This blog provides a better understanding of the operating practices and the opportunity for capital, operating and maintenance cost savings and reduced environmental impacts.
Good transport policy must be based on a sound understanding of the transport service, particularly by the public service whose responsibility is to provide frank and fearless advice and a willingness of the Minister to listen.
The Rail Futures Institute reports that the failure to re-instate the former standard gauge platform as part of the forthcoming Sunshine station re-development will seriously impact North Eastern/Riverina travellers some years in advance of the Airport railway opening, in fact from as early as 2025 with the Metro 1 tunnel opening.
Rising fuel prices are a signal to reduce travel – drive less often, over shorter distances and do so more efficiently.
The federal treasurer’ announcement of major capital spending on more transport infrastructure projects was criticised correctly by Marion Terrill (The Age Tuesday 29 March) because they were not supported by a business case.
We can’t build our way out of congestion. Numerous traffic studies show that more road space for cars leads to more people driving, further clogging our roads – the induced demand effect.
Pork-barrelling wastes money, is unfair, and could be dramatically curtailed if the federal government stuck to its job of providing funding only for nationally significant transport projects.
Transport is a service industry and requires a systems-based approach to address systemic problems within it. There no simple single fix solutions, however there are levers that can be used to change the transport system where a small intervention in one area can result in significant change in outcomes for the system as a whole. These levers must be given top priority.
Governments at all levels seem to have forgotten urgent messages delivered at COP26 a little over a year ago to reduce green-house emissions.
Far greater attention should be given to promoting small electric vehicles that take up less road space, have less material content and imbedded energy, demand less standby electricity and recharging infrastructure and promote behavioural change ie to travel less, less often and over shorter distances.
In our last forum we highlighted the need to plan for sunset industries that would struggle and ultimately have no future in a zero emission world and cited the airline industry as a prime example.
One of the messages we have been repeating for some time is that humankind is living beyond the means of planet Earth to support us.
In November 2021 representatives from many countries met in Glasgow to discuss the imperative of achieving substantial reductions in greenhouse emissions by 2030 amid warnings of dire consequences of not achieving them.
As noted in our last forum, climate change is being driven by changes to the geosphere by increasing greenhouse emissions, but it is also the result of changes to the biosphere including pollution and destruction of the natural environment.
The enormity of the task only dawns when we start developing a plan. It is only then that governments and societies start to understand the scale and complexity of our challenge, realise that technology is not the answer and that we have to change our behaviour, fundamental values and expectations if we are to achieve our goals.
Whilst climate science, trends and the implications have been well understood for decades our politicians continue to ignore it by pursuing what has got us into this mess in the first place.
One of the aims of the forum is to provide a better understanding of the complexity of the issues that must be addressed in a plan to reduce emissions quickly, starting immediately, get to zero, and the implications.
If humanity is serious in its determination to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees and achieve zero carbon emissions by 2030 as one of the critical targets to achieve this, it is running out of time and change based on business as usual processes will not be fast enough, nor sufficiently transformative to avert a climate calamity.
Unlike many of the measures proposed by many nations and the business lobby today which see technology as the answer to reducing greenhouse emission reductions, the focus of this initiative is not on technology but behavioural change designed to get people out of their cars and onto their bikes or simply walk more and limit car use for essential travel.
Melbourne must, like all cities adapt to the changing world around us and this includes the need to achieve zero emissions within a decade. At this stage we don’t know what a zero emission world looks like.
Transport for Melbourne (TfM) and other well qualified transport forums have been constantly reminding the State government of the need for a transport plan. This is mandated under the Transport Integration Act (TIA), so we are relieved that at long last the Victorian Government Audit Office has finally taken the government to task.
This project was always a disaster waiting to happen. It is a terrible project and should never have been contemplated let alone built in the first place. It was not part of any transport plan, although to be fair the State government does not have a plan.
The latest IPPC report should come as no surprise. The warning bells have been ringing for decades but ignored. As Prof Will Steffen stated after the report was released, “unless the world slashed climate emissions by 50% by 2030 it faced an impossible future”.
Whilst the glory days of Victorian rail freight are well and truly behind us, there has long been a view that rail freight is the most energy efficient way of transporting freight, particularly long haul and bulk commodities such as grain and much of the container traffic around Victoria and interstate.
The Prime Minister recently stated that achieving zero emissions would be similar to tackling Covid – just a case of applying technological solutions and leave business to carry it out, whilst in the meantime proceeding with business as usual.
The Federal Opposition has rightly accused the Federal government of using the $389 million car parking program as a political rort and is another example of abuse of governance and proper process which we have raised on a number of occasions.
Buses are the only form of public transport available for about two thirds of Melbourne and should be the ‘glue’ that ties the entire public transport system together.
Growth continues to be the holy grail governments rely on to keep our economies booming and underpin the quest for higher and higher standards of living.
Scientists are telling us we must achieve zero emissions – not by 2050, or 2040 but by 2030. But this will not happen on its own and cannot be left to the “market”. It needs a plan.
We have expressed concern about politicians’ faith in technology to solve our environmental problems. This is shared by many transport professionals who seem convinced that technological developments in the form of electric vehicles will be a large part of the transport “solution”.
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