Not another transport plan

Every time New South Wales changes Premiers, it also changes Transport Plans.

The latest one, recently announced by Premier Kristina Keneally, has one key positive -- it kills off the Sydney Metro.

Despite the fact that it has already cost NSW taxpayers a whopping $271 million, and that there will also need to be compensation paid to the now redundant bidders, these are actually small prices to pay for avoiding further expenditure on a metro proposal that was destined to be a multi-billion dollar white elephant.

Of course, that should not in any way excuse NSW Labor from the responsibility for having invested in such a foolhardy plan in the first place.  Stage One of the metro alone had a price tag of $4.8 billion, and yet was largely duplicating other public transport services.

NSW taxpayers will have to cop the wasted expenditure and Sydney commuters will continue to suffer from the diversion of funds to the metro, rather than to funding realistic solutions to Sydney's transport problems.

Of course, there is also collateral damage from constantly changing plans.  In the case of the now abandoned metro it is highlighted by the plight of small business operators in CBD buildings purchased by the Sydney Metro.  Their businesses have already lost most of their customer base, due to office tenants vacating the buildings, but now remain in limbo with the buildings being held in government ownership in case a future government decides to reinstate the metro project.

When it comes to the actual proposals in the Keneally plan, debating their merits is pretty much an academic exercise, as one can safely assume the plan will never be implemented.  It is hard to see too much of it being locked in by the time the State Election comes around in March next year.  That is probably also why, as the State Opposition have pointed out, it is not fully funded.

There is no doubt that an incoming Liberal-National government will have its own plan.  Even in the unlikely event that Labor was re-elected, history tells us that a new plan would not be far away.  Certainly, anyone expecting to use the now reinstated north-west heavy rail link, a project originally announced in 1998, but deferred at least four times, to be delivered by the slated completion date of 2024 must possess an unusually trusting nature.

If scrapping the metro had been the only change to her predecessor, Nathan Rees' transport agenda in Keneally's first three months in the job, she might earn positive marks.  However, three days before Christmas, she seriously blotted her copybook by ditching the previous Rees policy of moving towards privatising Sydney Ferries.  This flip-flop was correctly seen by most observers as caving in to the maritime unions.
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Ferry privatisation was recommended by Bret Walker SC, who conducted an inquiry into Sydney Ferries in 2007.  The need for it was confirmed by a report by the NSW Auditor-General late last year which highlighted a failure to meet eight out of 12 operational and financial targets in the year to June, with on-time running, passenger complaints and sick days per employee all falling below target.  And in a startling admission of failure the latest plan actually predicts an ongoing decline in ferry patronage.

In fact, NSW desperately needs to not only privatise the ferries, but the rail and STA buses services as well.  Throughout the past decade Sydney has seen much lower public transport patronage growth than other Australian cities, in particular, market leader, Melbourne.  A key reason why Melbourne has outperformed Sydney in public transport has been the fact that its trains and trams have been privately operated since 1999.

While the Melbourne system has its share of problems, operators have often been victims of their own success as the patronage boom led to problems such as over-crowding.  The Victorian government was slow to respond to the boom and the biggest problems such as the new ticketing system, myki, have been government initiatives.

While the NSW government has almost moved to a point somewhere beyond ridicule, they are not alone in the constant reissuing of transport plans and changing policies.  Attending conferences of transport professionals in recent years, one would constantly hear the refrain that the city in question needed a comprehensive integrated plan.  The actual problem has not been a lack of plans, but an inability to choose the right elements of plans and to actually deliver them.

There is a tendency to include large sexy projects to capture the imagination of the media and the public.  Metros certainly fit that bill, and have been floated in cities other than Sydney.  There is a metro in the 2008 Victorian Transport Plan, but, thus far, it is considered long-term, attracting nothing other than study at the moment.  Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, last November raised the concept of a metro for Brisbane saying that "the time to talk about it is now".

There is not much harm in studying and talking, but even that is a distraction from the practical requirements of getting the public transport basics, such as maintenance of existing rolling stock and infrastructure, right.  Hopefully, the scrapping of the Sydney Metro will make the Victorian and Queensland Governments have second thoughts about pursuing them for their capital cities.

So next time you hear about a "visionary" transport plan it is probably best not to get too excited.  The big projects will probably never happen but, before they are scrapped, they will probably eat up lots of resources and divert attention from the real problems.

What transport plans actually need, first and foremost, is the right structural model.  Thus, a decent transport plan for NSW would propose privatisation of ferries, trains and buses.  Beyond that, it needs practical capital projects which provide more capacity where it is most needed in the transport network.  And most of all it needs the political resolve to choose the right plan and to stay the course to actually implement it.

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