Tag: State Government

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governance public transport service value for money

Public Transport – Considerable Scope for service improvement

If we are serious about running a train service why do we replace them so often with buses?   

There was a time when ensuring train services never failed their passengers was top priority. Sadly that is not the case today. Too often passengers wait forlornly for trains that arrive late or never show up. Often the service is replaced with a bus. If that is not bad enough, customer advice provided for stranded passengers on such occasions is frequently poor or even misleading so it is too late to make alternative arrangements.  

Too bad if you are an elderly person for whom toilet facilities and refreshments and the need to stretch your legs periodically during the course of the journey are important, particularly for long country journeys which become considerably longer if they are replaced by a bus. Too bad for other passengers who use their bike as a link mode for suburban or country journeys and cannot carry them on the bus – leaving them stranded in the middle of their journey. Too bad if the delays result in a missed appointment or missed connections at the other end. And the list goes on and on. Little wonder our trains and public transport system generally is regarded by many as irrelevant or as a poor man’s service and why so many people prefer to travel by car – or even by bike these days.    

There is no good reason why this should be the case. It is a mindset issue. Successful businesses understand if they want to stay in business in a competitive environment the customer must be “king”.  Whilst it is true that public transport is classified, and rightly so as an essential community service it is a service that exists in a very competitive travel market and there is no reason why it should treat its passengers so poorly. Poor service also has serious financial implications. If the government wants to improve the financial bottom line it must increase revenue from the fare box but that will not happen unless passengers are treated far better than they are today.  

Whilst it is true that much of the problem stems from antiquated infrastructure and equipment  in need of upgrading or replacement, the result of neglect and underfunding, it also stems from changed attitudes and works practices, and in some cases even lack of expertise. The system needs to be maintained to a standard where breakdowns don’t occur but carried out in a way that does not affect passenger service.  

In earlier times capital infrastructure and much of the essential permanent way maintenance works were carried out at night after the last train and before the first train the following morning.  Works gangs became very skilled at working in these situations. Too often these days train lines or line sections are routinely shut down – often for extended periods of time to carry out this work and buses used to replace trains. Not only does this degrade the service for passengers on the line but it destroys the networking functioning of the system as a whole and the ability to travel by making connections with other trains, trams or buses.  

It is difficult to imagine a shop owner putting up a notice in the shop window to advise customers the shop is closed during the trading period for shop repairs or maintenance. The shop owner would be out of business in no time. Melbournians pay for our public transport and have every right to demand better service. There are no easy solutions but there are opportunities to improve the service quickly and cost effectively simply by changing attitudes and work practices.

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governance public transport service value for money

Understanding Transport – it is about service

One of the reasons transport outcomes have been so poor in Melbourne is a fundamental misunderstanding about transport itself, particularly amongst politicians who tend to think of transport and solutions necessary to improve transport outcomes in terms of infrastructure.

Transport is a service industry and transport choices are made by businesses and people on the basis of service and options available to travel or move goods and services in a competitive market. People’s travel needs are diverse. In this sense there are many market segments but for the most part these needs can be defined in terms of convenience, safety, timeliness, comfort, journey time and for some in terms of cost/price and efficiency.

Most Melburnians drive their car by force of habit or lack of choice but many will walk, cycle or use public transport if these alternatives are attractive enough to meet their needs. In many situations these alternatives could be viable travel options for many more trips. They certainly are in many other cities, and will become increasingly important as people look for more travel options in a post covid world.

But as we have already seen the covid world is not business as usual and some of these options are also under pressure and present new challenges for government, particularly for public transport. Travel cost will become increasingly important if we enter an extended period of recession or depression. Depressed conditions also have implications for government as traditional sources of funding such as fuel excise, GST etc and even parking revenue come under pressure forcing State and local governments to look at new ways to fund transport services, infrastructure maintenance and renewal works which will inevitably be passed on to travelers and the broader community.

If politicians are serious about creating more travel options ie to compete with the car for more trips they need to approach this with a service focus. There are no simple or single fixes however. It will require a comprehensive service strategy and investment plan to match. Some service issues require infrastructure investment but many won’t. In situations where infrastructure investment is required it must be well targeted to ensure it supports the service plan.

Unfortunately much of the investment in Melbourne’s transport today, particularly for personal travel is on infrastructure without any reference to people’s service needs and invariably without a proper plan. Most of it is on monumental infrastructure projects that are focused more on creating jobs than addressing service needs and promoted for political purposes or by others with a vested interest in the outcomes. If we want to improve transport outcomes this thinking will need to change.

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advocacy public policy sustainability governance freeways governance motorways public transport traffic congestion value for money

Does expanding motorways really reduce congestion?

The short answer to this question is no, and they usually result in increased emissions.

The evidence is presented in the following article by Simon Kingham, professor University of Canterbury NZ which was published in The Conversation Au edition 7th October 2020

Historically, building more and wider roads, including motorways, was seen as a way of reducing congestion. This in turn is supposed to lower emissions.

Fuel efficiency is optimised for driving at around 80kmh and it decreases the faster you go above that. But with speed limits up to 110kmh, people are likely to drive above 80kmh on motorways — and this means building and expanding motorways will actually increase emissions.

Many countries, especially in Europe, are now looking to lower speed limits partly to reduce emissions.

New roads, new drivers

The most significant impact new and expanded motorways have on congestion and emissions is the effect on the distance people travel.

Historically, engineers assumed cars (and more pertinently their drivers) would behave like water. In other words, if you had too much traffic for the road space provided, you would build a new road or expand an existing one and cars would spread themselves across the increased road space.

Unfortunately, this is not what happens. New road capacity attracts new drivers. In the short term, people who had previously been discouraged from using congested roads start to use them.

In the longer term, people move further away from city centres to take advantage of new roads that allow them to travel further faster.

This is partly due to the “travel time budget” — a concept also known as Marchetti’s constant — which suggests people are prepared to spend around an hour a day commuting. Cities tend to grow to a diameter of one-hour travel time.

The concept is supported by evidence that cities have sprawled more as modes of transport have changed. For example, cities were small when we could only walk, but expanded along transport corridors with rail and then sprawled with the advent of cars. This all allows commuters to travel greater distances within the travel time budget.

Building or expanding roads releases latent demand — widely defined as “the increment in new vehicle traffic that would not have occurred without the improvement of the network capacity”.

This concept is not new. The first evidence of it can be found back in the 1930s. Later research in 1962 found that “on urban commuter expressways, peak-hour traffic congestion rises to meet maximum capacity”.

A considerable body of evidence is now available to confirm this. But, despite this indisputable fact, many road-improvement decisions continue to be based on the assumption that extra space will not generate new traffic.

If you build it, they will drive

A significant change occurred in 1994 when a report by the UK Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Appraisal confirmed road building actually generates more traffic.

In New Zealand, this wasn’t acknowledged until the Transport Agency’s 2010 Economic Evaluation Manual, which said:

[…] generated traffic often fills a significant portion (50–90%) of added urban roadway capacity.

Some congestion discourages people from driving (suppresses latent demand), but with no congestion traffic will fill road space over time, particularly in or near urban areas.

Interestingly, the opposite can also work. Where road space is removed, demand can be suppressed and traffic reduces without other neighbouring roads becoming overly congested.

One of the best examples of this is the closure of the Cheonggyecheon Freeway in the middle of Seoul, South Korea.

When the busy road was removed from the city, rather than the traffic moving to and congesting nearby roads, most of the traffic actually disappeared, as Professor Jeff Kenworthy from Curtin University’s Sustainable Policy Institute notes.

This suppression of latent demand works best when good alternative ways of travel are available, including high-quality public transport or separated cycle lanes.

The short answer to the question about road building and expansion is that new roads do little to reduce congestion, and they will usually result in increased emissions.

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advocacy public policy sustainability governance governance public transport traffic congestion value for money

Traffic congestion – Is it a problem?

Congestion is frequently raised as a huge cost in our cities and it is often promoted in fearful terms like the following : Cities afraid of death by congestion.

The first paragraph reads: “A plan to widen part of Interstate 10 in metropolitan Phoenix from 14 lanes to 24 lanes is the USA’s latest giant superhighway proposal designed to ease the kind of gridlock that some planners say could stunt economic growth.”

Similar messages are being conveyed to government by companies that have a vested interest in promoting similar outcomes in Melbourne. These include Transurban, engineering construction companies, the road lobby and others who have the government’s ear and are defining the transport ‘problem’ in their terms ie in terms of congestion and potential gridlock, and solutions being to build more, larger, and vastly expensive road projects, user pays solutions and public private partnerships promoted with very slick marketing. It also includes finance companies, superannuation funds and others looking for “rent seeking” opportunities.

The current political mindset has been described by Prof Graham Currie “as a negative spiral which focuses on congestion ‘solutions’ in which politicians claim we will solve congestion with big investment. Expectations are raised (despite the fact that congestions can never be solved), congestion gets worse leading to credibility loss , followed by a positive approach which admits congestion can never be solved but will address worst impacts with more big investment thereby lowering expectations and credibility gain because congestion outcomes are as expected”.

But is congestion such a bad problem anyway. Transport analysts such as David Metz in the UK have shown that congestion can have a positive function, that there is no such thing as free flow of traffic (at average 80kph) in a city the size of Melbourne, and that congestion points filter traffic on to narrow city streets preventing terminal gridlock.

This view is supported by Wesley Marshall and Eric Dumbaugh Wesley E. Marshall & Eric Dumbaugh, 2020. “Revisiting the relationship between traffic congestion and the economy: a longitudinal examination of U.S. metropolitan areas“, and their findings that ” current concerns about traffic congestion negatively impacting the economy may not be particularly well founded. “Our findings suggest that a region’s economy is not significantly impacted by traffic congestion.

In fact, the results even suggest a positive association between traffic congestion and economic productivity as well as jobs,”. “Without traffic congestion, there would be less incentive for infill development, living in an location-efficient place, walking, biking, and transit use, ridesharing, innovations in urban freight, etc,” “And if your city doesn’t have any traffic congestion, there is something really wrong.”

If we are to get better transport outcomes in Melbourne we need to change the current political mindset. Instead of thinking about congestion as a cost, we need to persuade government that traffic congestion is an indication that we are not using the transport system efficiently and encourage it to develop policies and strategies to make this happen.

This strategy also avoids the risk of stranded assets as the economy and transport environment change in a post covid world, when social and economic conditions remain depressed and there is greater environmental pressure for change.

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advocacy public policy sustainability governance governance public transport traffic congestion value for money

Why Is Melbourne’s Transport System So Costly?

This has been the subject of extensive research over many years and it is not possible to discuss it in detail in this blog, other than in general terms.

The main reason our transport system is so costly is that it promotes the least efficient modes of travel and transport ie motor vehicles for personal travel and most of the freight task (some of which could be transported more efficiently on rail). This in turn demands more infrastructure to support them and has been supported by city planning and development policies, particularly since WW2.

This problem is compounded when precious funds are wasted on infrastructure we don’t need or would not need if we operated our transport system more efficiently but must still be managed and maintained at considerable cost. Some of this infrastructure takes up valuable city space that could be used for other purposes, such as housing or community facilities including parks or growing food. Transport infrastructure – particularly roads and motorways also contribute to the “heat island” effect by elevating surface temperatures which increase stress, service disruptions and reduce liveability in cities – particularly during heat waves, the frequency and intensity of which is expected to increase in the future.

Melbourne’s transport is also costly because of the way we use it. Our transport fleet needs to be more efficient with a greater focus on fuel economy and operated in a way that minimizes pollution – air, noise and groundwater. We need to minimize impacts on human health; not just from pollution but also from accidents and fatalities. Transport related health impacts manifest themselves in a wide range of diseases: cardiovascular, neurological, respiratory, muscularskeletal diseases, and severe mental health impacts. Many of these the result of physical inactivity more likely to occur in car dependent societies such as Melbourne. There are environmental impacts as well and an imperative to reduce greenhouse emissions.

These costs are under reported and tend to be dismissed as the price we pay for progress but they have a profound impact – not just at a personal level but for the economy and livability of the city as a whole. Reducing them requires good governance in the form of sound policy, strategic intervention, appropriate regulation, and effective administration to make it happen. Some cities do a far better job managing them than Melbourne so there is considerable scope for improvement.

There are also costs which some economists and politicians exaggerate such as congestion and use it to justify major infrastructure works, particularly for building new motorways. This will be the subject of my next blog.

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advocacy public policy sustainability governance governance public transport value for money

Beware China’s Belt and Road for Melbourne

We have long argued that infrastructure investment must be justified in its merits – on the basis of need (our collective needs and affordability), and fitness for purpose in the most cost effective manner. Further, that the development of infrastructure programs and projects should be the responsibility of relevant government departments as part of a well prepared strategic plan. It should not be used as a political football for other purposes but unfortunately that is exactly what it has become, particularly in Victoria by becoming linked with China’s One Belt One Road (“OBOR”) project.

Premier Andrews has argued that this is a way to increase jobs. That in itself is inappropriate – there are far more effective ways to create jobs and as I have explained in earlier blogs, using it for this purpose always runs the risk of it being used for political purposes for poorly conceived projects developed in haste that we don’t need.

More important concerns have been raised (The Age 6th October 2020) however by Paul Monk, a former head of China analysis at Australia’s Defence Department about “OBOR” being used to subordinate us into China’s sphere of influence in a way that could impose unacceptable political and economic risks. In the same article Senator Patrick said the freedom of Information documentation revealed “an extraordinary case of a state government pursuing a shadow foreign trade policy, quite separate and independent from the federal government”.

Use of grand infrastructure projects to secure political advantage by major powers is not new. The US through the agency of powerful multinational corporations pursued this for decades, convincing poor countries to accept huge development loans to ensure they were forever in debt to US companies, but often ended up taking over strategic assets when promised benefits failed to materialize forcing these countries to default on their loans. Some political analysts believe China’s “OBOR” has similar objectives.

Whilst the Victorian economy may be more robust than many of the third world countries seduced by these schemes, it is vulnerable nevertheless. Business cases for the Victorian mega projects which would be candidates are expected to provide very poor returns and I have outlined this in earlier blogs. These returns, miserable as they may be will be further diminished as we enter a covid induced recession or worse and recovery may take many years. It may also expose us financially – not just for annual repayments which could be onerous but more so when the debt needs to be repaid. Political implications in this case could be profound. We believe these risks are unacceptable and the federal government has every right to be concerned.

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advocacy public policy sustainability governance governance public transport value for money

Why Is Melbourne’s Transport System So Poor And So Costly?

Covid has forced significant changes in our travel patterns. Some of these will become permanent so it is timely to reflect more broadly on our transport system, the way we use it and the extent to which it really meets our needs.

This was a question many people would have asked after returning from a holiday in Europe, Japan, Singapore, China and many other parts of the world where it was easy to get around at relatively low cost without the need for a car. There are many cities that we can learn from that have become accepted as models of excellence and It is not rocket science. Nor are we unique. Some of these cities are not unlike Melbourne and had been confronted with similar problems. Nor is It a matter of cost and whether we can afford it or not. We are a very wealthy city and we can, particularly when so much of the infrastructure necessary to achieve it is already in place. So what is stopping us from achieving from achieving world best practice?

There are several reasons for this and these will be discussed in a series of blogs over the next few weeks but the most fundamental reason is the absence of any desire to change. This is a mindset problem. If government had the mindset to develop a world class transport system it could do so and within a relatively short time. In fact the foundations could be laid within a parliamentary term. So what is this mindset and how do we change it?

The mindset is a collective one, comprising the government itself, the Department(s) that advises it and the community. Overall we seem very comfortable with our grossly inefficient transport system but oblivious to the extraordinary high cost it imposes on us.

Since WW2 much of our city and transport planning has been developed on the presumption that the motor car and road based transport in general will be the transport of the future and this has become embedded in our economy. But the high cost of this inefficient system – not just in economic but also in social and environmental terms is starting to catch up with us and covid is exposing many of the flaws in this strategy. This will be discussed in my next blog.

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covid-19 governance

Why Good Governance Really Matters

Most people only think about “governance” when the government really messes things up and people can see it affecting them – like the botched hotel quarantining that caused the second wave in Victoria which resulted in hundreds of deaths and huge social and economic cost. Some might argue that everyone can make a mistake and no government is perfect but the State government had the opportunity to do much better.

The Victorian second wave of the corona virus was not a result of one thing – it was the failure of the system as a whole with many contributing factors. It is a reminder that the activities and processes governments carry out which we call “governance” are critically important.

There is growing concern that governance standards in this country are declining. We have seen this now in government’s response to the second wave of this pandemic but the problem appears at times in all levels of government today. Often the symptoms and impacts are difficult to see. We have seen this in transport : failure to adhere to accepted/proper standards and procedures including too close a relationship between public officials and private corporations, too much unaddressed conflict of interest, too little transparency, lazy analysis of problems – grasping at instant solutions imbued with ‘optimism bias’, manipulated supporting data, enfeebled public scrutiny, and even egregious examples of outright corruption both at political level and within what used to be trusted departments of the public service. This ‘institutional decay’ was evident in the abortive East-West Link motorway project, the West Gate Tunnel project and the North East Link. More details are provided by William McDougall on his blog https://www.wmcdougall.com.

Whilst poor governance is the main reason we have consistently achieved poor transport outcomes in Melbourne and Victoria generally, the greatest governance failure is reflected in government policy and responses (at all levels) to the climate emergency. Transport for Melbourne does not believe there are easy solutions to this problem but governance needs to be addressed because the quality of our democratic institutions and how they ‘govern” on our behalf will ultimately define who we are as a society and our future.

Transport for Melbourne is a think tank and advocacy group of transport professionals whose mission is to promote an understanding of issues that Melbourne faces and how these can be better addressed.

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