Last week the Government issued its 20-year transport strategy. There were two gorgeous documents full of vacuous words and phrases such as "liveability", "world class", and "encouraging people to make more sustainable travel decisions". There were lots of press releases, with opinion pieces by Premier Steve Bracks and Transport Minister Peter Batchelor.
But if you wanted to find out how much faster or slower trips were going to be, you would have searched in vain. The plans, like the patient-free hospital in Yes, Minister, regarded transport as something valued in its own right -- not a means of getting from A to B in the shortest time.
Victorians surely have a right to see objectives in terms of measurable and achievable outcomes in their goals of moving around the city.
Most road spending is earmarked for regions and outer suburbs; only 9 per cent of the budget is for major arterial roads. Seventy per cent of total spending is allocated to public transport, which handles fewer than 10 per cent of trips at a considerable subsidy.
Even so, there was a chorus of criticism from the public transport lobby.
Paul Mees, in "A plan with no one in charge" (Opinion, 18/5), argued we should have more tram lines to Ikea stores. He paraded Vancouver as an example, claiming that its policies have increased use of public transport. So they have. Use in Vancouver increased from 10.3 per cent, in 1999, to 10.8 per cent, in 2004, not 13 per cent, as he claimed.
This small increase was achieved by spending a fortune on light rail and reducing central business district parking places by 3000. If Vancouver is the answer, we are asking the wrong question.
Light rail, with a well resourced lobbying strategy, is pressing strongly for a share of the public's tax tribute. Brian Buckley, in "Road transport has been let run wild" (Business 19/5), as well as offering us his insights into the future rising price of petrol, offers seductive information on stunning patronage increases from some overseas light rail systems.
Greater public transport patronage is, of course, possible. You need to spend vast sums of money and throttle car use. Proponents of these solutions offer no evidence of saved travel time, and less on cutting costs. That's because there are no such benefits.
The fact is that successful cities have to adapt to the modern economy. This means greater flexibility in transport to correspond with a greater diversity of home, shopping and working locations.
The radial links that characterised cities in the past two centuries are being replaced by greater cross-suburb travel, and public transport is ill-equipped to deal with this.
Its role, though important, is fated to decline and trying to prevent this will mean regulatory controls on trips or starving road funding -- both of which will bring about a less efficient and, dare one say, less liveable city.
While public transport-bicycling fanatics were loudly claiming that a plan that spends 70 per cent on modes of transport that provided 10 per cent (and declining) of trips was inadequate, motoring lobbies were strangely muted. Perhaps they were relieved that previous proposals for 20 per cent of trips by public transport by 2020 were downgraded. Attempting to achieve that would have bankrupted the state and transformed the city into a decaying piece of antiquity, with clogged roads and disappearing jobs.
The pattern in the US is clearly being replicated here. In 1960, mass transit trips were 3 per cent of those by car. By 2004, they were 1 per cent. Mass transit costs in 1960 were the same per person mile as car trips. By 2004, petrol price increases notwithstanding, they were more than four times as dear. And commute times averaged 43 minutes by transit compared with 25 minutes by car. A city based on public transport needs extremely high density levels -- the sort of levels that amiable planners consider the hoi polloi should endure, but which they reject for themselves. New York, the world's capital, has a vast central business district, including Manhattan, that has a population density 10 times that of Melbourne. Even so, New York's transit provides fewer than 10 per cent of trips.
Modern cities have no alternative but to adapt to the cars that people want to use and that governments profit from by taxing that use.
Some of this revenue is properly redirected to public transport, which has a clear role in serving central business district workplaces (which account for 10 per cent of jobs).
Support for other services is also warranted since a small minority has no access to a car. More funding should, however, go to providing roads to allow faster trips.
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