- Trams Downunder

Re: Re: The Gold Coast light rail project shows that new transport links are worth it | CityMetric
Brian

I have seen three of them at a time controlling crowds at Central on
a Sunday morning. Passengers are sometimes denied boarding, to wait
for the next tram.

It would seem to be more productive to direct the wages involved to
employing an extra driver/tram to absorb the crowds.

Probably 10-15% of the loading from Central gets off at Capitol
Square, just one stop out..

Brian

----- Original Message -----
From:tramsdownunder@...
To:"TramsDownUnder"
Cc:
Sent:Thu, 24 May 2018 17:48:59 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:Re: [TramsDownUnder] Re: The Gold Coast light rail project
shows that new transport links are worth it | CityMetric

I wonder if these customer service people are provided by the operator
or Translink? It seems to be a feature of new tram services being
overwhelmed here as there are regularly such people assisting with the
crowds on IWLR at Central. Again I'm not sure if these are funded by
the operator or TfNSW. They shouldn't be necessary and I suspect often
over-nanny and prevent people catching the service.

Tony P
On Friday, 25 May 2018 10:34:50 UTC+10, Richard Youl wrote:It’s run
by Keolis and friends. Who knows what profit margin they have written
into the contract?
I don’t criticise this point, but at times they have had a number of
customer assistant people at some of the trams stops. I’ll have to
look out and see if they are still around. They mostly help visitors
coping with the ticket vending machines which have quite a few options
for purchasing and topping up gocards and thus can be quite confusing
to people not used to public transport.
If anyone is at a loose end, just go to Broadbeach South terminus and
help the visitors with their ticket purchases for a few hours. I have
helped the occasional visitor there.
Regards,
On 25 May 2018, at 9:57 am, Prescott wrote:

I don't think it should be tampered with either. I'm just wondering
why it costs so much to run! Cutting out trips wouldn't save much, as
you still have most of the trams and drivers out on roster anyway.
Tony P

On Friday, 25 May 2018 09:20:38 UTC+10, Richard Youl wrote:Let the
bean counters get at it and they will make plenty of ‘savings’.
Every second tram to Helensvale does not meet any train so a 15 minute
headway beyond the hospital would suffice.

In fact a 15 minute headway all day could probably cope easily with
the loadings.

GoldLink has their own ticket checkers but they could just let
Queensland transport do all ticket checking.
Trams run half hourly overnight Friday and Saturday instead of buses
but does anybody pay?
But of course all of those cuts would encounter customer resistance
and sure to result in lost passengers.

As it stands, it is a turn up and go service with many bus routes
connecting here and there along the way. There is no need to make
buses connect with trams at particular times as with erratic bus
running times every bus will meet up with a tram within minutes.
Personally, I think the service is great as it is and should not be
tampered with. I sometimes wonder how many visitors to the region no
longer bother hiring a car and use the tram instead. Maybe some day
visitors from Brisbane will now choose the train and tram rather than
fight the M1 which seems to have traffic collisions with monotonous
regularity, weekends too.

Regards,
On 25 May 2018, at 8:31 am, Prescott wrote:

If $5 per passenger per year is the operating subsidy, it still has a
way to go with patronage before the cost-benefit kicks in. The Gong
Shuttle is costing $1 per passenger per year and the NSW government
(the one that's blown $1 billion extra on CSELR) is complaining that
it's costing too much! May GCLR continue to be blessed with
sympathetic governments with a little bit of a financial blind eye. I
really thought operating costs for an electric transit system would be
a lot lower than that too. What on earth are they spending the money
on?
Tony P

On Friday, 25 May 2018 08:05:59 UTC+10, Richard Youl wrote:
https://www.citymetric.com/transport/gold-coast-light-rail-project-shows-new-transport-links-are-worth-it-3091
[1]

THE GOLD COAST LIGHT RAIL PROJECT SHOWS THAT NEW TRANSPORT LINKS ARE
WORTH IT | CITYMETRIC

Gold Coast’s light rail scheme has attracted great interest since
the streets of Surfers Paradise were torn up and stations and track
were built. Was it worth spending A$1.5bn on 13km [2] of light rail
and more than A$40m a year in subsidies? Are we right to be spending
another A$420m on an extension [3] to Helensvale in time for the
Commonwealth Games? Should we be taking it all the way down to Gold
Coast Airport?

Another question is whether gains in property values served by the
project could be “captured [4]” to fund such infrastructure..
Previous studies of property values in areas serviced by the light
rail showed only modest gains after it opened. Our research [5] cast a
wider net back to when we first started planning the system in 1996
through to the latest data we could get in 2016.

The results were intriguing. We found that prices in the catchment
areas started to increase in the earliest planning phases. The effects
of the light rail were to push up property values within 800 metres of
the stations by more than 30 per cent in total from 1996 to 2016.

This is well above most previous estimates of a light rail
system’s effects. This is mainly because we looked earlier for the
property value gains and used a carefully designed control to make the
comparison.

IMPACT AFTER OPENING SEEMED MODEST

These findings cast a different light on the apparently modest
impact of the light rail after it opened.

When the first stage from Broadbeach to our university at Parkwood
opened it was well received. But the behaviour change we all hoped for
was rather modest at first: after opening in 2014, patronage did not
surge compared to bus ridership on the route in earlier years.

New passengers got on board, but it was an uphill climb for the new
system. Fare increases of almost 50 per cent [6] from 2010 to 2014
pushed passengers off public transport across southeast Queensland,
especially on rail. Not all passengers enjoyed improved service for
their particular journeys, either. Those who used to travel through
the corridor in a bus now had to break their journey at the light rail
terminus and transfer, adding travel time and annoyance.

In the second year of operation, however, patronage jumped 16 per
cent [7] and our contacts suggest third-year patronage is tracking
well. Subsidies per passenger are falling. The decision to add the
connection to Helensvale looks a sound one.

But, seemingly, other changes everyone expected weren’t there. The
Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics analysed
property values in the corridor from 2000 to 2013 [8] using a coarse
geography and didn’t find much evidence of any uplift. This gave
many cause for concern.

Reassuringly, Cameron Murray used valuation data for a similar
period [9] using a different geographical scale and found a 10 per
cent increase for properties within 400 metres of the new stations.
But there was still uncertainty.

Our new research backs up and expands on Murray’s findings,
suggesting there was substantial positive impact.

_The Gold Coast light rail under construction at Surfers Paradise in
2013. Image: author provided._

WHAT DID OUR RESEARCH LOOK AT?

Our research team in the Funding on the Line [10] Australian
Research Council Linkage Project took a different approach. In a
peer-reviewed paper, which will shortly be presented at the World
Symposium on Transport and Land Use Research, led by Barbara Yen, we
used sales data for residential properties along the corridor. Our
study compared areas within 800 metres of the stations with a control
area containing locations a little further away but still in the same
vicinity.

We used a longitudinal methodology to see when the value uplift
occurred from back in 1996, when planning of the system first started,
through to the latest 2016 data. Property prices in the catchment
areas started to increase very early in the planning phase. The
property value uplift was highest in the locations between 100 and 400
metres from the stations.

Values went up 11.9 per cent in these locations compared to our
control areas between 1996 and the feasibility study’s announcement
in 2002. They increased a further 26.3 per cent from 2002 to 2006
over the control areas when the feasibility study was completed.
Prices rose only 2.3 per cent from 2006 to 2011 when the formal
funding commitment was made and construction began, and then by
another 5.4 per cent after the line opened to the end of the study
period in 2016.

_ [11]_

_Timeline of the planning and development of Gold Coast Light Rail
Stage 1. Image: author provided._

The areas less than 100 metres from the stations, and between 400
and 800 metres also recorded strong increases compared to the control
areas, though not quite as much.

This is to be expected. Sites closest to the stations received some
nuisance from the light rail and road corridor; sites further away
obtain fewer advantages in travel time savings for passengers.

WHAT ARE THE FUNDING IMPLICATIONS?

The property value gains attributable to the project from 1996 to
2016 of more than 30 per cent are very significant. Yet it’s pretty
much only the landowners who benefit.

The City of Gold Coast recoups some of its A$120m investment [12]
in the light rail through its rates and its public transport levy on
urban residents. The Queensland government may end up getting a little
slice via stamp duty as properties are sold. The few pieces of
government-owned land likely rose in value.

But the state and federal governments generally have no other
mechanisms to take a small sliver of the increased property value
their investment generated to help pay for the light rail system or
reinvest in public transport elsewhere. We’ve written about this
previously [13] and suggested ways we could change the system.

A recent federal parliamentary inquiry [14] and moves to set up
“value sharing [15]” units in the Queensland [16] and New South
Wales [17] governments suggest we are now getting serious about
generating alternative funding for public transport. Our study’s
results only add more support to these initiatives. Get it right and
we should be able to deliver more metros, busways and light rail to
serve our growing population and its increasingly urban way of life.

_Matthew Burke [18] is associate professor in the Cities Research
Institute at Griffith University [19]_

_This article was originally published on The Conversation [20].
Read the original article [21]._

Richard

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