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UEA Response to Draft SA Transport Plan

Urban Ecology Australia Response to Draft South Australian Transport Plan

Michael Pilling, September 2003

This is a good start

Urban Ecology wishes to acknowledge that this draft plan includes many recognitions of the systemic effects of transport infrastructure on the overall functioning of society within the built environs. It is also good that community consultation is seen as important in the plan. We agree that a good transport infrastructure contributes greatly to the economic capacity of the state but feel that the social importance of transport has been underestimated in the plan and note that an equitably affordable and accessible public transport system can contribute greatly to the attractiveness of South Australia as a place to live and work.

Two major points Urban Ecology would like to make:

• Focus on Equity and Accessability

  If full consideration is given to equity and accessability in the transport system, most other desirable outcomes follow.

• Forget the Technical Fix

  An overall shortcoming of the draft plan is its over reliance on technical fixes. By all means use the most appropriate technologies but never forget that choice, planning and visionary decisions will have a far greater result in creating good long term outcomes. Many decisions that greatly affect transport demand, cost, utility and sustainability need to be made outside the transport portfolio. A whole of government approach is needed.

The rest of this submission consists of principles and suggestions for various transport modes.

Equity

Everyone in our society should be able to get where they need to go:

• Affordably
• By a choice of modes
• Reliably
• Quickly
• In Safety
• With minimal hassle and personal organisation
• With minimal negative effects on the environment, the city's amenity, or others' enjoyment of life.

Facilitate this by:

• Ongoing community consultation regarding transport planning
• Measures to improve affordability and availability of transport options to those who cannot afford or simply cannot use a car.

Walking and Cycling

Walking and Cycling are declining partly because they are not considered safe or feasible, yet an increase in these activities would greatly improve both the environment and our populations health. Ways of facilitating these modes as viable choices include:

• Change the law so it places the onus on the motorist to prove the cause of an accident with a cyclist or pedestrian was not themselves. This would completely change the dynamic of bicycle car interaction.
• Extend Bicycle Lanes the full section of bikeways rather than deleting them at intersections where they are most needed.
• Move Bicycle lanes to be between the curb and parking to shield them from cars.
• Allow free transport of bicycles on trains, and also on new buses and trams as the ability to cycle from the public transport greatly extends its utility as a transport option. Taking bicycles on public transport should be seen as common sensible practice.
• Use city planning regulations to bring most services, recreation and work within walking and cycling distance for the majority of the population.

Public Transport

A working public transport system is clearly the cheaper infrastructure choice and also most urban friendly choice. Costs incurred in public transport subsidies are more than repaid in savings made in other infrastructure and mitigation costs. Therefore it does make sense to subsidise public transport provided it is equitably accessible to all.

Cars are the most polluting and costly form of transport as a group. Scott Bottles notes "Car dominance does not just happen, it is promoted by vested interests and public policy." A conscious decision must be made in the transport plan to prefer public transport over private vehicles. When truly viable public transport options are available, patronage and cost recovery increases.

Unfair Competition

Public Transport competes with many other modes of transport but suffers from a hugely subsidised road transport industry. Measures that could address this imbalance include:

• Moves towards full cost recovery from road users, and from capitalised use charging (registration) to rent.
• Levies on heavy vehicles that fully include the extra and disproportionate damage they do to the road surface. The levy should be proportional to the damage done to the road as a function of axle load.
• The road damage levy for a car should be calculated per use and added as a levy to the cost of petrol, along with third party insurance and other charges such as emergency and pollution levies. Many people use their car because "they have already paid the rego and want to get full benefit from it", by moving charges to rental via the petrol pump, more accurate cost choices can be made by the consumer. This would encourage people to only use their car when there is an actual need.
• Lobbying other governments to remove tax incentives for car ownership and use. For instance, I can salary sacrifice to get my car, it's petrol and its maintenance income tax free provided I drive more than 15,000 km a year, but I can't claim my public transport tickets as a work expense. This system pushes people to use cars unnecessarily - it is common for people on such schemes to go on long driving holidays at the end of the qualifying year to reach the 15,000 km (or higher depending on their chosen scheme) "target".
• Removing special tax incentives for BOOT and other private infrastructure that suits only cars.
• Place governors on commercial road vehicles so they cannot exceed the speed limit. With todays technology, it would be possible to allow the occasional burst of speed to "get out of danger" as this is the common argument against governors.
• Freeways must be discouraged, they cause congestion at the other end and attract their own congestion. Flippantly one can push more people through an escalator in an hour than a freeway, but the land corridor involved, if used for public transport can transport vastly higher numbers of people.
• Attractors of high traffic volumes should be made to contribute to the cost of servicing the traffic. E.g. Shopping centres should be charged special rates for each car park according to the number of parks and the catchment area the centre draws its clientele from (which can be statistically measured).

Safety

• Concerns about personal safety are a major disincentive for potential users of public transport. Conductors or guards should be on every transport carriage so that vulnerable people know they are safe and can choose PT.
• Over bridges and underpasses should progressively be added to fully separate train/tram, road, cyclists and pedestrian traffic.

Discouraging the car as the default or only option

Once people have a car they will use it.

• More effort needs to be made to discourage car use through whole of government initiatives.
• By requiring land developers to provide frequent public transport until a certain load factor is reached, they will think about the transport viability of their developments. Moreover, moving into new developments will not force people to buy a car which only reduces the viability of future public transport services.
• Dormitory residential developments must be discouraged, there should be no residential development without jobs that are reasonably local. Land must be developed in clusters of mixed use.
• The Government should offer local vehicle rental at cost prices to enable people who have rare and occasional need for a car to live without purchasing one.

Viability

An affordable effective public transport system is possible for Adelaide. Toronto's public transport system, serving a number of people equal to Melbourne's entire population, costs a similar amount to run to Melbourne's. The public subsidy is less than half that of Melbourne, although fares are lower. In order to create and sustain such a system for Adelaide, we need to:

• Maintain the affordable fare structure and all vehicle ticketing system we currently have.
• Build Frequency and Connectivity by
  • Maintaining and increasing the number of Go Zones but focusing first on areas not served by current routes. In the first instance, Go zones need to be provided in the outer suburbs connecting regional centres already served by high frequency routes to/from the city. Adding more frequency to existing services has a linear effect, adding connecting services between existing ones has a multiplicative effect on the available options for travellers.
  • The city centric view of public transport must be abolished in favour of a decentralised, multiply connected one. Dropping "fiddle-sticks" (random lines) over a map of Adelaide and then bending each stick a little to flow over navigable routes would provide a much better transport route infrastructure to cater for any possible trip than a centralised or overly planned system. Once these routes are decided on they should be progressively implemented at good frequencies starting with the most initially viable.
  • Frequencies should ideally be high enough not to need a timetable. Where this is impossible a "pulse" timetable should be implemented where multiple feeder buses arrive simultaneously at an interchange hub to allow for transfers to other busses trams and trains and then depart. The need for technological solutions such as "smart bus stops" would be minimised if bus frequencies were in the 5 to 10 minute range.
  • Routes should start as mini-busses and build to higher volume vehicles as patronage increases.
  • Renewing the tram and train fleet with vehicles that can operate as single cars or multiple units to allow high off peak frequency.
• All vehicles should be comfortable, even for overweight and handicapped people or they will not leave their cars. Good and available seating is essential.
• Commuters measure distance in number of stops and time rather than kilometres, so it important to offer express services also.

Privatisation

Urban Ecology has no objection to privately run PT provided:

• Operators are paid on the basis of potential trips (population in catchment area of the route multiplied by connections) rather than actual trips so that routes can become viable over time rather than fizzle out.
• Operators are Australian Owned as we cannot afford leakage of funds from our economy.
• Overall Route planning is a government and centralised function, with private companies only contributing to the operation of the service and the occasional experimental new route to test viability.

Ticketing

Our current ticketing system works very well, it is simple, effective for the traveller and has a high degree of fare compliance.

• Urban Ecology disagrees that the SA PT ticketing system is inadequate.
• The short section and everywhere fare types are broadly fair and make PT accessible to the maximum number of people. Poor people are often forced to live in outlying suburbs and should not be penalised for doing so.
• There should be a limited number of ticket concessions.
• Every type of ticket needs to have a separate colour coding and pattern for the colour blind.
• Fares should be kept as low as possible with cost recovery coming from increased patronage.
• The SA PT ticketing system is a proven and simple technology. More complex ticketing systems, such as in Melbourne, have been plagued with operational problems with much of the ticketing machines being unusable at any time and have been revenue and litigation disasters.
• SA PT enjoys high fare compliance due to the simple ticketing model with a validate always culture and peer pressure from the aural validating indication.
• Complex ticketing is only necessary to divvy up fares between competing operators, this becomes unnecessary if a catchment area payment model is used.
• Urban ecology opposes any zoned or pay at end of trip ticketing system where the total fare is not known at the commencement of the trip.

Measures and Incentives

Success of the transport plan should be judged by:

• Maximising
  • The number of successful people movements per hour, not vehicle movements.
  • The number of available transport options at any given time from any given location.
  • Equality of transport choices (fixed by improving the weakest areas).
• Minimising
  • The capital cost of transport options to individuals.
  • End to End transit times.
  • Number of Casualties of transport.
  • Pollution including emissions, heat and noise.
  • Distance traveled divided by end to end distance as the crow flies.
• Ignoring indirect measures that assume a particular "solution" such as
  • Road Congestion
  • Cost from one budgetary line item, rather than whole of government (all tiers) costs including emergency services.

References

SA Government Draft Transport Plan (www.dtup.sa.gov.au/transport_plan)

2007.2.8