Re: Road and Rail Funding (was Re: Bugger all express services on Hillside Trains)

[amorton@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au (Anthony Morton)]

>Anthony Morton wrote:

>> This year the money is to be spent on a whole swag of projects including the
>> Eastern Freeway extension to Ringwood and the Hallam Bypass.  This is an
>> election year in Victoria and new roads are regarded as vote-winners in a way
>> that rail projects are not.  (Never mind what the community thinks.)  

David McLoughlin replies:

>Well, clearly the majority of the voting community are happy with the
>way money is spent on roads. Think about it. Otherwise politicians would
>spend a lot more money on public transport. They spend taxpayers' money
>where the opinion polls they take show the largest number of votes are.

That's quite true, people like roads and so building roads wins votes.  But
as I'm sure you understand, it's one thing to ask people whether they want a
new road, and another to give them a choice between a new road and better
public transport services.  Australian governments are very good at
building roads but not so good at running decent public transport.  By and
large it's never occurred to them to find out whether they could gain votes
by improving public transport; instead they look at the small number of
people who currently use public transport and relegate them to the 'special
interest' category.

The recent panel hearing in Melbourne on the Scoresby Freeway was instructive.
When the transport consultants went to the community in the outer eastern
suburbs and asked them about transport problems, they found that by and large
people were satisfied with the quality of the road network, but extremely
dissatisfied with the quality of public transport.  It's a fair bet that
many people would have thought a $100 rail extension to Rowville a better use
of public money than a $900 freeway that would have improved average travel
speeds by car at most from 51kph to 53kph!

(That rail extension, incidentally, was proposed by community groups for
consideration but subsequently excluded by the bureaucrats from the options
submitted for community comment.  The community were effectively given a
choice between the freeway or nothing.)

>I support both adequate roads and adequate public transport. Sadly, 95pc
>of the money goes to roads in both Australia and New Zealand. 

I would argue that cities like Melbourne already have a first-class road
network.  In terms of sheer infrastructure Melbourne and Sydney also have
first-class public transport networks, and could have the best public
transport in the world if only it were operated competently.  I'm talking
reasonable service frequencies, better evening and weekend services to match
today's travel patterns, and better bus-train connections at stations.

The problem I have with adding more roads to an already adequate network is
that it attracts more traffic and thus more congestion at bottlenecks, and
contributes to an urban form that impairs the viability of public transport.
I'd like to think one could save Los Angeles by turning freeway lanes into
railways, but I suspect it's a lost cause.

>Public transport is seen as a drain on public funds. Roads cost vastly
>more than buses, trains and trams, but apart from those who object to
>paying tolls (IMO the way new roads should be funded), hardly anyone
>objects to the cost of roads.

Actually, anyone who objects to the tax component of petrol prices is
objecting to the cost of roads, because the total amount spent on road
construction and maintenance is around the same as the amount collected in
fuel tax.  But of course the cost of roads involves other factors like
pollution, noise and trauma that aren't directly priced.  As for funding
new roads with tolls, I agree in principle but I'd suggest that, if you're
in favour of road pricing, you'd achieve the same outcome more easily by
raising petrol prices.

Cheers,
Tony M.