Action for Public Transport (N.S.W.) Inc.

Action for Public Transport is a transport consumer group, operating around Sydney. Our funds derive almost entirely from membership fees. Our members are users and beneficiaries of public transport.

Let us begin with the assumption that "productivity" refers to the ratio of outputs to inputs - that is, the more output that can be derived from a particular resource, the greater the productivity.

This submission aims to demonstrate that investing in public transport is vastly underestimated as a means to achieve greater output from specific, critical resources: land, time, and potential workforce. We then address the specific terms of reference against this backdrop.

1. Land

The superiority of public transport in maximising the number of people able to access any given place (notably workplaces such as an office precinct, a hospital, or a factory complex) is easy to see.

A road lane can carry one car every 2 seconds, or 1800 cars/hour or about 2000 people per hour at typical loadings. A bus lane can carry 10000 people per hour and a rail line at least 20000 people.

2. Time

The time lost to traffic congestion is frequently put forward as a cause of reduced productivity, and as an argument for road-building projects that will "solve" the problem. But here's the thing - they don't work. If anything, an emphasis on building roads to accommodate predicted demand makes the problem worse, by generating more vehicle movements.

This phenomenon was identified many years ago (e.g. "Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic: The SACTRA Report" - U.K. 1994 at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/economics/rdg/nataarchivedocs/trunkroadstraffic.pdf although the phenomenom had been noted decades earlier) and has been empirically demonstrated time and time again since then. There may be some initial relief, but over the longer term what is usually achieved in the urban context is to move bottlenecks from one point to another, gaining nothing despite massive expense.

Time lost to traffic congestion is best addressed by improved public transport services - not just construction projects, although there are definite long-term public transport infrastructure backlogs to be addressed. Smaller-scale priority systems such as bus lanes and bus-activated traffic lights also have much to offer.

It should be said that the time of public transport users is just as valuable as the time of car drivers, and their level of productivity is similarly reduced when services are infrequent, connections poor, and journey times protracted.

3. Workforce participation

A lack of access to jobs, and/or excessive time (and sometimes cost) involved in reaching them by public transport, is a real and serious impediment to full workforce participation. The same can be said in the case of educational and training opportunities. In productivity terms, the potential for businesses to access an adequate supply of labour is artificially and quite needlessly constrained. In human terms, the impact is a devastating lack of opportunity and life prospects in some localities (both urban and rural).

An article concerning the impact of the excessive cost of fares on Sydney's Airport Rail Link on some airport workers touches on this point [SMH 24 Nov 2013 "Train ticket mark-up puts Sydney Airport workers in danger"]. The NSW Legislative Council had an inquiry into the same fares in September 2013 although it is yet to report.

4. Term of reference a. The need for an integrated approach across road and rail in addressing congestion in cities, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

As a public transport user organisation, we submit that rail supported by frequent bus feeder services unencumbered by antiquated non-contiguous fares policies offers the highest congestion-busting potential. It can best do so if the approach to road investment maximises the access of rail passengers to rail stations.

In practical terms this means that bus feeder services to major centres served by rail need to be accommodated in road planning, as do opportunities at intermediate stations for "kiss and ride" and "park and ride" facilities. Safe and direct pedestrian access needs to be preserved and enhanced, and secure cycle parking options facilitated.

It is fundamental that land-use and transport should be planned together - that is, integrated. Concentration of activities (especially those generating employment) at nodes that are well served by public transport is a key strategy, easily undermined by inconsistent road planning.

5. Term of reference b. The social and environmental benefits of public transport projects compared to road infrastructure projects such as Westconnex and the East-West link

Point 3 above raises some of the social and economic benefits of public transport. It is plainly unwise to presuppose that family budgets will stretch to the running of multiple cars, and that the transport task consists of providing people with more roads on which to drive them.

Even for those who can make such a choice, it must come at the expense of expenditure on other things, at least some of which might be regarded as more productive.

Public transport has important social benefits in its ability to foster and enable access to work and educational opportunities. The same is true of access to facilities and services such as health, fitness, leisure, shopping and personal care. The absence of access to some or all such opportunities is a marker of social isolation.

Motorway-style road projects, such as Westconnex, form an impenetrable barrier to safe pedestrian movement. They divide communities physically and sever important connections, as is discussed later. They also directly undermine public transport usage which depend on (and foster) good pedestrian connectivity.

The environmental benefits of public transport over road infrastructure projects have been well documented. They lie principally in the consumption and burning of fossil fuels, air pollution impacts. The amount of hard asphalt surfaces required for the movement and parking of vehicles directly impacts on pollution runoff into creeks, rivers and oceans. On all these measures, public transport is the better choice.

6. Term of reference c. The national significance of public transport.

Already about half of Australia's population lives in or near cities which are too large to function effectively without strong public transport systems. This population stands to increase steadily over the rest of the 21st century, due in large measure to decisions taken at federal level.

If our cities cannot function optimally because of the lack of strong public transport systems, the consequences will be felt nationally.

We wish also to emphasise that public transport is important to the health of regional centres as well. The geographic distribution of centres of population is a function of a number of factors, not least the availability of employment. Strong public transport access is a competitive advantage. For this reason fast rail access is a legitimate strategy to ameliorate population pressures on Sydney in particular. See our submission on VFT.

7. Term of reference d. The relationship between public transport and building well-functioning cities

Suffice it to say that no major world city can function without a strong and extensive public transport system. That is because major cities have large populations, and intense clusters of activity, all of which depend on connections with each other. It is no coincidence that New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Toronto, Frankfurt and Zurich have world-class transit systems. It is no coincidence that Los Angeles, having tried the alternative model only to grind to a halt, is now investing serious money re-establishing its public transport system.

Sydney and Melbourne in particular have the benefit of a legacy of enlightened, forward-thinking investment in their public transport systems, early in the 20th century. They built those systems at a time when their populations were much smaller, and they did not (and do not) need high-density living as the price of decent public transport. Thus Perth is a fine example of how timely public transport investment can keep a growing city functioning.

8. Term of reference e. The decision of the Federal Government to refuse to fund public transport projects.

This is frankly unfathomable. The genesis of this idea appears to lie in "Battlelines" by Abbott (p.174) "Mostly, there just aren't enough people wanting to go from a particular place to a particular destination at a particular time to justify any vehicle larger than a car". If this were correct, we wouldn't have traffic jams.

If there is no possibility of federal funding for public transport there is a strong likelihood that State governments will favour the projects for which they can get assistance - road projects. These projects will chew up money and cannot solve the congestion problem they aim to address. This self-defeating and wasteful exercise will have detrimental effects on the functioning of Australian cities and on their productivity.

9. Term of reference f. The impact on user charges arising from requiring states to fund public transport projects

There is no reasonable prospect that capital expenditure on public transport could be recovered from user charges (otherwise known as fares). NSW Treasury has for years argued for a theoretical model that sees user charges (fares) cover the cost of operation of public transport services. This has resulted in a sharp rise in fares some of which are at the limit of affordability. The end result is to reduce patronage which then of course will reduce the amount brought in by user charges, which will lead to further fare increases ... and so on.

The more likely result is as set out above - States will be encouraged to withdraw from funding public transport projects.

10. Term of reference g. Any related matter

Some of the reluctance to fund public transport investment seems to APTNSW to be based on an entirely inaccurate proposition - that high quality public transport can only co-exist with high-density residential development. Historically, and empirically this is not so. Regrettably this misapprehension sparks a strong defensive reaction to a non-existent threat. An important book by the late Dr Paul Mees ("Transport for Suburbia") tackles the issue explicitly, and APTNSW recommends it to the Committee.



Jim Donovan
Secretary
Action for Public Transport (NSW)
jimd@aptnsw.org.au