation between the state and federal governments. Private public partnerships, and value-capture mechanisms that take advantage of land value.

Done right, these projects will pay off in the long run - economically, socially and environmentally.