Labor will work with South Australia to deliver a massive expansion of Adelaide’s tram network, if it wins at this year’s federal election, Anthony Albanese has said.
Albanese, the shadow minister for infrastructure and transport, as well as cities and tourism, made the announcement on Wednesday.
AdeLINK, which appears on Infrastructure Australia’s current Infrastructure Priority List, is an ambitious plan to revive a tram network in a city where light rail once thrived.
Adelaide already has the Glenelg Tram, a 15 kilometre line which runs from Hindmarsh, through the CBD, to the beach at Glenelg, which has been running in some way or another since the late 1800s.
In a project Infrastructure Australia anticipates could materialise could materialise between 5 and 10 years from now, the South Australian Government wants to build six new lines in the city:
- PortLINK would convert the existing Outer Harbor railway line to deliver a new tram service to Outer Harbor, Port Adelaide and Grange, and construct new tram lines to West Lakes and Semaphore
- EastLINK would be a tram line running along The Parade to the University of South Australia campus at Magill
- WestLINK, which would incorporate the existing Glenelg Tram, would create a line running along Henley Beach Road to Henley Square, with a branch line to Adelaide Airport
- ProspectLINK would be a tram line running from Grand Junction Road along Prospect Road and O’Connell Street
- UnleyLINK would run along Unley Road and Belair Road to Mitcham
- CityLINK would run in a continuous loop at regular intervals along the Morphett Street, Sturt Street, Halifax Street and Frome Street corridors, with transfers available from other tram lines and railway stations
Click to enlarge
“I’ve been meeting with the South Australian ministers respectively, Stephen Mulligan and Tom Koutsantonis, the Treasurer, about the expansion of the tram network here in Adelaide,” Albanese said on local FiveAA radio in Adelaide on Wednesday.
While he said the network may be cheaper to build than in other cities, thanks to Adelaide’s relatively flat topography, and relatively wide roads, Albanese conceded that projects like AdeLINK are not cheap.
The shadow minister indicated the project should be funded, in part through value capture.
“One of the things that would happen with such a project is that you would have uplift value along the route, so you’d look at ways you could get some private sector financing into the project,” he said.
“While I’m here I’ll be having more discussions with the South Australian Government.
“They’ve identified this as I think a visionary project.”
Albanese’s other priority during his visit to Adelaide was the upgrade of the rail line between Gawler and Adelaide, a project Labor committed to fund late last year.
The Gawler line is expected to see a near-doubling of patronage by 2031. The proposed initiative is to electrify the line, and install a new signalling system.
Infrastructure Australia anticipates the project should take place in the next five years, if it passes the assessment process.
Street trains and street trams (street cars) at ground level are modes of travel of the 19th century. Rail of all forms should be moving at high speed in grade separation if the expenses are to be justified in the 21st Century.
Essen in Germany moved its trams underground when it experimented with the O-Bahn bus technology using trolley buses to run on the same tracks as the trams through the tunnels.
Tram carriages are expensive to manufacture because the carriages have 3 or more articulations allow them manouvre around tight corners in the street intersection.
Changing the Osborne – Grange Railways to tram technology involves electrification of the lines. It would be simpler to run trains along the tracks and extend them to West Lakes if that is still a priority.
In South Australia our Trams are low floor – Trains are high floor. Changing to tram will involve removing all the platforms on the line.
Parade Norwood, Unley Road and Prospect Roads are not wide enough to have dual tracks of tram lines and tram stops to be put onto the road surface. With so many intersections the trams trips will be extremely slow.
This is reflected in the experience with Glenelg tram, which is the slowest mode of travel to get from Adelaide to Glenelg when compared to travel by bus, car and bike.
http://www.raa.com.au/documents/raa-multi-mode-travel-time-report
Glenelg to City
==============
Transport Mode Time Taken to Arrive at Hindmarsh Sq
* Car 36 minutes
* Bike (Alternative Route) 36 minutes
* Bike (Direct Route) 39 minutes
* Tram 44 minutes
* Bus 47 minutes
For the Glenelg to City multi-mode travel time survey it was the car that was quickest, albeit only by half a minute compared to the bike on the alternative route. This suggests that the car has more of an advantage over the bike on longer test routes.
The alternative bike route was actually two and a half minutes quicker than the more direct route, whilst the tram and the bus recorded travel times of 44 minutes and 7 minutes respectively.
The slowest mode of transport which was the bus recorded a time that was 11 minutes slower than the car, which was the quickest mode.
For both the car and the tram, they made good starts to the survey, racing ahead of the bike and bus. However, congestion build up as they approached Adelaide allowed the bike to make ground on them.
The most recent tram extensions in Adelaide were predicated on separation from traffic where cost effective to do so, combined with traffic signal priority at intersections where grade separation is not feasible or warranted/cost effective. This results in free-flowing light rail mitigating the need for expensive tunneling. Additional improvements in tram technology power supply (by use of battery and or capacitors) will mean that initial construction and on-going maintenance costs will be lower than for previous systems. Far from being 19th century technology, light rail has always been a leader in effectively moving people, witness those cities (Melbourne, much of Europe) who sensibly kept their systems and now reap the benefits!
Wire-free operation generally implies higher initial costs. In addition systems using batteries and super capacitor add a substantial amount of mass to the vehicle (Hybrid packs that provides both energy storage and power handling during acceleration and braking) have a mass of around 2.2 tones. This mass is generally constrained by the axle load and the available space on the roof. Generally a 30m long tram has 2 packs and a 40 m long tram 3 packs. This means less payload and a higher energy consumption. Also based on return experience on a fleet wide operation, batteries and super capacitor life is only a fraction of the life of the vehicle. So far the observed maximum life of Ni-MH batteries in partial wire less operation is 7 years, in line with top range of the initial life estimate. Over a 30 year life of a tram, such energy storage packs will have to be replaced at least 3 times. Another aspect of advanced batteries and super capacitor is their sustainability footprint and the need to properly manage their charge levels to avoid fire and in some cases release of toxic gases. While lots of progress are made towards dealing with these issues they increase the complexity level of the system and add to costs.
When one looks at the total cost of ownership, full wire-free systems whole cost of life will be higher than those of a partial or standard overhead contact lines. To date most of the wire free solutions deployed are over short distance to remove the overhead wires in historical place or to simplify the crossing of wide intersections.
This being said, China distinguishes itself by deploying full wire-free systems mostly based on indigenous or licensed technology of super-capacitor. As, in many cases, acquisition costs are not an issue. Very often, being ahead of the technology front motivates these deployments by the local authorities. Operating costs are simply not accounted for in the equation. It will be interesting to find out how well they do in a few years time!