Sydney Light Rail Debate: Amusing

Sydney's love affair with arguing about something they clearly need has always been entertaining, but the Sydney Morning Herald's 'City In A Jam' series has been particularly so.

Stupidly, I can't remember all of the names involved and therefore may not be called upon to reliably remember actual facts, but the argument began to get quite heated on January 17 when a pro-bus lobbyist-type person called John Lee jumped on the 'buy more buses' bandwagon. He said buses only take up 1% of CBD traffic (ha!) and that buses can carry more passengers per hour than light rail. Obfuscation of statistics can be fun and he really took that ball and ran with it.

Lee also says that trams aren't any better for the environment compared to buses because they move the emissions back to the generation source. Well, yes, but power stations extract a better burn from their coal than diesel buses (remember those CNG buses? Yeah, me neither.) and it certainly removes the airborne particulate problem that is blighting Sydney. Well, part of it anyway.

Lee also cited problems with ticket integration and most amusingly, cited a 1908 (!) report into trams on city roads.

'A 1908 royal commission into city improvement recommended that Sydney's trams be replaced with buses. It concluded trams were inflexible, expensive, and took up too much room.'

1908? He went on to give some ridiculous costing and failed singularly to miss the point - by giving outlandish costings of pricing trams vs buses, prattled on about Euro III emissions buses (running at about 120db, making Sydney inordinately noisy) and failing to account for all the technologies in place in countries all over the world, some of them technically third world, where people have use one ticket.

Priceless. Who is John Lee, you ask? He's the CEO of Sydney Buses. His background? Communications...as in spin...hmmm.

The very next day, the guy who runs Metro Transport (they run the Monorail and the SLRT), Kevin Warrell responded.

'Travelling on the light rail in the CBD would not cost more. The CBD light rail proposal put to the NSW Government involves no increase in overall fares to passengers who would purchase a joint bus-light rail ticket. When light rail is implemented in the right place, the cost per passenger is lower than bus or heavy rail. Compared with, say, a bus transitway, light rail is exceptional value.'

'As for passengers changing modes, it works in Singapore, Paris, London and virtually every other major city in the world. Many Sydney commuters interchange every day, and CityRail is introducing more interchanges as part of its clearways proposal. The key is designing the interchange to work efficiently for passengers.'

Naturally, he would err on the side of light rail considering he's going to be front and centre if a tender ever gets handed out. Note, however, he mentioned having light rail 'in the right place.' Lee reckons light rail is no good at all. You ask a Melbourne-ite who lives in the inner city about trams and most will say they are terrific.

In an article published in the Herald on January 10, Garry Glazebrook, a transport consultant, predicted that there will be another 2000 buses on Sydney's roads by 2021. The same story said that the Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam, promised to put light rail down straight after he wins the next NSW election.

Fat chance.

Sorry, that wasn't fair. Good on him, but only if he actually does it. He's a big L Liberal, not small, so I can't see him going all gooey and environmental that quickly. I smell a rat when I read on and he talks about positively Communist ideas by extending light rail out to Parramatta and the Northern Beaches. And, bizarrely, Wollongong. He did prevent a riot by not mentioning Bondi. The residents would have gone ballistic.

Government Transport Minister John Watkins immediately went on the attack, saying, 'I'm not convinced that whacking light rail tracks down one or two of our major city streets is the answer to congestion in Sydney because it means you would have to ban motor vehicles from those streets.'

Ahem. John. Next time you're in your chauffeur-driven limo reading the paper, say, 'I say, James, take me to Melbourne this instant. They have trams, you know, and damn it all, I want to see a city with no motor vehicles on the streets.'

Good grief, man, are you an idiot? Nobody says you have to ban cars from the city (it would help, though) and why not put a congestion charge on to do just that? Oops...sorry...can't do that, can you? That would decrease the toll take for those public-private partnerships.

And therein lies the problem. The NSW government, current and past, has got so deep into these ridiculous public-private partnerships that they're stuck. In a response to a blog post on the same SMH website, a reader asked why NSW politicians can't open their mouths without sounding like they're applying for a job at Macquarie Bank. Sydney desperately needs light rail to reduce its dependence on buses and to improve the efficiency of not just the existing bus and heavy rail networks but the entire city. The CBD is coming under increasing pressure as more trips to the city by people (up 32% by 2020) for business and pleasure place the already staggering network under more pressure.

Watkins again: 'We haven't closed the door to light rail … but my priority as Minister for Transport has to be getting the heavy rail system running correctly because that is how you move the majority of people in and out of the CBD.'

Rubbish. His priority is to build and maintain an integrated transport network to avoid the staggering annual losses calculated to be $18bn as a result of an entire city that is virtually gridlocked. Heavy rail is not the only answer and he is indeed part of a government that abandons heavy rail projects that will do just as he wants - get people in and out of the CBD. The Parramatta-Chatswood line would have kept thousands of daily commuters out of the CBD and therefore out of that part of the network, but they bailed at Epping, of all places. So more people having to drag their sore feet through the CBD.

Sydney's problem is that the Government keeps building roads and the people of Sydney fill them while the rail network is awash with angry, often stranded, passengers. The buses are caught in the traffic and light rail is just a dream. Running a light rail line down George and looped back up Castlereagh would be of immense use to Sydney. It will get hundreds of buses off George St, be an opportunity to build spangly new ticketing and interchange systems and reduce both air and noise pollution (why do those buses have to be so loud?).

What is the Government priority? Who knows. But it's not getting Sydney moving.

Howard Government Reshuffle

How the talentless have fallen...

Senator Hill's resignation from politics and Senator McGauran's supremely self-interested 'defection' to the other side of conservative Australian politics had some interesting effects on the Howard Government's new ministerial line-up.

I'm constantly amazed by the way such an organisation as the Parliamentary team conducts themselves. Nobody really seems to know what Howard thinks and it's as though he operates on a different plane (well, he does literally...nice jet, John) and hearing Downer say optimistic things about keeping Foreign Affairs is extraordinary. Why would he be sacked? Why was he worried? Despite thinking he's an insufferable prig, I reckon he's a passable Foreign Minister and Hill was a passable Defence Minister despite shipping people off to other people's wars.

Anyway, the pugnacious Kay Patterson has bitten the dust. Good. Her response to Jackie Kelly's attack on the Government's child care 'policy' was arrogant and ill-thought out. 'Ms Kelly is not privy to Cabinet discussions.'

No, and neither are the child-care using public. Does that mean we aren't qualified to sink the size 12s into the Government's shocking mismanagement of such an important sector? Patterson's attitude seems to mirror that of the Government's - you voted us in, now sit down, shut-up and do as we tell you (don't blame me, I voted for Labor, despite Mark Latham).

Malcolm Turnbull has been strategically moved to Parliamentary Secretary (yawn) and spokesman for Water Policy (ah-ha, now we're talking). Turnbull is about to make the hapless NSW Premier Morris Iemma wish he hadn't been born. Again, Turnbull is insufferable, more so than Downer, but he has a good line on water. He seems to understand the issues in both urban and rural areas and hates the NSW Government's decree to place a desalination plant at Kurnell in Sydney's south.

The desalination plant was announced by former Premier Bob Carr days before his resignation. I reckon his resignation had much to do with the backlash that accompanied this ludicrous idea - he had, for the first time, completely misjudged the reaction. Before that, he knew when stuff was going to be unpopular and took measures to ensure the people of NSW were going to like it. He had nowhere to go with this one, it was a total stuff-up. Like the arrogant Federal Government, this arrogant State Government wasn't interested in debate or input. He copped it good and proper and resigned shortly after his return from the United Arab Emirates.

Anyway, Turnbull is going to heap large amounts of ridicule on anything Iemma and his cruddy government suggest to do with anything, but particularly water policy. Turnbull loves Sydney with an unnatural passion and anything the car-loving, pollution-encouraging NSW state government announces will be greeted with the calculated derision for which Turnbull is famous. It was a shrewd decision by Howard - he hasn't been around long enough to really be given a senior ministerial position, he's got a big, well-educated mouth and, crucially, a score to settle with the NSW Government who effectively booted his wife out of the mayoral position in Sydney in a failed attempt to wrest control of the City of Sydney. It will make Costello happy because he'll have to stop agitating about tax reform (he's quoted on SMH as saying he can only talk about his portfolio) and that means that Howard's leadership will be under slightly less pressure as a result.

Mr Teflon strikes again. Jammy git. So Howard comes out smelling of roses, will no doubt name yet another sportsperson as Australian of the Year [edit: ok, I got that wrong. It was funny, though...], continue to use the Government's Boeing Business Jet as his personal limousine and sip tea and sup scones on the verandah of Sydney's Kirribilli House. It's good to be the King. Pity he's a mindless populist who listens to the opinion of Alan Jones...

Various Boring Whinges

...that no-one else will listen to.

Here you will read me ranting on about the governments of the day, both domestic (Australian) and international.

There will be some informed and uninformed belligerence towards the decisions of corporates, NGOs and government organisations. Mostly I hope you will be amused into thinking and eventually acting if you have the capacity to do so.

Bear in mind that these are my own opinions and, unless I say so, are based on hearsay, media reports and personal experience.

Enjoy.