Message for the "anti-roads" fraternity

[new2ford]

I suspect you're meaning fully-funded, but like road projects any Federal funding is part-funding. They wouldn't fully fund anything. I'd have to do a lot of work to dig up a list, but public transport contributions goes back to the Whitlam government and include rolling stock purchases as well as construction projects. One that comes to mind is the Sydney light rail in the 1990s which was funded part by Commonwealth (Better Cities Program) and part private. There was little state financial input into that one.

I also dislike the idea of Canberra bureaucrats getting their mits into road projects! But they certainly don't seem to be able to keep their noses out.

[MercurySilver]

i dont even drive to the footy
if i want to go early i will
if i want to go late i will

and london and asia are a tad smaller more compact and have a ***** load more people than oz
they cant be compared

[Ben73]

Originally Posted by new2ford

image

The logic of that GIF is flawed.

60 people = 60 cars = 60 buses.
Or
60 people = 12 cars = 1 bus?

[new2ford]

Originally Posted by Ben73

The logic of that GIF is flawed.

60 people = 60 cars = 60 buses.
Or
60 people = 12 cars = 1 bus?

It doesn't stay still long enough for me to count, but the logic is that an articulated bus carries about 130 or more people and if they were all in their own cars there would be approx 130 cars on the road instead.

So next time you're stuck behind a bus cursing it, think whether you'd prefer 130 cars to be in front of you instead!

[Davehoos]

http://insidestory.org.au/who-should...er-the-cities/
good read.

The Building Better Cities program was first funded – to the tune of $816.4 million over five years – in the 1991–92 budget. Sensitive to the acrimony created by the Uren initiatives, the program moved slowly, kicked off by a special premiers’ conference and proceeding through new, and at the time groundbreaking, intergovernmental agreements under which funding was tied to agreed outcomes...............

The legacy of the Building Better Cities program is visible in developments such as the Honeysuckle area in Newcastle, which, as Howe puts it, allowed that city to reimagine its future in the wake of twin earthquakes: the natural disaster of 1989 and the recession of the early 1990s and closure of the steelworks.
In Sydney, old industrial sites in Pyrmont-Ultimo were transformed and the light rail link introduced. Building Better Cities was responsible for the revitalisation of the suburbs of inner Brisbane, the redevelopment of contaminated and disused industrial land in East Perth, the redevelopment of the Launceston railyards and the transformation of institutional land at Janefield in Melbourne into a new suburb.
By the time the Howard government cancelled the program, the demonstration effect had done its work. Private investment, along with some state contributions, was enough to maintain the development momentum. Today, Building Better Cities is credited with having kickstarted the redevelopment of Australia’s inner cities – and all with a surprisingly modest amount of federal money.

The Sydney[ darling harbour] light rail project I suspect was the TNT mono rail, or is it the current light rail that is using the unwanted freight rail lines.
even the labor party spin has no mention of PT as it is an ongoing cost to any project. only roads and cycleways.

[Davehoos]

http://www.hdc.nsw.gov.au/sites/defa...in_Renewal.pdf
cant open the document to read the conclusion-its out of date now as soon they might have light rail etc.

look at the Dollars. for every dollar thrown in state government they have a return of 130% economic activity. IF they get 10% gst and they get some if any Tax and charges, Then the cost of repairs and operation etc would add up to a great big loss-hopefull with other peoples money.

Honeysuckle has as many detractors but it has been good to turn rubbish into something.--and the road there are useless.

[mik]

As far as the railways go , there must be some value in having them under ground, apart from relieving crossing bottle necks across the cities and removing pedestrian / car/ train interaction.
when a hot summer occurs and the tracks buckle, various parts of the above ground system end up on a go slow, or fully stopped at times causing further disruption .
I dont know what would be done with all the land that tracks and ugly power lines where on, (should they be put under ground), at the very least they could be made into grassy areas with bike tracks , getting a lot of bikers out of harms way,
and possibly allowing some roads that need to be widened have it done , possibly even allowing more room for bus stops or extra bus stops to be put in.
i cant see to many downsides for putting the metropolitan railway underground , it would also be a win for the trains not having to stop or slow down for railway crossings.

[Harrison]

Can't we just all get together and find a way to stop this vast and ongoing influx of immigrants we've all been forced to accept and accommodate in one way or another since the mid to late nineties ?

That's the real problem here. Arguing about the side effects is exactly what they want us to do.

[Davehoos]

under ground rail.
subway system is going to be expencive to build. once its there its good until it need repairs. is it cheaper to build on the ground then cover over is the argument in Newcastle. trench and cover heavy rail versus light rail or trolley busses.

under ground tramways in Sydney had been used for car parks some have been used for motorways.

plans for the use of AIR SPACE in Sydney over rail system as is the motor ways. most of this has stalled because people [left] claim that developers are riping off the community building high density apartments and shops on government land.

[GREGL]

Originally Posted by mik

As far as the railways go , there must be some value in having them under ground, apart from relieving crossing bottle necks across the cities and removing pedestrian / car/ train interaction.
when a hot summer occurs and the tracks buckle, various parts of the above ground system end up on a go slow, or fully stopped at times causing further disruption .
I dont know what would be done with all the land that tracks and ugly power lines where on, (should they be put under ground), at the very least they could be made into grassy areas with bike tracks , getting a lot of bikers out of harms way,
and possibly allowing some roads that need to be widened have it done , possibly even allowing more room for bus stops or extra bus stops to be put in.
i cant see to many downsides for putting the m etropolitan railway underground , it would also be a win for the trains not having to stop or slow down for railway crossings.

That is a brilliant idea, the bit about cycle paths . I fact it should be introduced right now, plenty of room to fit them between existing lines, gets the idiots off the road . Win win .

[mik]

Originally Posted by Davehoos

under ground rail.
subway system is going to be expencive to build. once its there its good until it need repairs. is it cheaper to build on the ground then cover over is the argument in Newcastle. trench and cover heavy rail versus light rail or trolley busses.

under ground tramways in Sydney had been used for car parks some have been used for motorways.

plans for the use of AIR SPACE in Sydney over rail system as is the motor ways. most of this has stalled because people [left] claim that developers are riping off the community building high density apartments and shops on government land.

From what I have seen above ground takes up a he'll of a lot of space, it's an absolute horrible eye sore, is also extremely high in maintenance.
the land could be used for better things.
as mentioned, lost services due to heat problems in summer making it unreliable,

surely the cost to the country in general due to accidents and bottlenecks, lost productivity and pollution with thousands upon thousands of cars and trucks in traffic jams every single day caused by boom gates and above ground railway would out weigh the cost of having a decent under ground railway in the long run.
Yes it would be a big job, and that fact alone creating some long term employment would put dollars back
Into the economy.
It would be money well spent in my eyes.

[superyob]

How about an audio-vibratory-physio-molecular transport device. That's gotta work! Surely Dr Scott has worked it out by now?

[GREGL]

As long as they dump all the spoil on your floodplain/swamp . Can you imagine how many million cubic metres of fill would come out of any given excavation, wtf are they going to do with it ? The ongoing tunnel building in Brisbane has created a whole new industrial area stretching from the river 10Km north . This area whilst never being under any significant amount of water during a flood was a drain, now it is being covered in concrete after altering the height where is the water going to go ? Someones house that as never flooded before I'm sure .
Wow, even the apartments newly built have underground carparks that FLOOD in a downpour . The whole of brisbanes rail services stop in any significant storm lately due to flooding . However it's all good jack as long as it doesn't affect me (nimby syndrome )

[Itsme]

Originally Posted by mik

From what I have seen above ground takes up a he'll of a lot of space, it's an absolute horrible eye sore, is also extremely high in maintenance.
the land could be used for better things.
as mentioned, lost services due to heat problems in summer making it unreliable,

surely the cost to the country in general due to accidents and bottlenecks, lost productivity and pollution with thousands upon thousands of cars and trucks in traffic jams every single day caused by boom gates and above ground railway would out weigh the cost of having a decent under ground railway in the long run.
Yes it would be a big job, and that fact alone creating some long term employment would put dollars back
Into the economy.
It would be money well spent in my eyes.

Cost of underground railway would be astronomical in construction & again in maintenance, I'd be happy for over/underpasses to be constructed at every level crossings but I doubt we will see that many being done in our life times.....LOL

[Ben73]

Originally Posted by new2ford

It doesn't stay still long enough for me to count, but the logic is that an articulated bus carries about 130 or more people and if they were all in their own cars there would be approx 130 cars on the road instead.

So next time you're stuck behind a bus cursing it, think whether you'd prefer 130 cars to be in front of you instead!

True, but my sarcastic point was that 130 people could fit in 26 cars if you really wanted to. Considering most cars have 5 seats.

I'm all for public transport though. More cars off the road the better.

[Itsme]

Originally Posted by Ben73

I'm all for public transport though. More cars off the road the better.

Quite agree but it is a shame the present transport systems would not be able to handle extra passenger capacity if that happened

[jpblue1000]

Originally Posted by trublu

Quite agree but it is a shame the present transport systems would not be able to handle extra passenger capacity if that happened

Hence the need for investment in Public transport. Make more of the roads we have already paid for rather than make new ones.

JP

[XG_Falcon]

We need to make public transport a safer option. I know that most inner city residents think that their bus, train and tram stops are all perfectly safe but as soon as you venture off the beaten track, things can get quite sketchy. Yes, even Australia has places that you shouldn't travel alone unless you can handle yourself (and you still must maintain vigilance).

There is a serious problem with welfare dependency in this country, the offspring of the welfare dependent are often vicious creatures who are also welfare dependent themselves and rely upon public transport to get them around. It's a toxic cycle. They're lazy, they're poor because they're lazy and they're angry because they're poor. When you mix this anger with alcohol, a lack of brain cells and some other illicit substances, the result is a volatile cocktail. I've seen it too many times.

The car is a means to segregate yourself from these people. Unfortunately I am personally forced to take public transport daily to get to work (a car is impractical for the route I take) so I end up shoulder to shoulder with the dregs of society every day. I've seen the violence that can result when these people meet civilised people. Our public transport system is a melting pot and it's getting worse every year. Of course, this is all systemic of a bigger problem but it has become a problem all of it's own.

Before public transport becomes a viable option for all of us, it needs to be safer. I wouldn't let my girlfriend, sisters, mother or female friends travel the route I take to and from work every day. Especially the return trip on Friday nights. This is just something to consider before you bash cars.

[Trump]

Originally Posted by XG_Falcon

We need to make public transport a safer option. I know that most inner city residents think that their bus, train and tram stops are all perfectly safe but as soon as you venture off the beaten track, things can get quite sketchy. Yes, even Australia has places that you shouldn't travel alone unless you can handle yourself (and you still must maintain vigilance).

There is a serious problem with welfare dependency in this country, the offspring of the welfare dependent are often vicious creatures who are also welfare dependent themselves and rely upon public transport to get them around. It's a toxic cycle. They're lazy, they're poor because they're lazy and they're angry because they're poor. When you mix this anger with alcohol, a lack of brain cells and some other illicit substances, the result is a volatile cocktail. I've seen it too many times.

The car is a means to segregate yourself from these people. Unfortunately I am personally forced to take public transport daily to get to work (a car is impractical for the route I take) so I end up shoulder to shoulder with the dregs of society every day. I've seen the violence that can result when these people meet civilised people. Our public transport system is a melting pot and it's getting worse every year. Of course, this is all systemic of a bigger problem but it has become a problem all of it's own.

Before public transport becomes a viable option for all of us, it needs to be safer. I wouldn't let my girlfriend, sisters, mother or female friends travel the route I take to and from work every day. Especially the return trip on Friday nights. This is just something to consider before you bash cars.

Where abouts do you live?

I'm not taking a shot at you, but the difference between "civilised" and being a welfare dependant dreg is a paycheck and a half. The civilised world is so dependent on instruments of debt, the line between said types of people is exceptionally thin and getting thinner with each day that passes.

[Davehoos]

Im not living in inner city, the welfare toxic around these parts are not public transport types-as they certainly not poor the true toxic work the system and are not a drain on it.

My wage is average and I would be classed as middle class welfare receiver and for now we survive on welfare until the age of entitlement concludes.

Cant say the same for mentally ill, there must be a large population that has no alternative to travel in public not having life skill to own and operate personal transport. My travels on public transport have nearly always had to deal with someone that really shouldn't be outside world. This is not the daily commuter traffic or the mums travelling around to break up the daily activities but the out of peak hour explorers.

P/S
there are those you would class as belonging to the toxic class-but you will be surprised from where they come from. My experience with vandals and theft has almost always ended up in bored upper and middle class.

[XG_Falcon]

Originally Posted by Loud_Noises

Where abouts do you live?

I'm not taking a shot at you, but the difference between "civilised" and being a welfare dependant dreg is a paycheck and a half. The civilised world is so dependent on instruments of debt, the line between said types of people is exceptionally thin and getting thinner with each day that passes.

Adelaide, Northern Suburbs.

[Trump]

Originally Posted by XG_Falcon

Adelaide, Northern Suburbs.

My condolences

[jpblue1000]

Peak Car!
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4133094.htm

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/20...ached-peak-car

JP

[XG_Falcon]

Originally Posted by Loud_Noises

My condolences

Thank you. It's only temporary, I'm not from here and don't plan on staying long.

[Davehoos]

The ABC report was one of those anti tony abbot interviews that the independent [politically central] has.

I had thought it was strange at the time and must of been my misreading of the atitudes around me. The feeling around here was Victoria would get a green government led by a clover moore and return to the dark ages with 20% unemployment. no electricity and rail boom gates in the CBD.

gaudian report- good read. click on the links for the associated stories. lot of cut and paste. one of the lines implied that the economy was manipulated to reduce the number of driving licences in Europe-strange that similar comment made about Victoria.

Note-I don't live in VIC and have less contacts that do these days. But my media-TV-newspapers mostly come from there and are irrelevant to local conditions.. bizarre the different spin that can be put on locally edited media content-like the local verion of the guardian actical has a disclaimer that the evidence doesn't support the peak car in Australia and Germany.

With somewhere like London, which is 15 Copenhagens in size, it’s really difficult to say. It depends on the decisions that Transport for London makes, and on manufacturers like Ford and BMW extending their mobility experiments. Then with cities like Sydney and San Diego, you are maybe talking 20 or 30 years before you get significant modal shift from private car ownership.

[Davehoos]

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/31...travel/?cs=305

most of the comments after the story involve the junkies coments common with XG_Falcon. newcastle and Adelaide are said to mirror each other with trends.

I have used the bus on weekends and found it to be empty. I visit a toy shop with the 5 year old son and catch a public bus,train ferry for a day out.-he now catches a school bus so its not a big deal these days.
A 110 bus route in the CBD to replace train was running empty and I had to wait for a traffic bottle neck at a stop to approach the driver. in 90 minutes wait for a half hour service the time tabled route didn't turn up-an other route to an outer suburb the driver told me he no stops in the inner city area. close to the route.

For a tourist some edumycattered expert erected signs with list of time tables stops that the elderly had to ask for someone to read-and displayed no route maps. If you train it in Sydney you all know of colour coded mapped happiness.

[XG_Falcon]

Believe me, I'm not talking out of my rear... public transport is really sketchy in some places. In other places, it's great.

[Itsme]

Originally Posted by XG_Falcon

Believe me, I'm not talking out of my rear... public transport is really sketchy in some places. In other places, it's great.

You are quite correct in your statement, I use to work for the Victoria public transport & have traveled the metropolitan rail, bus & tram network daily in the 80's & 90's which I found intimidating with unsavory characters at times, I would hate to use the system these days as it is worse, taking away station staff & conductors has not helped & CCTV cameras do not help at all in stopping you to be assaulted or worse, might help to catch offenders after the damage has been done, cold comfort indeed.

[new2ford]

Here's an article that's recently appeared pertinent to this discussion:

Do more roads really mean less congestion for
commuters?

Matthew Beck - Senior Lecturer in Infrastructure Management at University of Sydney
Michiel Bliemer - Professor in Transport and Logistics Network Modelling at University of Sydney

Congestion is a major source of frustration for road users and has worsened over time in most cities. Different solutions have been proposed, such as introducing congestion charging, a favourite of transport economists, or investing in public transport. One solution that is most often put forward is to build more roads, but does this approach work?
While China has increased its expressway network from 16,300 km in the year 2000 to around 70,000 km in 2010, the average commute time in Beijing for 2013 was 1 hour and 55 minutes, up 25 minutes from just the year before. Why, then, do residents of these cities with large amounts of road capacity, not live in a driving utopia?

Induced demand
The first concept you need to get your head around is called induced demand.
Think about the street on which you live. If a new road makes driving to work quicker, you may benefit from that, but this reduced travel time might be enough to encourage two other people in your street to start driving; and two more people in the next street; and two more people in the street after that; and so on. Very quickly the drive to work takes just as long as it ever did.
In transportation, this well-established response is known in various contexts as the Downs-Thomson Paradox, The Pigou-Knight-Downs Paradox or the Lewis-Mogridge Position: a new road may provide motorists with some level of respite from congestion in the short term but almost all of the benefit from the road will be lost in the longer term.
Further, while more roads may solve congestion locally, more traffic on the road network may result in more congestion elsewhere. In Sydney, for example, the WestConnex may improve traffic conditions on Parramatta Road, but may worsen congestion in the city.

Weakest links
Congestion is determined by the weakest links in the road network. If road capacity expansion does not involve widening of these bottleneck links, congestion may simply move to another part of the network without solving the congestion problem. Moreover, it could potentially make congestion even worse.
The Braess Paradox is a famous example in which building new roads in the wrong location can lead to longer travel times for everyone, even without induced demand, because such new roads may lead more car drivers to the weakest links in the network. The reverse may also be true: removing roads may even improve traffic conditions.
This paradox occurs because each driver chooses the route that is quickest without considering the implications the choice has on other drivers. Car drivers only care about the number of vehicles in the queue in front of them and do not care about vehicles queuing behind them. This is a classic problem in game theory1, very similar to the type for which John Nash2 was awarded a Nobel Prize.

What does the data say?
One US study3 has shown a strong relationship between the amount of new road length and the total distance travelled in US cities, a finding the authors of that study termed ‘the fundamental law of road congestion’.
Similar findings are reported in other studies internationally, where even major road capacity increases can actually lead to little or no reduction in network traffic densities. It has also been found in Europe that neglecting induced demand has led to biases in appraising of environmental impacts as well as the economic viability of proposed road projects.
In Sydney, there is similar evidence from traffic volumes crossing the harbour. The Sydney Harbour Bridge was carrying a stable traffic volume of around 180,000 vehicles per day from 1986 to 1991. The Sydney Harbour Tunnel opened in 1992, and the total volume of traffic crossing the harbour increased in 1995 to almost 250,000 vehicles per daty. This 38% increase in traffic can be attributed to induced demand and not to population growth, which was around 4% during this period.
Empirical observations have also confirmed the existence of the Braess Paradox. For example, in 1969 a new road was built in Stuttgart, Germany, which did not improve traffic conditions. After closing the road, congestion decreased.
Similar observations in which road closure led to improved traffic conditions have been observed in New York City, where closing 42nd street, a major cross town street in Manhattan, it was observed that traffic was significantly less congested.
A recent experimental study confirmed that this paradox still exists by showing that expanding road capacity can result in worse traffic conditions for everybody.
The theory of induced demand is accepted by a large majority, but not by everyone. For example, authors of a 2001 paper have argued that induced demand does not exist. However, UK researchers Goodwin and Noland have criticised this study.
In isolation, building more roads can certainly improve traffic conditions but these effects may only be local and only in the short run. Congestion may become worse in other parts of the network and experience shows that spare road capacity is quickly filled by new journeys.
Even without the extra road users that new roads create, if the new roads are built in the wrong locations congestion may actually become worse simply because of the way people behave. Roads alone do not solve congestion in the long term; they are only one, problematic, tool in a transport management toolkit.

This article was originally published in ‘The Conversation’ on 18 April.
1 For ‘non-cooperative games’ seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-cooperative_game
2 For John Forbes Nash Jr seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.
3 The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Citieswww.ademloos.be/sites/default/files/meccano_docs/The_Fundamental_
Law_of_Road_Congestion_Evidence_from_US_Cities.pdf

[Harrison]

This study has no value whatsoever without mentioning that Australian cities, and those of many other Western countries, are experiencing population growth figures far beyond our capacity to supply the appropriate and necessary infrastructure needed to support them.


But I guess it gives the impression someone actually gives a damn that we're all choking to death on each others exhaust fumes, and makes for a temporary, and somewhat interesting distraction...