The Canberra light rail project is a dumb idea likely to end in tragedy. It's divorced from economic sense, unlikely to increase public transport use, likely to destroy the city's amenity and almost certainly going to bankrupt the city. It also goes against lessons learnt from similar projects in the United States and seems to be being prosecuted by an unholy alliance of ideologues and developers against the left, right and technocrats. It's basically the monorail from The Simpsons.
If you were to think of who in Canberra might actually catch the tram anywhere, who comes to mind? Hipsters in Braddon commuting to Barton, or dinks in Kingston commuting to civic, and people making the commute down the principle transport corridor in the city: Belconnen > Civic > Woden.
When you think of who is least likely to be interested in a tram, who comes to mind? People that love to drive and consequently live in distant town centres like Gunghalin and Tuggeranong.
Where is the tram being built? Gunghalin to Civic. What. The. Fuck.
The policy is essentially based on the idea that 'if you build it, they will come'. But there is no evidence of such a phenomenon anywhere. Public transport development has to follow demand, and there isn't any. Even if the tram was built in the correct place, it would see little use because the rapid bus networks running that track are presently not at capacity. It's also the case that Braddon hipsters work in civic for the most part and Kingston dinks work in Barton for the most part - so they have no reason to take the tram.
As far as I know, no surveys were conducted in relevant areas to ascertain whether people would actually be interested in using the tram and how often.
Advocates think that the tram will drive densification and lead to demand in the long run. This puts the cart before the horse. Get density, get buses and bike lanes to capacity, build some money in the public purse, and then make the investment in light rail. There is already demand for densification along the northbourne corridor - you do not need to build a tram to drive demand; you need to change zoning regulations. There is so much empty land around civic that even a high speed rail network from Gunghalin to civic wouldn't encourage people to purchase there when they can live on Gininderra drive instead.
Rattenbury wants to build a tram to make Canberra more like Amsterdam. This is stupid because Amsterdam has a population of 800 000, exists amidst the European carbon market, is populated by people from a culture that doesn't worship the motor vehicle and, critically, is full of medium density buildings dating back to an era when people had to walk everywhere and so built up not across. (The irony here is that the Green's policy of protecting dugong moth breeding grounds and the like has led to Canberra developing as a long noodle rather than a circle that would actually encourage densification and make mass transit more viable).
The latest advertising run from the territory government talks about how the tram will create 10 000 new jobs. This really grabs my goat. There aren't 10 000 people involved in running a tram network that totals 30km, so it's not creating 10 000 jobs. It's creating 10 000 contracts. A labour government interested in creating long-term, secure employment should not be so full of shit.
This advertising campaign is doubly bad because it so closely mimics town-planning blunders across American towns of sizes comparable to Canberra. As Charles Marohn of Strong Towns explains in this podcast, a common response of moribund American towns to declining growth and population was to build big highways out to a WalMart site. This fiscal stimulus led to jobs and growth in the short term, but then ended up entrenching the decline further (and discrediting fiscal stimulus). The jobs didn't last because the highways did not produce the kind of environments that were conducive to small business development. Speed limits were too high for pedestrian traffic, commutes were too long and connectivity to telecomms infrastructure was too weak for firms to move there. So the highway just involved a massive transfer of rents from ratepayers to construction workers over the course of a year or two, and then government debt. Walmart created only a handful of jobs because it is a capital intensive organisation, and the problem continued. Similar stories emerge from projects to build stadiums.
Marohn's argument is that the most profitable land in small cities is main street. Speed limits are slow so you get plenty of foot traffic. Pedestrians like to window shop and buy food and entertainment. Small businesses move in to make a profit of the customer base and development occurs gradually. As the area becomes lively and attractive, firms set up on 2nd and 3rd floors because their workers want to be close to the nightlife and cafes. Crucially, job growth is strong because you have a lot of small enterprises and steady investment. This is a kind of organic development and similar to what has happened in Braddon over the past 5 years. Organic development is a concept completely missing from the transport for Canberra plan. Indeed, transport for Canberra runs counter to such organic development because it directs development to emerge along a single corridor rather than responding to economic activity as it emerges according to existing geographic parameters.
The perfect storm emerges when you realise that the tram from Gunghalin to Civic will run along long stretches of absolutely nothing. There are literally farms out between Gunghalin and civic. The government intends to lay kilometers of expensive track that will service nobody, even as existing bus services are under-capacity. If the tram was likely to lubricate commerce along its route then there could be an argument for it, but it seems impossible for that to happen because there isn't even plumbing there, let alone sites of commerce. Unsurprisingly, there is now an indication that the long term plan is to massively expand Dickson - not because there is any organic reason to, but simply to make the tram viable.
The tram is not a cheap thing and the government does not have a big surplus. If usage of the tram is low there is no way it will turn a profit with which to repay the initial investment costs. The chances of the government going bankrupt as a part of this hair-brained scheme are thus quite large.
Then there's the fact that building it will require destroying the gorgeous nature strip down Northbourne, and that the tram will have to stop at lights just like the bus. What. The. Fuck.
The weirdest thing about the tram for me is that it doesn't serve any interest other than those of ideologues who like the idea of trams contra all evidence, and developers who foresee a bonanza of rapidly approved speculative projects along the proposed route. The left dislikes the project because it won't actually increase public transport use the way organic densification and the steady enhancement of the bus network will. The right dislike it because it is clearly a fiscal disaster. And technocrats hate it for both reasons.
The liberals have managed to grab hold of this opening with rare clarity. Their flyers for the upcoming election say something along the lines of:
1. No tram, lower rates
2. (Elaborating on the other side): the government needs to raise your rates to pay for a tram you don't need. Vote liberal instead.
I can't argue with that, so even though the Canberra libs are a pack of arch-conservative, Thatcherite dipshits, I'm going to have to vote for them! What a disaster.
If you were to think of who in Canberra might actually catch the tram anywhere, who comes to mind? Hipsters in Braddon commuting to Barton, or dinks in Kingston commuting to civic, and people making the commute down the principle transport corridor in the city: Belconnen > Civic > Woden.
When you think of who is least likely to be interested in a tram, who comes to mind? People that love to drive and consequently live in distant town centres like Gunghalin and Tuggeranong.
Where is the tram being built? Gunghalin to Civic. What. The. Fuck.
The policy is essentially based on the idea that 'if you build it, they will come'. But there is no evidence of such a phenomenon anywhere. Public transport development has to follow demand, and there isn't any. Even if the tram was built in the correct place, it would see little use because the rapid bus networks running that track are presently not at capacity. It's also the case that Braddon hipsters work in civic for the most part and Kingston dinks work in Barton for the most part - so they have no reason to take the tram.
As far as I know, no surveys were conducted in relevant areas to ascertain whether people would actually be interested in using the tram and how often.
Advocates think that the tram will drive densification and lead to demand in the long run. This puts the cart before the horse. Get density, get buses and bike lanes to capacity, build some money in the public purse, and then make the investment in light rail. There is already demand for densification along the northbourne corridor - you do not need to build a tram to drive demand; you need to change zoning regulations. There is so much empty land around civic that even a high speed rail network from Gunghalin to civic wouldn't encourage people to purchase there when they can live on Gininderra drive instead.
Rattenbury wants to build a tram to make Canberra more like Amsterdam. This is stupid because Amsterdam has a population of 800 000, exists amidst the European carbon market, is populated by people from a culture that doesn't worship the motor vehicle and, critically, is full of medium density buildings dating back to an era when people had to walk everywhere and so built up not across. (The irony here is that the Green's policy of protecting dugong moth breeding grounds and the like has led to Canberra developing as a long noodle rather than a circle that would actually encourage densification and make mass transit more viable).
The latest advertising run from the territory government talks about how the tram will create 10 000 new jobs. This really grabs my goat. There aren't 10 000 people involved in running a tram network that totals 30km, so it's not creating 10 000 jobs. It's creating 10 000 contracts. A labour government interested in creating long-term, secure employment should not be so full of shit.
This advertising campaign is doubly bad because it so closely mimics town-planning blunders across American towns of sizes comparable to Canberra. As Charles Marohn of Strong Towns explains in this podcast, a common response of moribund American towns to declining growth and population was to build big highways out to a WalMart site. This fiscal stimulus led to jobs and growth in the short term, but then ended up entrenching the decline further (and discrediting fiscal stimulus). The jobs didn't last because the highways did not produce the kind of environments that were conducive to small business development. Speed limits were too high for pedestrian traffic, commutes were too long and connectivity to telecomms infrastructure was too weak for firms to move there. So the highway just involved a massive transfer of rents from ratepayers to construction workers over the course of a year or two, and then government debt. Walmart created only a handful of jobs because it is a capital intensive organisation, and the problem continued. Similar stories emerge from projects to build stadiums.
Marohn's argument is that the most profitable land in small cities is main street. Speed limits are slow so you get plenty of foot traffic. Pedestrians like to window shop and buy food and entertainment. Small businesses move in to make a profit of the customer base and development occurs gradually. As the area becomes lively and attractive, firms set up on 2nd and 3rd floors because their workers want to be close to the nightlife and cafes. Crucially, job growth is strong because you have a lot of small enterprises and steady investment. This is a kind of organic development and similar to what has happened in Braddon over the past 5 years. Organic development is a concept completely missing from the transport for Canberra plan. Indeed, transport for Canberra runs counter to such organic development because it directs development to emerge along a single corridor rather than responding to economic activity as it emerges according to existing geographic parameters.
The perfect storm emerges when you realise that the tram from Gunghalin to Civic will run along long stretches of absolutely nothing. There are literally farms out between Gunghalin and civic. The government intends to lay kilometers of expensive track that will service nobody, even as existing bus services are under-capacity. If the tram was likely to lubricate commerce along its route then there could be an argument for it, but it seems impossible for that to happen because there isn't even plumbing there, let alone sites of commerce. Unsurprisingly, there is now an indication that the long term plan is to massively expand Dickson - not because there is any organic reason to, but simply to make the tram viable.
The tram is not a cheap thing and the government does not have a big surplus. If usage of the tram is low there is no way it will turn a profit with which to repay the initial investment costs. The chances of the government going bankrupt as a part of this hair-brained scheme are thus quite large.
Then there's the fact that building it will require destroying the gorgeous nature strip down Northbourne, and that the tram will have to stop at lights just like the bus. What. The. Fuck.
The weirdest thing about the tram for me is that it doesn't serve any interest other than those of ideologues who like the idea of trams contra all evidence, and developers who foresee a bonanza of rapidly approved speculative projects along the proposed route. The left dislikes the project because it won't actually increase public transport use the way organic densification and the steady enhancement of the bus network will. The right dislike it because it is clearly a fiscal disaster. And technocrats hate it for both reasons.
The liberals have managed to grab hold of this opening with rare clarity. Their flyers for the upcoming election say something along the lines of:
1. No tram, lower rates
2. (Elaborating on the other side): the government needs to raise your rates to pay for a tram you don't need. Vote liberal instead.
I can't argue with that, so even though the Canberra libs are a pack of arch-conservative, Thatcherite dipshits, I'm going to have to vote for them! What a disaster.
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