EcoTransit News Centre

This Opinion piece was submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald back in early January...in the wake of information that suggests that $54 billion dollars is allocated to Sydney motorways in the NSW Governments latest transport plan, we thought that a little historical context would be useful....

By Tony Prescott
Planner and member of EcoTransit Sydney

At the beginning of a year in which no fewer than two grand plans for transport are due to be released, it is appropriate to consider the outcomes of previous plans. This is particularly important when at least one of these plans will involve $23 billion worth of new motorway developments in metropolitan Sydney alone. Thankfully, we can use recent history to judge whether motorways can deliver the benefits claimed by their proponents.

Exhibit A is Action for Transport 2010. This policy was released in 1998, and aimed at fulfilling the Carr Government's 1995 election promises of better air quality and public transport services. It recognised the need for public transport projects that had been neglected by previous governments, with commitments to eight rail projects and seven bus transitways as well as five major motorway projects (four being segments of the Sydney Orbital). In 2010, only three of the seven bus transitways and two of the eight rail projects have been completed. Of these five projects, only three were completed in full. Despite detailed policy and the commitments that this implied, only one fifth of the public transport projects was attempted or fully-completed. By contrast, all of the motorway projects included in Action for Transport 2010 have been completed. However, by failing to meet its targets for public transport, particularly heavy rail, the NSW Government has inadvertently conducted a transport experiment, and we are now in a position to judge whether motorways reduce congestion and travel times. The results speak for themselves.

Vehicle Kilometres Travelled (VKT) have been growing at twice the rate of population growth while average speeds have been decreasing, as Dr Michelle Zeibots of the Institute for Sustainable Futures noted recently in the Herald. When a road reaches capacity, its users gravitate back to public transport. This is demonstrated by the loss of 380,000 commuter journeys from the East Hills railway in the first year after the opening of the parallel M5 motorway. Rail patronage slowly recovered as the motorway became gridlocked during peak hour.

The political response to a motorway reaching peak-hour gridlock in NSW has been to widen the motorway, but the experts agree that the real answer is to increase the speed, availability and quality of the public transport network. Despite the talk of sustainability, governments are mired in a 1950's mindset that views public transport solely in terms of a cost to the budget and never as a genuine remedy to congestion and pollution costs.

Sydney should be following cities in Europe and the United States, which use orbital motorways to provide access to expanding public transport networks by using park-and-ride facilities that allow commuting from areas not currently served by public transport. The Sydney Orbital transects commuter rail lines at Artarmon, Epping, Quakers Hill, Rooty Hill, Liverpool, the East Hills line from Narwee to Bexley North and Arncliffe. However, for reasons that can only be imagined, there has been no attempt to interchange the road network with the public transport system at these points. Worse still, the proposal to widen the M2 will remove the bus link from the M2 to the Epping rail interchange and eliminate any potential for buses using the M2 to interchange with rail services.

With a NSW election looming in 2011, we are now in a position to say that Sydney does not need wider or more numerous motorways. The past 20 years of motorway development have shown that it achieves nothing in the long run, and effectively starves other transport options of funding. It is time that resources were poured into catching up on public transport networks that are, in some cases, as much as 60 years behind schedule.

Improving the speed and availability of the public transport network across the whole of Sydney is the most cost-effective and environmentally sustainable way to secure the future of a rapidly-growing city.

Both Sydney dailies have carried stories that should make both the NSW Government and the Opposition sit up and take notice.
See the stories and tell the letters editors what you think!

Slow trains push commuters onto motorways - ANDREW WEST (SMH TRANSPORT)
January 16, 2010
THE decision to slow down Sydney rail services has increased traffic on the city's main roads, including motorways.
See more

Labyrinth threatens to eat city - ANDREW WEST (SMH TRANSPORT)
January 16, 2010
SYDNEY'S suburbs - from the Sutherland Shire to the densely packed inner west to the north shore - would be carved up by a labyrinth of motorways that do little to reduce traffic congestion, under two plans being considered by the State Government.
See more

Parents worry children's future sold up the river - JOSEPHINE TOVEY (SMH URBAN AFFAIRS)
January 16, 2010
Children growing up in Tempe today would not dream of swimming in the water, but their parents are worried they will not be able to breathe the air either if the Government goes ahead with a four-lane motorway.
See more

Controversial $5bn Metro rail-roaded - Adam Walters and Angela Kamper (Daily Telegraph)
January 16, 2010
Transport Minister David Campbell last night buckled under pressure from inner-city councils to announce the Government was now considering an extension of existing light rail to the inner-west and through the CBD.
See more

Despite an Upper House order to produce all documents related to the Steer Report (produced by NSW Treasury and leaked to the SMH earlier this year) and the 2007 discussion paper on the M4 East, at least six boxes of documents have not been provided for public examination. Indeed, the only materials that have been released are documents that are already in the public domain.

This is just the latest in a long line of evasions that the NSW Government has engaged in during the last two years on this subject. It is clear that the M4 East is not something that the government is prepared to go public on, in spite of public statements that the project is something that they wish to proceed with when funds are available.

See the SMH story by Matthew Moore.

See the most recent answer to questions in the parliament about this project on page 10 of this questions and answers paper.

More Information about the M4 East
See our collection of documents on the M4 East (includes stuff you were not supposed to see!)

We have received a lovely response from the NSW Opposition Leader on our latest newspaper. We are hoping to collect a great many more in the next few weeks. A landslide of popular opinion against the project that is set to starve the CityRail Network of funds and steal the corridor that will help expand CityRail's capacity by around 50%!

Here's the start of the list:

Barry O'Farrell
Gladys Berejiklian

It has been revealed that the recent decision to attempt a change to the legislation on the closure of currently unused railway corridors may have had a push from the man who has been accusing EcoTransit Sydney of trying to eliminate cycling in the Rozelle Goods line corridor. From this article (SMH 23/09/09), it would appear that the shoe is on the other foot!

EcoTransit Sydney and other community organisations attended a protest outside the NSW Parliament on the day that the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the CBD Metro was released. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh1JbxRhskE

(as printed in Crikey.com on Thursday, 26 March 2009)
Gavin Gatenby, co-convenor of public transport advocacy group EcoTransit Sydney, writes:

NSW Premier Nathan Rees has his hand out for billions in federal funding for Sydney public transport projects, but the gurus at Infrastructure Australia should be asking some hard questions because something seems terribly wrong with the cost of rail construction in NSW.

I was in Perth recently, so I took a ride down to Mandurah on the city’s new southern rail line. It’s a 72 kilometre, 45 minute trip to the coastal growth centre where the trains are met by specially fitted shuttle buses that whisk you to the waterfront precinct in five minutes. It was all very nicely done and the engineering standards are high. As a longstanding and very frustrated Sydney public transport campaigner I could only envy Perth’s achievement.

A few days later I had a couple of chardonnays with Alannah MacTiernan, WA’s shadow minister for strategic infrastructure who was, while minister for planning and infrastructure in the last Labor government, responsible for pushing the project through in 48 months.

“Congratulations Alannah! Spiffy line,” I said. “What did it set you back?”

“About $1.3 billion,” she replied.

Either I’d misheard her, or she was losing it. Conditioned by the NSW experience, I was certain nobody could build rail that cheap.

Later, I got Alannah to dig out the final cost figures, and it turns out that the Mandurah line actually came in for $1.22 billion. The Sandgropers got a double track rail line for $17 million a kilometre.

This was a revelation. I was reminded of a remark by former NSW Transport Minister John Watkins when EcoTransit Sydney met with him in August last year: “One thing I’ve learned in this job is that everything to do with rail is a lot more expensive than you think it’s going to be.”

Indeed. When the go-ahead for NSW RailCorp’s proposed 13 kilometre line to Sydney’s south-west growth centre was announced in June last year (characteristically, it’s since been indefinitely deferred) the estimated cost was $1.36 billion ?—?more than the price of the Mandurah line. How could a simple 13 kilometre project over unchallenging greenfield terrain with just two new stations, a stabling yard, reconstruction of Glenfield station and connections to the Southern Line possibly set the taxpayer back $106 million per kilometre?

In Perth they got 72 kilometres with 11 stations (two underground, and most with well-integrated bus interchanges and hundreds of park-and-ride spaces), a stabling yard, two major water-crossings plus more than a kilometre of tunnel under the city and the project came in for just $17 million a kilometre.

It wasn’t as if it was all plain sailing for the WA government. During the course of the project the cost of steel nearly doubled, the mining boom sucked technical skills out of Perth, a savage industrial dispute delayed construction. Not surprisingly, initial costs blew out. On the evidence of this comparison, if Sydney’s proposed South-West Rail Link had been constructed for the WA Government, it would have cost under $250 million.

It is also instructive to note that the South-West Rail Link estimate is only slightly below the $1.5 billion paid for Sydney’s M7 orbital motorway, which is 40 km long, with many bridges and off-ramps and the enormous Light Horse Interchange. This project traversed the same geological environment as the South West Rail Link and involved at least as much earth-moving per kilometre.

In NSW, rail construction projects fall under the Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation (TIDC), a government instrumentality charged with designing and delivering public transport projects. TIDC works for the Minister of Transport and for some years, rail bureaucrats and even politicians have joked that the acronym really stands for Triple Initial Development Cost.

When an addition to the NSW rail network is contemplated, TIDC works up a basic design for the project and figures out a cost for construction by the private sector based, presumably, on recent experience. To that they add a very generous allowance for “contingency”, a margin for ‘risk and financial risk’ and their own fee for managing the project.

At this point the government triumphantly announces how much it’s going to spend on the project and things get murky. The inflated estimate skews benefit-cost analysis so that the project appears uncompetitive with motorways ?—?an outcome neatly coinciding with the dominant philosophy of state governments from Greiner onwards. The forces within government traditionally opposed to rail argue vociferously against it. In the uncommon event that the project survives this assault, the tenderers structure their bids to reflect TIDC’s inflated estimates. Even if the project is cancelled, its estimate becomes the baseline for the next estimate. It takes little imagination to see that this process, continuously repeated, would put costs on an escalator.

Government secrecy has concealed the problem. To understand the extent of the apparent overestimations, those without access to information confidential to TIDC, the Ministry of Transport and the NSW Treasury can only compare rail projects with similar characteristics in other states and with similar NSW projects from the recent past.

Of course, there are variations related to the technical differences between, for example, WA’s narrow-gauge heavy rail (which we have used for comparison here) and NSW’s standard gauge systems. Geology and topography can also be relevant to costs. Nevertheless, these differences could account for only a small proportion of the huge discrepancies.

Here are a couple more examples of apparent egregious overcosting:

The Parramatta-Epping link

The Parramatta-Epping link (an integral section of the Parramatta-Chatswood Line indefinitely deferred by NSW Transport Minister Michael Costa in 2003) was to have been slightly over 11 kilometres long. Five kilometres were on the surface, along the route of the existing single-track Carlingford Line, and this section required some earth works to accommodate double track. The rest of the project consisted of a total of 6 km of tunneling in two sections. It was last costed at $2.2 billion.

What should it really have cost? It is possible to arrive at a rough (and generous) estimate. Assume that the existing surface track, with its wiring, signals and bridges was completely replaced with new double track and all necessary fittings. On the evidence of the Mandurah Line’s $17 million per km (which included significant engineering challenges and incurred a 25 per cent cost over-run) reworking the existing section of track should cost no more than $100 million.

The cost of tunneled sections can be adequately estimated by looking at two comparable Sydney projects and by assuming that the costs for these were not excessive. The Airport Line came in at around $800 million 10 years ago. There were five stations on this line and it was a state-of-the-art engineering through wet sand most of the way. This project was 8 km long, so a cost of $100 million per km would seem robust.

More recently, the now indefinitely deferred North-West Rail Link, Stage 1, from Epping to Castle Hill, was costed at $660 million in November 2006. This was to have been a conventional heavy rail link (not to be confused with the North-West Metro proposal, also indefinitely deferred). Curiously, TIDC’s estimate for North-West Link seems reasonable. The project was to have been 9 km long, all in tunnel, with three stations. At $73 million per kilometre it would have been rather cheaper than the earlier (and more technically difficult) Airport Line, but to be conservative let’s use the Airport Line’s $100 million per km in calculating a reasonable cost for the tunneled sections of the Parramatta-Epping connection.

A two-level underground rail-bus interchange at Parramatta Station is a feature of the Parramatta-Epping link’s design, however the Airport Line, which we have specifically used as a cost comparison, featured five stations ?—?four of which were underground, including the Domestic Terminal station whose construction was especially challenging and involved a major cost over-run ?—?so an allowance for Parramatta interchange and underground platforms at Epping is built into the analogy.

On this basis, total cost for tunneling for the Parramatta-Epping link would be $600 million. Add $100 million for the surface section and you end up with a total of $700 million for the whole project. The TIDC estimate is over three times this figure.

Metro West proposal

The current “Metro West” proposal (Parramatta to Central) has been submitted for federal funding with an estimated total cost of $8.1 billion. The rationale for this project is that it would increase capacity between Parramatta and the City, which is what the now-truncated Parramatta-Chatswood line was intended to accomplish. Metro West is only in the very early stages of planning so it is unclear how a precise estimate of $8.1 billion could possibly have been arrived at. Nevertheless, sufficient details are in the public domain for its basic outline to be clear. All in tunnel, it would be about 23 km long with, probably, 11 stations. On the evidence of the Airport line costs and the North-West Link estimates this should cost a maximum of around $2.3 billion (not including rolling stock), but the official estimate is three and a half times higher. Even if rolling stock is included in the TIDC estimate, it should total no more than $3 billion.

Had the estimates for these three projects been merely 130 per cent of comparable projects ?—?either actually built or properly estimated ?—?the excess might be legitimately explainable by regional differences in materials, geology, labour costs, land acquisition (where applicable) but at 200 per cent such an anomaly requires detailed public explanation. Three hundred per cent and above seems inexplicable and possibly scandalous.

Absurdly high estimates skew the benefit-cost ratios for rail projects with the result that they are indefinitely deferred, typically in favour of motorways. This seriously corrupts the planning process and inhibits the introduction of necessary public transport infrastructure at a time when the global decline of oil production looms, car use is falling dramatically, there’s enormous pressure on existing transit, and vast areas of Sydney are effectively without any public transport at all. On the face of it, if these projects are in fact funded, the Australian taxpayer will be forking out at least three times as much as they should for much-needed infrastructure.

Gavin Gatenby is co-convenor of public transport advocacy group EcoTransit Sydney.

The third edition of the ETS News coverage on the Dulwich Hill extension of the lightrail is now available.

Find out about the campaigns progress, and plans for the future, including more details about a proposed $20 million extension to East Balmain.

You can also download our latest letter to the NSW Premier asking for a thorough consideration of these light rail projects, and read all about our rally for better transport planning at the opening of the 'Shooting Through - Sydney by Tram" exhibition at the Museum of Sydney (well worth a look).

Finally, you can also read up on the latest developments in light rail around the world, and get a taste of Enquiry by Design - a planning process that puts communities, engineers, and government agencies on the same page at the same time.

Read all about it!

EcoTransit Sydney's successful linking of the latest exhibition at the Museum of Sydney with the current campaign to make more of light rail has been covered in a range of local media. See the coverage and pictures of the demonstration:

http://digitaledition.theglebe.com.au/?iid=24105
http://www.altmedia.net.au/light-rail-supporters-shoot-down-%E2%80%98mic...

More news as it comes to hand, but in the meantime a jaunt to the Museum of Sydney to see what remains of one of the largest tram networks in the world is well worth the the effort.

The exhibition "Shooting Through - Sydney by Tram" runs until October. See more about the exhibition at:

http://www.hht.net.au/whats_on/exhibitions/exhibitions/sydney_by_tram

Not news to you? Not news to us either, but its about time that someone moved the petrol debate into the realms of the possible. We need to get it into the Federal Government's head that high prices are not going away and that the answer is to change our thinking about how we are going to get around in the future. This clip is a nice response to the very silly argument being had about how to manage petrol prices. Hopefully this will catch their attention.

See the whole clip at Get Up!