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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-12-02 Daily Xml
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ENVIRONMENT, RESOURCES AND DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE: PUBLIC TRANSPORT

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (22:16): I move:

That the 65th report of the committee, entitled Public Transport, be noted.

In an ideal world, public transport would be available, affordable, safe and clean in the carbon neutral sense; somehow, the domination of the car would not have it placed in a catch-up mode and ill prepared to raise the challenges raised by climate change and peak oil. In a comparison with other states and similar cities worldwide, South Australia has some admirable aspects and some faults. A one sentence summary of where South Australia is at the moment is: South Australia was lagging, but the planned infrastructure spending will bring us in line with other states. But this will not be enough to carry the state into future scenarios influenced by peak oil and climate change.

The reality is that in Adelaide less than 10 per cent of people use public transport to journey to work. The private car dominates. Arguably, Adelaide is the most car dominated city in Australia, but statistics show that Perth and Canberra are about the same. This should not be surprising. The car has been an easy, relatively inexpensive, fast way to get to where you want to be, and an extensive road network is provided for car users.

Public transport is used by two groups: those going to the CBD (about 43 per cent of all public transport trips are CBD bound journeys) and the 50 per cent of the population who do not have access to a private vehicle. These people are old or young or cannot afford to run a car.

Public transport for many historic reasons has provided services that radiate out from Adelaide. This has not effectively served the traveller's needs and a chicken and egg situation has arisen. Suburban centres that are designed to accommodate cars arise, and these are difficult to serve by public transport.

It is recognised that there must be a shift to public transport, as the current use of private cars is unsustainable; the environmental and economic consequences are well known. Recent history shows that successive state and local governments are making considerable progress in improving Adelaide's public transport: integrating the fare and ticketing system, the O-Bahn to the north-eastern suburbs, extending rail to Noarlunga, providing an interchange, and creating community bus networks to name a few.

The integration of state and private services through the establishment of the State Transport Authority (now the Passenger Transport Board and Public Transport Divisions) has been very positive. Compared with other states, funding for capital works for public transport was low. The committee's visit to Perth—a city of comparable size to Adelaide—demonstrated the vast improvements that capital funding can provide.

This situation has now changed for the better: The current state government now has a program of works to improve major elements of Adelaide's public transport system, including the following rail infrastructure projects:

resleepering the Noarlunga and Belair lines;

constructing a tramline overpass at South Road;

electrifying the Noarlunga and Outer Harbor lines;

extending the tram line to the Entertainment Centre (and, hopefully, soon to the new cricket and football stadium at Adelaide Oval); and

extending the Noarlunga line to Seaford.

For these and other projects, including replacement buses and improved access for O-Bahn buses into the city, the state government expects to invest $2 billion over the period 2008-18, with some financial assistance from federal government programs. The initial thrust is on rebuilding the rail and tram infrastructure, but improvements to other services are expected to take place concurrently.

A key recommendation of the committee is that the government produce a strategic transport plan. This would set the new program of public transport improvements, the costs involved and the budgets required into a strategic framework; provide a guideline for the medium-term future; and form a platform on which longer-term plans can be developed. It would demonstrate that South Australia was 'adopting an integrated, intermodal, best-practice approach to transport planning and management', and 'planning for long-term change'. These were the findings of a recently published report of the Senate Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport, and are echoed by many others.

A new draft plan could be prepared quickly and released for public consultation by updating the 2003 draft transport plan for South Australia. If existing resources cannot be spared to prepare such a plan, consideration could be given to a future thinker in residence, who could be invited from interstate or overseas to complete the task.

Current plans have targets for increasing public transport patronage that are set far too low. The current South Australian Strategic Plan target to improve Adelaide's public transport patronage to 10 per cent of passenger kilometres by 2018 should be increased to a more aspirational 25 per cent. The targets for public transport travel into the Adelaide CBD should be raised to 50 per cent of trips by 2018.

The committee realises that improved public transport is only one element of reducing private car use and moving towards a sustainable future. Planning areas such as transport oriented developments (TODS, as they are known), taxes on car use, encouraging cycling and walking, and education campaigns should all be part of the approach. It is important to raise the general standard of services in the following areas if public transport is to be an attractive alternative to the private car:

frequent services;

reliable services;

bus priority measures;

realistic operating timetables;

accurate and comprehensive public timetables;

convenient and pleasant interchanges;

convenient access to vehicles, stops, interchanges and platforms;

maintaining low fare levels;

smartcard integrated ticketing;

overall comfort and security; and

capacity for shopping, school bags and luggage.

The Smart Stop real time information system needs improvement and then should be rolled out to all major bus tram and rail stops. The Crouzet ticketing system should be replaced with a smartcard system with a high priority.

Other key recommendations centre on funding. The committee identified the greatest impediment to maintaining such a program of improvements to be the availability of finance. The capital budget has been increased greatly in recent years but there has not been a corresponding increase in the operating budget to cover the contracts between the state government, its rail and tram operating agency (TransAdelaide) and the private contractors providing bus services. To the contrary, the main effort in the last decade, or more, has been to maintain the current budget or make savings.

Given the expansion of the rail and tram systems, additional funds will be required to cover increased operating costs. If the overall budget for service contracts is limited to current levels, then savings will have to be made elsewhere in the present system, which will negate the effectiveness of the capital works program.

It would be folly to cut bus services to fund increased rail operating costs, as improvements to the total network are important actions on particular corridors. Such cross-subsidisation would also be economically inefficient as the cost recovery on rail services from fares is much lower than that of the bus network, and buses carry far more travellers than the rail system.

The terms of reference included the consideration of restoring certain rail passenger services. The committee is firmly of the view that the future, as impacted by peak oil and climate change (members will notice the influence of the Greens on this committee, with the mention of peak oil), will include public transport to the areas reviewed. The committee's research concludes that restoration of passenger train services to near metropolitan areas is unlikely to occur in the immediate future for a number of reasons.

The committee therefore recommends: continued reservation of rail rights of way that are currently unused by rail services; a short eastward extension of the Gawler line rail service to the planned Concordia/Buckland Park development and construction of a secure park and ride facility at the new terminal; extensions of rail networks and stations to precede urban expansion/ development; review the potential for restoring passenger trains to Mount Barker if and when all or most freight trains are removed from the Adelaide Hills line to operate via a new freight bypass railway line; and a study to determine whether improvements to public transport services in the eastern suburbs of the City of Onkaparinga would benefit from the use of the Willunga rail right of way through the area.

Although restoring regional rail passenger services to Whyalla and Broken Hill is possible (both cities plus Port Augusta are on the ARTC standard gauge network), such services are unlikely to be needed or justified in the near future. Consideration of re-opening passenger train services to Mount Gambier must await any action to standardise and re-open the currently unused broad gauge freight branch line from Wolseley.

The state government and member companies of the Bus SA organisation should review the level of service to near metropolitan communities and the regional cities and develop measures to raise the quality and image of coach services to offset the view presented to the committee that improved public transport can be achieved only by re-introducing passenger train services.

Moving forward, there will need to be more consultation across the spectrum, producing a strategic plan for making changes to bus routes. The committee has made several recommendations regarding consultation, including a research partnership between DTEI, local government and local communities. This would be useful in identifying and addressing safety (from resultant traffic) and the amenity issues around stops and stations.

It is hoped that this report will be of use to the parliament and to the benefit of government in setting its policies for the future. The report contains research and analysis that will serve many of the stakeholders in public transport. I commend the report to the council.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (22:28): I will be brief, given the lateness of the hour. First and foremost, I want to make some acknowledgments in terms of the establishment of the committee, which was initially proposed by the member for Schubert, Mr Ivan Venning, who, it is fair to say, has a great interest in trains, planes and automobiles above many others.

I would like to also thank the research contractors on the project from the University of South Australia's Institute for Sustainable Systems and Technologies—Professor Derek Scrafton, Professor Michael Taylor and Dr Nicholas Holyoak—who did a great deal of work in putting together facts and figures, examining international systems and preparing an historical treatise on our metropolitan and country transport systems. I think it is fair to say that we were all very impressed with it and found it very useful.

The recommendations probably had much more direct ownership by members of the committee and, in particular, the Hon Mark Parnell and Ivan Venning had great input into finessing the recommendations to ensure that they had a fair amount of grunt to them. There are a number of recommendations which I think are quite aspirational and which urge the government to ensure that it does invest in our public transport system. The point was made quite clear to us that it is not just a matter of purchasing additional buses or trams, or whatever infrastructure it may be, but those operational costs are ongoing and those investments need to be made in a recurrent budget to ensure that the maintenance and ongoing needs are met in an expanded system.

I am pleased that the government has replicated the Liberal Party's announcement to electrify the rail as a key plank in expanding the capacity of our public transport system. I commend the report to the council. I think it is a very useful piece of work that people will find quite beneficial into the future in terms of having an audit, if you like, of our current situation, our potential in the future and also historically. I support the motion.

The Hon. M. PARNELL (22:31): I rise to support the noting of the Environment, Resources and Development Committee's report on public transport. Along with the other members who have spoken, I acknowledge the input of the Institute for Sustainable Systems and Technologies at the University of South Australia and, in particular, the help given by Professor Mike Taylor, Professor Derek Scrafton and Dr Nicholas Holyoak. I make the observation that I actually studied transport planning with Professor Taylor as part of my Master's Degree in Urban and Regional Planning.

The other thing that I note by way of preliminary matters is that there were four submissions that dealt with all or most of the terms of reference. Those submissions came from the government, from the Conservation Council of South Australia, People for Public Transport and Dr Jennifer Bonham from the University of Adelaide. The vast bulk of the submissions received by the inquiry related to specific issues, in particular, the issue of extending public transport to the near country regions of South Australia, such as the Barossa.

If there was one statement in this entire report that sums up the committee's findings, it is this:

It is recognised that there must be a shift to public transport as the current use of private cars is unsustainable. The environmental and economic consequences are well-known.

It does not get much simpler than that. I am not going to leave it just there, because I want to actually go through some of the recommendations and say why I believe they are important.

Our first recommendation basically identifies that we have to take public transport seriously if the transport sector is to play its role in the two looming environmental crises of climate change and peak oil. When it comes to climate change, we are all very familiar with the current debate at the national level, the discussion around emissions trading schemes and the discussion around targets. What we find is that the absolutely pathetic greenhouse targets put forward by the Rudd government lock us into climate change failure. The idea of reducing our emissions by 5 per cent is ridiculous when South Australia's own legislated target is for a 60 per cent reduction by the year 2050.

If we take that legislated South Australian target and apply it to each sector of the economy, and if we look at the transport sector and ask ourselves how on earth is the transport sector going to reduce its carbon emissions and its greenhouse gas pollution by 60 per cent by the year 2050 without a substantial shift to public transport?—the answer is that it cannot be done. It will not happen. Peak oil is the same. We are probably the most unprepared state in Australia for the looming increase in oil prices that inevitably results from the planet having peaked its oil production, with demand now vastly outstripping supply. So, that puts this inquiry into some sort of context.

Another recommendation of the committee is the simplest of recommendations: we need a plan. We do not have a transport plan. The government talks about its infrastructure plan. It had a draft transport plan from 2003, but there is no transport plan. That is why we find a range of projects, many of which are very good projects, but they come out of thin air; they do not come out of any overall plan, and the government wonders why people are critical and wonder how these transport projects fit into a grand scheme. Projects such as the extension of the O-Bahn, which I fully support, does not fit within any context because it does not form part of an overall transport plan. So, we have recommended bringing a plan back.

In terms of the South Australian Strategic Plan targets, they are quite pathetic. The target is to increase patronage by 10 per cent by 2018. So, again, if we are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that target must be much higher. The committee has recommended that it should be a 25 per cent increase, and even that is probably on the low side. When it comes to public transport trips to the city, those trips that are best served by public transport, our target should be 50 per cent of trips to the city by 2018.

When it comes to the linkages between public transport and urban sprawl, the committee noted that, in the northern regions, in particular, around Gawler, we need to commit to the public transport infrastructure before any urban expansion is allowed to occur. In particular, that means new railway lines and stations to the east of Gawler to cater for both new residents in that area and also to provide for park'n'ride for commuters from the Barossa.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins interjecting:

The Hon. M. PARNELL: The Hon. John Dawkins referred to the single line. We can do better than that. We have to put in new lines and new stations. Again, we have to ask ourselves: why on earth would we be expanding the metropolitan area into places that either are not, or are not capable of being, served with public transport? Buckland Park is probably the classic example, where the environmental impact statement for that development says that only 5 per cent of trips will be by public transport into the 2020s and 2030s. What a pathetic target—and it just shows that we are not serious about meeting our greenhouse gas reduction responsibilities.

The committee had a look at a number of transport oriented developments, both on the ground and in the literature, and the committee is generally supportive of that concept, but we need to be more imaginative about where they could go. One recommendation of the committee looks at the area around Tonsley, the Flinders Medical Centre, Flinders University and Darlington. That would be an excellent location for a high density mixed use development, especially when you consider the vibrancy that can and does surround universities in other parts of the world. So, that is a project that is well worth exploring.

One recommendation—and I will finish with this one—that has received a little bit of attention in the media is the idea of the levy on long-term car parking spaces. This is hardly a novel idea. In fact, it is featured in my book Greening Adelaide with Public Transport, which I think it is now 15 years out of print, it was so popular! I certainly recommended in that book a levy, with the funds being hypothecated back into more sustainable forms of transport. In other words, if it is more expensive to park in the city and the extra revenue has been diverted back into free buses, extra tram services and cycling and walking facilities, the need to bring a car into the city is alleviated.

I think there is a great deal here that the government should be taking particular notice of. The recommendations are one thing, but the balance of the report is a very comprehensive analysis of public transport, not just here but also in other Australian cities and around the world. With those words, I commend the report to the council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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