‘Historic time’ for Australia’s public transport

By Jennifer Perry

It is an “historic time” for public transport in Australia, according to Professor Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University of Technology and advisory council member to Infrastructure Australia (IA).

“I’ve been involved in public transport movements for 30 years, and in many ways we’ve been trying to keep the ‘dying patient’ alive,” he said.
“Now public transport is very vigorously alive and in fact so alive that it has reached over 5 per cent growth per year and in some cities over 9 per cent
“Perth began the growth when it rebuilt its rail system but now all Australian cities are growing dramatically.”

Click here to view a video extract from Professor Peter Newman's keynote address at Transport Infrastructure Australia.

Delivering the keynote address at the Transport Infrastructure Australia conference on May 20-21st, Professor Newman said the “spark” for Perth’s transit growth actually occurred when the conservative parties closed the Fremantle railway down - “the best thing” they could have done.
“Instead of going along with a vague dying system it was actually killed off and that produced an enormous political response...to rebuild our rail system,” he said.
“Other Australian cities watched as Perth showed that people would get out of their cars – now they all want to revamp their railways.”
As advisory council member to Infrastructure Australia (IA), Professor Newman said IA’s approach was “totally fascinating,” as for the first time it used an across-the-board comparison of all of Australia’s infrastructure options.
In analysing each infrastructure project that was submitted, IA used strategic criteria as well as a “very serious” benefit cost ratio which to begin with, was done poorly by every State.
“We then got it down to something reasonable so that you could compare across the infrastructure options and when we did that, rail came out very well,” he said.
With an historic 55 per cent of Federal funding in the budget (from the Building Australia Fund) going to urban rail and another billion or so on freight rail, Professor Newman said that rail projects had a very good benefit cost ratio outcome. Urban rail also focused land development much more effectively, therefore benefitting entire urban regions.
Besides having to meet IA’s set of strategic priorities, each project had to consider agglomeration economies in their benefit cost ratio, which Professor Newman said “threw everybody.”
“Agglomeration economies basically recognise that we don’t build infrastructure for its own sake - we build it to make cities work...and the outcome is that you create certain scale and density opportunities that weren’t there before...”
Moving on to examine the impact of the global financial crisis on Australia’s transport infrastructure, Professor Newman explained that the “resilient city” that is built on new infrastructure is clearly how we need to respond to the global economic “crash.”
“Resilient cities are based on the idea that in every age of innovation there has been a crash that leads to that innovation,” he said.
“In the 1840’s...the old ‘walking cities’ collapsed and out of this came the railroad era of steam power...all Australian cities began to spread along those railway lines.
“The 1890’s saw another global crash and out of it came...the extraordinary rebuilding of cities around electric trams and trains.
“The 1930’s saw another crash and out of it came the car-based cities, cheap oil, highways and the era we have lived through...our cities have spread in every direction and have reached limits based on that technology and will not continue.”

To read the second part of this report, click here.