Public transport

Given Labor's hapless record under three premiers, if the Rees Government has any decency or common sense it will just keep quiet aboot public transport from now until the election. It keeps none of its promises. Only its negative statements are credible: services to be cut, timetables to be slowed - announcements of that sort can be relied on. As Mr Campbell said on Friday as he wielded the axe on the much-ballyhooed projects [the NorthWest Metro and the SouthWest Rail Link], "I think what we're doing here today is being up-front and honest with the people of the north-west." Follow his examole, Mr Rees. Insult us no further wuth promises and plans and other lies, but speak honestly, and only when progress has actually been achieved. That should ensure complete silence.
- from "Terminating Trains", editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald 3 Nov 2008.

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.
- "British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher does her bit for the car industry", quoted in Tony Davis's entertaining review of the car industry, Step On It!

"After a while", one commuter told me, "if you see the same person every morning on the platform, and maybe quite often sit opposite them on the train, you might just start to nod to each other when you arrive, but that's about as far as it goes". "How long is 'a while'?", I asked. "Oh, maybe a year or so - it depends, some people are more outgoing than others, you know." "Right", I said (wondering what definitions of 'outgoing' she could possibly have in mind), "So, a particularly 'outgoing' person might start to greet you with a nod after seeing you every morning for, say, what, a couple of months?" "Mmm, well, maybe", my informant sounded doubtful, "but actually that would be a bit, um, forward - a bit pushy; that would make me a bit uncomfortable."
- Kate Fox, in Watching the English

Most US malls are not well served by public transport and this seems to be a deliberate strategy to limit access by poor minorities.
- Ross Gittins, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald 7 July 2004.

... integration is not and should not be a transport objective. It is a policy option, which may be good or bad in different circumstances. A station carpark may well represent integration but is merely a waste of money if nobody uses it.
- Malcolm Buchanan, in his paper to the AITPM 2003 National Conference Achieving sustainable land use and transport systems ... Time to stop deluding ourselves and face the choices

The reason why private buses cost less to run than public routes was obvious to my contemporaries even when we were at primary school. The companies may have worked their drivers harder and paid them less than in the pubic sector, as Roth suggests, but the real cost savings came from running a third-rate service.
- Paul Mees, in A Very Public Solution, 2000

If we had a single, proper transport organisation or strategic organisation and a common way of assessing expenditure and a transport budget which included all the expenditures that we spend on transport, would we really be putting roads for buses throughout the western suburbs or would we, perhaps, be using far less money to buy back the licences which have been captured in perpetuity by the private bus industry through the legislation and restructure the private bus industry in western Sydney and then maybe have some roads constructed if need be. But what we've really got is a public works solution to a difficult licensing problem because we've got a bucket of money for tarmac but we don't have a bucket of money for buying back monopoly licences.
- John Mant, addressing the NRMA "Dollars and Sense" conference, Sydney, November 2002

The Government should determine and clearly state the objectives and intended outcomes of the School Student Transport Scheme ...
- Recommendation 1 of the 1993 NSW Parliament Public Accounts Committee Inquiry into the School Student Transport Scheme (SSTS). In 1992-93 the estimated cost of SSTS was $306 million. For 2002-03 the estimate has risen to $427 million, a 40% rise in a period when inflation has risen by only 27%. The real cost of SSTS has thus increased by about 10% over ten years and objectives are no closer.

In the Newcastle Metro system, a newspaper reported that teenage vandalism had been reduced to incidental levels by a simple method: instead of playing contemporay pop hits over the public address as muzak, they decided to switch to a classical repertoire. The effect was dramatic. The gangs of youths who usually spent a lot of their time hanging out in stations and the tunnels couldn't stand it. They left to find somewhere more to their taste. Delius's symphonic poem, Sea Drift, was spectacularly effective and caused mass migration instantaneously.
- Christopher Ross, Tunnel Visions

Mountains, we are told, have to be climbed "because they are there", but transport infrastructure does not have to be used merely because it is there. The normal rules of planning and assessment have to be applied to light rapid transit proposals. These include:
    1) ensuring that all sensible options are explored
    2) identifying the best
    3) only proceeding if the best option is worthwhile compared to the "do minimum"
    4) ensuring that the best option forms part of a coherent strategy (but not employing such
        a strategy to cover its weakness)
- Malcolm Buchanan, The Use of Available Transport Infrastructure for Light Transit

The remarkable doubling in the number of trips by public transport in Freiburg over the decade since 1984 can be chiefly accounted for by the introduction of a cheap travel pass with the essential characteristics of unlimited use at zero marginal financial cost, interpersonal transferability and wide regional validity. Pedestrianisation of the old city from 1973, extensive traffic calming and parking restrictions were undoubtedly important prior complementary measures, without which the environmental travel pass might have had less impact.
- Fitzroy & Smith, Public Transport Demand in Freiburg : Why Did Patronage Double in a Decade ? Transport Policy July 1998.

During the start-up phase traffic has been lighter than the Sydney Light Rail Co and operator TNT Transit Systems would have wished, but the reasons are not hard to find. A speed limit of 20 km/h slapped on the street running sections by the city authorities contrasts markedly with the rapid progress of trams through the streets of Melbourne. Journey times are longer than they need to be, which is exacerbated by LRV's not having priority at road junctions. Relatively high fares and early problems with ticket machines did not help.
- From Sydney's trams in search of passengers, Railway Gazette International February 1998.

Transit agencies have demonstrated a bias for expensive high capital cost rail systems that are inappropriate to the American urban form. New urban rail systems may meet some needs - for example they seem to enhance civic pride - but if the purpose of new urban rail systems is to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, then don't build them, because they don't do that.
- Extract from Address by Wendell Cox to the Ohio Transportation Users Conference,1992.

Back to index of opinions