Fw: Mon.10.12.18 daily digest
  Roderick Smith


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Roderick.

181129 'Brisbane Times' - Brisbane liveability.

181130 - Melbourne 'Age' - Australian emissions. with tdu.

181210M Melbourne 'Age':- trams power outage.- bus punctuality.
181210M Melbourne 'Herald Sun':- letters (road-rail-energy).- tunnel road diversions.
181210M Metro Twitter - Frankston alternatives.
181210M Melbourne Express:- 232 bus delays.- VR administrative offices 1909..- Melbourne cable tram ride (SA State Library).- Christmas W2 (MTM, David Featherstone).- Hallam queue (Johnnie Lay).

181210M 'Brisbane Times':- new trains.- cableway.

Metro, PTV, VicRoads and police: 'We can't cope; we don't care; we don't try].  Yet the gullible people on the Dandenong and Frankston lines still voted Labor.Mon.10.12.18 Metro Twitter
Buses replace trains Westall -Pakenham/Cranbourne until the last train of Sun 16 Dec while 'upgrades' take place.  Further changes apply until the last train of Sun 23 Dec.
8.30 Mernda/Hurstbridge: Minor delays (ill passengers at Jolimont and at Flinders Street).  Trains may be held.
- Should be no delays; take them off.
8.44 Werribee line: Minor delays (an earlier [unannounced] unruly passenger at Newport).
10.56 Pakenham/Cranbourne/Frankston lines: Minor outbound delays (an equipment fault near Toorak).
- 11.26 Train currently suspended at Hawksburn, with no idea when we will he leaving. Any updates?
- 11.32 Buses to replace trains South Yarra - Caulfield (a person has been hit by a train).  [We can't cope with four tracks].  If travelling beyond Caulfield, express buses are being arranged.Elsternwick - Caulfield. Buses may take time to arrive, consider alternative travel options.
- 11.40 Frankston line: Major delays Caulfield - Mordialloc (police).
- 11.50 Trains now resume between South Yarra and Caulfield with minor delays, and from altered platforms, but will not stop at Armadale.  For passengers travelling to [and from?] Armadale, a shuttle bus will run between Malvern and Toorak.
- 11.52 Route 3, 5, 6, 16, 58, 67 & 72 trams may experience higher than usual demand because of the disruption.
- 14.17 Trains have resumed stopping at Armadale, still with minor delays and altered platforms.
- How about Caulfield to Carnegie ?
- What about Westall? We’re stopped at Caulfield.
- 16.09 Why is my train not moving to Westall.  Are we having a repeat of Friday?
- 16.12 Your train should be on the way to Westall shortly.
- 16.44 How about Cranbourne/Parkenham line? All good now?
- 16.45 We're currently running a good service for both directions.
14.34 Major delays Essendon - Craigieburn (a track fault).
- 14.40 clearing.
15.40 Frankston line: Buses to replace trains Caulfield - Carrum (a person hit by a train).  Buses have been ordered, but may take over 60 minutes to arrive, consider alternate transport.
- 15.43 Alternative route from Bentleigh to Carrum?
- Bus to Oakleigh Depot (703), Smartbus to Mentone (903), Mentone to Carrum (708).  Or bus to Middle or North Brighton (703), train to Hampton (Sandringham line), then bus to Carrum (708).
- 15.44 Weird for it to be disrupted so far. I don’t know why Cheltenham or Mordialloc can't be used as a terminus.
- 15.47 Allegedly signals down somewhere between Moorabbin and Caulfield too.  Nearing half an hour being stranded between Highett & Moorabbin.
- 15.50 It's going to be a long day.
- 15.51 I'm sitting on a train outside Moorabbin going nowhere. What's the update?
- 15.52 And with peak hour just an hour away. It's going to be a hard slog tonight.
- 15.56 Is this going to be for a few hours? I was going to head for a train ride.
- 16.01 A twat ruins it for the rest of us. Darwinian theory at work.
- 16.05 Please consider alternative transport options [as an image].
- 16.06 Is this going to affect the evening peak?
- of course it is.
- going to be fun and games again.
- 16.07 There is one guy trying to manage all of the people at the bus stop..  You need to get some mates to help him out. He is doing well, but will get overrun with people.
- 16.15 20 buses are in operation between Caulfield and Carrum, with a further 16 en route and an extended journey time of up to 60 minutes.
- 16.19 Why are buses going all the way from Carrum to Caulfield. Are there other issues?
- 16.20 Loop train station staff are announcing buses from Mordialloc to Aspendale.  Can you tell them to check your updates?
- 16.22 If the incident occurred at Mordialloc, is there a reason why trains are terminating at Caulfield rather than Moorabbin?
- 16.28 Presumably the nearest available safeworking point (with qualified staff) where trains can terminate and turn around?
- Moorabbin is remotely controlled by Caulfield, which is staffed 24/7.
- 16.28 22 buses are in operation between Caulfield and Carrum, with a further 14 enroute and still an extended journey time of up to 60 minutes.
- 16.30 I'd love to know where they are.  No buses are at Caulfield, and there is a very large group of waiting, and growing.
- 16.31 What about the truck load of people you just dumped at Mordialloc with no announcement?  And noone here giving advice or an eta for buses..
- 16.32 According to the announcement at Mordialloc, the incident was at Aspendale.
- 16.34 22 buses that don't know where they're going.  A few thousand people are stuck at Caulfield with no movement.
- 16.34 Three buses are at Caulfield, not taking passengers.  Utter garbage.
- 16.38 Accidents can't be helped.  However the service at the station is terrible.  Surely you should be better prepared for situations like this?
- 16.41 Services resume between Caulfield and Mordialloc,  with buses continuing to replace trains between Mordialloc and Carrum.  30 buses are in operation, with a further six 6 enroute to Caulfield and Carrum.
- 16.43 They're listening to you, update just came through.
- 16.43 Please consider alternative transport: Extended journey time of ~60 minutes.
- 16.43 How much longer?  I'm at Carrum, and have been sitting here for over an hour.  One bus came; nobody of the 100 waiting could get on.
- 16.44 Maybe it would be a good idea to have some staff telling people to queue for the buses when they arrive?  Instead of it being a free for all to get on! One bus has turned up at Carrum so far.
- 16.50 Hopefully your staff at Caulfield have learnt from Friday's stuff up with buses on the Pakenham line.
- 16.52 Now they're going onlyl to Mordiallic. Wow. Just wow.
- 16.53 30 buses my ass. There were only three at Caulfield, and going to only Mordiallic.  Absolute horrible handling of this.
- 16.54 I'm at Southland citybound, should I just wait for the train?
- 16.55 Don’t forget 903 to Mordialloc from Oakeigh.
- Mentone to Carrum is an option on the 708 too.
- 17.00 It probably took a bit of time to get the right people into position to terminate trains closer to the incident.
- 17.05 Traffic is heavier than usual in Main Street and Beach Road into Mordialloc. Boom gates are down on McDonald Street and Bear Street near the station. Allow extra time, and consider White Street instead.  [The usual can't cope: train's can't move, but nobody will direct cars around booms which stay down].
- 17.05 White Street is nose to tail on a good day.  Why not consider Lower Dandenong Rd instead (dual lane)?
- 17.07 Is there not a more suitable option to get to Chelsea (which is only two stations away from Mordialloc) other than going all the way to Springvale? Seems ridiculous.
- 17.14 No advice at Moorabbin too.
- 17.24 Any buses at Mordialloc?
- 17.27 Anticipate that buses will replace trains between Mordialloc and Carrum until at least 18.30.
- 17.35 We have 36 buses in operation between Mordialloc and Carrum.
- 17.50 Can you at least update the app to include that there are no express trains from Caulfield to Cheltenham currently?
- 17.52 So is it back on trains from Carrum and Frankston?
- 17.55 Buses are replacing trains between Mordialloc and Carrum.
- 18.10 I just boarded a bus at Mordialloc; there were three or four before this also taking passengers, both limited and express service.
- 18.28 I'm pretty sure that someone was hit by a train, according to early reports.
- 18.33 It says that buses are replacing trains until at least 6.30 pm. It's after then now.  Is there an update?
- 18.36 Trains are running through again. I just got on the first one.
- 18.38 That sounds promising.  The train driver keeps telling us there's still buses. Communication is lacking it seems
- 18.38 So, is it working now? It's past 18.30, and we just passed Cheltenham.
- 18.39 So despite every announcement and sign at Caulfield saying that all trains are all stations to Mordialloc, I'm going express to Cheltenham.  I'd have been better off walking to Glen Huntly. Get it together guys.
- We were told at Richmond that this was an express train? Why would they tell you at Caulfield otherwise?
- I got on at Richmond thinking it was an express, got off at Caulfield, then got on again when I heard/read the announcement. No ETA for the train back from Cheltenham.
- Half the train did the same thing.
- 18.40 Trains have resumed between Mordialloc and Carrum, with major delays.
- 18.41 The network control centre often doesn't inform train drivers well.
- 18.42 We are sitting just before Mordialloc with no new announcements.
- 18.46 My first train terminated at Mordialloc, and when we were walking to the bus they told us to get on the next train as trains were running again. Fingers crossed control centre updates your driver soon!
- 18.52 Our train ran with a metro guy shouting on the platform...but now it's stopped at Aspendale beccause of a police operation ahead...absolutely ridiculous.
- 18.56 They've stopped again.
- 18.58 No, they haven't started moving again.
- 18.59 Major delays (police attending to a trespasser near Edithvale).  Trains may be held.
- 19.00 We have police attending to a trespasser near Edithvale, which is causing delays to extend.
- 19.05 I was on the train stranded near Moorabbin station for an hour.
- Not ideal; at least the airconditioning was working.
- Thankfully only a short walk to the station. I, along with others, was bursting.
- 19.08 clearing.
- 19.14 We did have to stop trains again near Edithvale while police attended to a trespasser; they are now on the move again, with major delays.
- 19.50 All love and support to the train driver and to the family and friends of the person who was hit. Thank you to the police and ambos who attended the scene. Thank you to the young man who was so kind to my daughter who was on the train and shaken to the core.
- 21.21 I was literally a station and a half away from home.  I Ubered back, got in my car and drove in.  2 hour round trip to go 5 km!
- 21.27 Two in one day apparently.  Very, very sad.
- 21.37 This is so sad! I was at the scene for the one at Armadale, and I live next to Cheltenham station. Condolences to all families!
Buses replace trains South Yarra - Sandringham from 20.00 (maintenance works).
- Silent CARRIAGES to replace noisy CARRIAGES ?
Victorian Railway Offices at 67 Spencer St, Melbourne in Victoria in 1909.
Melbourne Tram Museum will next open on 12 Jan.  Art tram 336 by Mike Brown (1978). (David Featherstone).
Princes Bridge, Melbourne: View from the front of a cable tram travelling north along St Kilda Road approaching Princes Bridge, Melbourne, c1915. Photograph courtesy State Library of South Australia (B 28518/187). www.pinterest.com.au/pin/753719687614672834

Melbourne Express, Monday, December 10, 2018
8.50 There are minor delays on the Mernda and Hurstbridge lines (an ill passenger at Jolimont). Also delays on the Werribee line thanks to an unruly passenger at Newport.
7.32 there are minor delays on the Glen Waverley line (an unruly passenger), and on the Frankston line (a faulty train).
It's another week on the buses for train commuters on the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines. They're getting free travel. A test of patience nonetheless.
There's a protest to support Armadale's popular Cubbyhouse Canteen, which has been given its marching orders by Stonnington Council.  The cafe was leased through the Victorian Tennis Academy. The council has awarded the tender to a national leisure company, turfing the VTA and Cubbyhouse just weeks before Christmas.  The cafe is a lifeline to many new parents in the Stonnington area. Many took to social media to voice their disappointment yesterday. The protest will be held at Stonnington Town Hall at 9.30am.
Toby Chan waits for the delayed 232 bus outside Southern Cross station. Credit: Joe Armao.
We take a look at life on the delayed 232 bus, as new figures reveal two-thirds of buses this year arrived more than five minutes late - or one minute early.
5.48 All good on the trains so far.
<www.theage.com.au/melbourne-news/melbourne-express-monday-december-10-2018-20181210-p50l7d.html>

10 December 2018. Our roads and rail may not be as bad as you think. But here's why we could still do better.  57 Comments.
Politicians love big road and rail projects. But are they always a good idea? In part four of The Future Fix, we examine the "congestion issue" and look at clever ways to change direction on transport.
It’s nearly 35 years since the Very Fast Train bulleted onto the national agenda.
If it had been completed as first planned in 1995, the VFT would now be whisking millions of people a year between central Sydney and downtown Melbourne in three hours.
But nothing came of it, nor of a string of subsequent proposals.
Now high-speed rail is back. With an election looming in NSW, Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that if the government is re-elected it will “start work” on a fast rail network. Four routes between Sydney and regional cities will be considered, including a connection to Canberra.
Berejiklian is open to working with others to extend the network, possibly to Melbourne.
“If other jurisdictions want to join us to further extend the network, we would of course be willing to consider that but we will not wait for that to start work on our fast-rail network,” her spokesperson said.
The previous Labor federal government in 2013 commissioned a feasibility study of a high-speed rail network connecting Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane – and building the line remains ALP policy.
If you ask experts whether the failure so far to build high-speed rail along the eastern seaboard is good, bad or even likely, you’ll get mixed views.
“Pigs might fly,” was the assessment of one transport specialist.
But advocates point out that while Australia has been debating high-speed rail many countries have been building it, especially in Europe and Asia.
“What do we know that they don’t know?” asks one economist.
The decades of debate on the issue illustrate some of the challenges and pitfalls facing those responsible for big transport investments.
Any high-speed rail plan is likely to require long-term co-operation and co-ordination between federal, state and local governments. Bipartisan political support would also be necessary because the process of detailed planning, approvals and construction would span several terms of government
So, given this complexity, how well is Australia doing in the overall planning and delivery of big transport projects? Are we building what we need? And where could we do better?
Our roads and rail are good-quality by world standards but there's room for improvement.Credit:Ryan Stuart
Hopelessly congested? Not so fast
Complaining about traffic gridlock and crammed public transport has become something of a national pastime. Industry groups, lobbyists and some politicians regularly claim Australia is suffering from an “infrastructure deficit”.
But when the infrastructure in our biggest cities is systematically compared with international peers it rates fairly well.
The annual international city rankings report by consultancy firm Mercer includes an assessment of 231 cities' infrastructure including transport, electricity, water and communications. This year's analysis placed Sydney eighth, Melbourne 34th and Brisbane 37th in the world.
“Our cities are actually working very well,” says Marion Terrill, who heads the transport and cities program at the policy think tank the Grattan Institute.
“Commute distances and commute times are pretty much unchanged in a period of rapid population growth. The infrastructure is doing the job it’s supposed to do.”
One positive is that federal and state governments have established bodies to assess and prioritise big infrastructure projects.
Adrian Dwyer, chief executive of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, which represents large infrastructure firms, says we have some of the most sophisticated and well-regulated infrastructure markets in the world.
“That’s something we should be rightly proud of,” he says.
Even so, there’s plenty of room for improvement.
But where?
Announce first, justify later.
Bert Kelly, the renowned economic rationalist who represented the South Australian seat of Wakefield in the 1960s and 1970s, used to quip that every time an election was announced he could “feel a dam coming on”.
If Kelly were in politics today he might say the same thing about transport projects.
Short-term political considerations continue to undermine good decision-making.
Many enormous road and rail schemes are announced when an election is looming long before a comprehensive business case and planning have been completed.
“It’s like a rationalisation of the project.”
Melbourne University urban planning expert Dr Crystal Legacy says that pattern taints the development of a rigorous business case.
“It’s like a rationalisation of the project rather than doing rational decision-making,” she says.
One recent trend is for politicians to try and get the benefits of a big transport project announcement when they are really only announcing a feasibility study about the project.
The latest NSW fast-rail announcement is a case in point – as was the Andrews government's pre-election commitment to (what amounts to the preparation of a business case for) the suburban rail loop.
No wonder many voters are cynical.
How much did you say?
Over the past 15 years, government spending on roads and rail has been very high by international standards and the highest in Australia since records were first collected in the mid-1980s.
In 2002, Australia spent the equivalent of 0.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on road and rail projects but that reached 1.08 per cent of GDP last year, down a little from the recent peak of almost 1.2 per cent in 2012.
Over the decade to mid-2018, construction work on new transport projects for the public sector cost more than $180 billion.
“Premature announcement is the biggest culprit.”
The Grattan Institute recently analysed cost overruns on Australian transport infrastructure projects between 2001 and 2016. Governments had spent a hefty $28 billion more than they told taxpayers they would – that’s nearly a quarter of the total amount budgeted for projects.
“Premature announcement – when a politician promises to build a road or rail line at a particular cost, often in the lead-up to an election – is the biggest culprit,” the report concluded.
It also found that cost estimation guidance is inconsistent, omits valuable tools and can’t draw on previous projects because we don’t collect the data.
“Governments set aside large contingency funds for every project and on many projects this is ultimately spent on add-ons that are poor value for money,” the report said.
Sydney’s troubled eastern suburbs light rail shows that cost blowouts are not a thing of the past. The cost was initially put at $1.6 billion but that was revised up to $2.1 billion. And the final bill is set to go even higher – an Auditor-General’s report last month warned “additional costs to the project” are expected.
With so much infrastructure in the pipeline, the risk of cost blowouts is high.
Project as political trophy
As spending on big road, rail and other infrastructure projects have grown so, it seems, has the incentive to politicise that spending.
Signature projects are increasingly championed by one major party only to be ditched or substantially altered by their political opponents.
Soon after the Andrews Labor government came to power in Victoria, it spent more than $1 billion to shelve the controversial East-West Tunnel in Melbourne given the go-ahead by the Napthine Liberal government.
A few years earlier, the O’Farrell government in NSW tore up Labor plans for an Epping-to-Parramatta rail link and tried to funnel $2 billion in federal funds allocated to that project to its preferred option, the Metro NorthWest.
This trend continued last month when NSW Labor announced it would junk Berejiklian government plans to revamp two Sydney stadiums. The opposition would not rebuild either the Sydney Football Stadium at Moore Park or proceed with an $800 million upgrade to ANZ Stadium at Sydney Olympic Park if it wins government at the March election.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announces work on a fast rail network.Credit:AAP
Spending in the wrong places
Ideally, infrastructure investment should be driven by patterns of population growth and target projects that deliver the biggest economic gains.
But transport infrastructure spending has long been skewed by electoral political considerations – certain electorally sensitive regions have received a disproportionate share, especially regional NSW and Queensland.
“Regional NSW, where the National Party holds a large number of seats, received a disproportionate slice of pie.”
This trend has been especially stark in the allocation of federal money to transport projects.
A recent report by the Grattan Institute found the federal government spent 46 per cent more per person on transport infrastructure in Queensland than in Victoria in the decade to 2015.
Regional NSW, where the National Party holds a large number of seats, also received a disproportionate slice of the federal road and rail funding pie in that period.
Melbourne Airport: there has been talk of a rail link for years.Credit:Craig Abraham.
Bits and pieces.
Debate about transport projects is normally focused on individual projects such as Sydney’s WestConnex or Melbourne’s airport rail link.
But Dr Legacy says it is often unclear how these new additions integrate with existing infrastructure and other new projects. “We take a very fragmented approach to transport infrastructure planning,” she says..
“There’s a lot of getting on with project building at the moment but that sometimes comes at the cost of doing good planning where you clearly articulate what the problem is and different ways of solving that problem.”
No one can be certain of what the future holds – that’s what makes astute investments in expensive transport projects tricky. But here are some ways to improve things.
Video Road and rail: where are we headed?
Sometimes it's the small projects that make the biggest difference, says senior journalist Matt Wade.
Justify first, announce later
Good project decision-making requires “careful consideration of the problem, a thoughtful understanding of the options, and a detailed evidence-base to demonstrate the benefits of the solution,” says Infrastructure Partnerships Australia’s Dwyer.
The economic justification for many big projects is still vague and their business cases shielded from independent evaluation.
“Deliver business cases before projects are announced, not after,” says Dr Legacy.
One option would be to require publicly funded transport projects with an estimated cost of $1 billion or more to have the support of Parliament, not just the party in power or seeking office.
The cost-benefit analysis of a project could also be improved and made more transparent.
For example, the official discount rate – a core element in the way the long-term costs and benefits of infrastructure proposals are assessed – should be lowered.
The discount rate is a calculation tool used in cost-benefit analysis to put the present and future costs and benefits of a project on a comparable footing.
The discount rate used by most Australian governments including NSW has been stuck at 7 per cent since at least 1989, even though the cost of borrowing has fallen dramatically since then.
A lower discount rate would improve the relative attractiveness of some public transport rail projects because of the long-term nature of the investment.
With 5m residents each, Melbourne and Sydney need to move more people by train.Credit:Ryan Stuart
Pick up the pace on public transport
Speaking of public transport, the populations of Sydney and Melbourne have climbed to about five million and many of each city's key industry sectors are globally integrated. But both are highly dependent on cars compared with many other cities of their scale and economic sophistication. Both also have population densities that are relatively low.
Regional economics expert Terry Rawnsley says Melbourne and Sydney have reached a population threshold where they need more mass transport. They can no longer rely so heavily on cars to move people around.
“We’ve got to try and get more and more new trips onto rail..”
“It’s not like Melbourne and Sydney are going to morph into having the transport mode share of London or New York, they’re still going to be heavily car-based because they are so dispersed,” he said. “But we’ve got to try and get more and more new trips onto rail.”
There are big public transport projects in the pipeline but Rawnsley says authorities need to “pick up the pace” of implementation and plan to deliver even more. That won’t be easy.
“Because our cities have such a large geographic footprint, trying to retrofit metro systems and heavy rail networks is very challenging,” he says.
Sydney and Melbourne residents are more reliant on cars than residents in comparable cities.Credit:Peter Braig
Small is often better
Politicians find it hard to resist big, impressive-sounding infrastructure announcements.
But it is typically much easier to find a very favourable cost-benefit ratio in a group of small to medium-sized projects.
One reason is that adding major projects in mature cities such as Sydney and Melbourne is almost always complicated, disruptive and expensive, likely involving costly land acquisitions and tunnelling.
Relatively modest projects targeting transport “pinch points” can often deliver much bigger bang for buck in terms of economic benefits and convenience for commuters.
Reviewing finished rail and road projects can yield valuable lessons. Credit:
Don't go down the same track
You might expect that once a big infrastructure project is finished, the government responsible would conduct a thorough evaluation.
In fact, that rarely happens.
A recent Grattan Institute report found that only two post-completion project reviews had been published in NSW during the past four years. Victoria was only a little better with seven reviews.
In the case of some big projects run by the private sector, market forces deliver the harshest of judgments – the bankruptcy of the operating company.
In the public sector, projects should be systematically reviewed. That would help planners avoid making the same mistakes as in the past such as overly optimistic traffic projections.
One option would be to require a post-completion review of all large transport projects be submitted to the federal government.
Building a new freeway may not always help.Credit:File
Building is not always the answer
If the goal is “congestion busting” – as some political leaders like to say – there’s a swag of reforms that would help that don’t involve concrete or tarmac.
One option is time-of-day congestion pricing, where motorists are charged for using roads at peak times. That would ensure existing infrastructure is used more efficiently, reducing the need to build more.
“There is a structural preference to look for infrastructure solutions rather than a full suite of options.”
A range of housing-related reforms, including stamp-duty changes and improved planning, would reduce the cost of moving house and make it easier for people to live closer to their work. That would, in turn, ease pressure on transport networks.
Unfortunately, announcing a new infrastructure project typically comes at a lower political cost than sensible reforms.
That political reality means there is a "structural preference" to look for infrastructure solutions to city transport problems rather than considering a full suite of policy options.
Big new projects might sound appealing but they’re often not the best way to make our cities function better.
<www.theage.com.au/national/our-roads-and-rail-may-not-be-as-bad-as-you-think-but-here-s-why-we-could-still-do-better-20181206-p50kjc.html>
* Aside from it being a good idea or not, I wouldn't like to see Gladys getting involved in this just in case Alan Jones calls her and wants high speed rail stations at each race course.
* For a second there when Matt mentioned "small" and "medium" -sized projects I was thinking maybe there was going to be a bit of vision and enlightenment and will mention that there are thousands of cycling and walking projects out there that WILL make a difference, not only to congestion but livability, our physical health, and greenhouse gas pollution (the transport sector is our highest emitter).
Alas, its more of the same old same old assumptions that "infrastructure" must mean (large and expensive) road and rail projects rather than a multitude of connected green-spaces, corridors and liveable streets.
For one tenth the cost of westconnex you could have the best green grid city in the world. State government have done the green grid planning but only a few paltry million has gone into building anything. The billions in funding still goes to tollways.
We need to change the mindset, not just the way we assess "big" projects to look at the entire transport, environment and health tasks as an integrated issue.
* Part of the reason we spend so much on infrastructure is that we almost never get it right the first time. Especially when it comes to roads, we build comically undersized highways, motorways and bridges which are at capacity 10 years later and need upgrading.
I mean, who on earth thought that the M5 East should be just two lanes? Or that the Alford's Point Bridge should be one lane each way? Or that when Homebush Bay Drive was completed, we should just throw in a set of traffic lights at each and every intersection rather than build a flyover?
Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane should have had a dual lane continuous highway connecting them 30 years ago. And if we'd gone ahead with Bob Hawke's VFT in the 80s, we'd now have a high speed rail corridor for peanuts compared to the billions needed today now that property prices have skyrocketed
* We have seen 20 years of disaster projects, designed for ribbon cutting and not for benefits.  Consistently, government departments have fed wrong schemes to governments of both flavours: straight out of 'Marge & the monorail'.  At all times, they have failed to maximise the benefits of existing infrastructure.  Much of this has been the result of importing managers from UK in conjunction with privatisation.  For urban transport, politicians, journalists and hence the gullible public are besotted with the term 'metro', without knowing what one is, what one does, or the urban geography for which one works.  Melbourne has blocked future improvements with wrong design; Sydney has gone backwards.  Existing lines are not at saturation until double-deck trains are running on 2 min headways: 60 000 passengers per hour per track (double current standards).  For long distance, everyone dreams of Chinese-style high speed, and so we have nothing.  Existing lines can take trains at 200 km/h with proper track standards (rail, sleepers, ballast, canting) and with tilting trains (cheaper than realigning curves).  That doesn't deliver 3 h Melbourne -Sydney, but could deliver 8 h.  Making the constant failure worse is the constant delivery of spin into outright lies.
* Shanghai metro cost $27 million per km.  A tunnel boring machine to bore a 3.6 metre tunnel for metro costs about the same - about $20 million.  Station boxes can be 3D printed and standardised. The idea that a station costs squillions is just ridiculous.  So a 20 km metro line for Sydney would come in at about $500 million. Basically peanuts.  There is something profoundly wrong going on with large scale PT and metro building in NSW, and has been for decades, and I fear that there are no journalists who will be able to explain why.
* “What do we know that they don’t know?” asks one economist...Just about everything apparently including the fact that fast trains are only fast if they don't stop so they are not suitable for solving city congestion. They are also expensive because they need to travel in straight lines so they can't use existing tracks which wind around hills.
* How about, instead of announcing on budget night we are going to spend x about of money on a infrastructure projects. Why don't we announce the project and put out to tender and get the best price?
* The biggest culprit behind any and all Australian infrastructure cost blowouts is the Howard government's misuse of budget surpluses for middle class welfare. Australia is still struggling to recover from their misguided cynical vote-buying largesse.
* Our gdp infrastructure spending is still catching up.
The Grattan analysis is full of holes and prejudiced outcomes.
We have double and triple the net immigration of Sweden and the UK respectively.
The Liberal NSW and Labor Vic governments are both doing a great job.
* Leave it to the Liberal - they will surely build to sell it to their mates for them to make money when we finish building it with our money - similar to Westconnex, Northwestern railline and the new Eastern Suburbs Lightrail
* We need more of a rail 'network' in Sydney - it is predominantly radial.
Complete the Epping-Parramatta link (the missing link is ridiculously short - just Epping to Carlingford, though of course duplication from Carlingford to Clyde and thru to Parramatta is also required). Extend it in an arc through the western suburbs to Liverpool (the Cumberland "highway" is a joke)..
Bring the NW metro around so that it connects with the Richmond line and the main Western line. Another line to serve the SW. And another across to the Northern beaches, maybe from Chatswood.
Of course, all these will take time and investment, but we seem to be perpetutating a predominantly radial rail network, when it is no longer the case that everyone commutes to and from the CBD.
* You’ll get more of a network with whatever comes after west metro and the western Sydney airport metro. So it’s in the way, albeit in about 15-20 years
Forget PERL. The Carlingford line alignment is hopeless for a main line service and this was always the case. The line is about to be repurposed for Parramatta Light rail
* It doesn't take much time and it doesn't take much investment. In fact most metro can be paid for by developers who can be allowed to develop the air space above stations.
In terms of time, a TBM can bore up to 1km a week given good substrate. Most of Sydney is clay and sandstone - perfect 'grist to the mill' for a TBM.
Let's say worst case scenario of 500 metres per week, which is extremely slow. That would still come in at under 1 year for drilling.
Station fit out should take another year, approximately.
Add another year for cutting the ribbon and producing glossy PDFs.
3 years. That's one term of government.
20 km bi directional metro tunnel fitted out in 3 years, for $500 million.
Traffic congestion in Sydney alone costs us a billion a year.
* Here we ago again, HSR, what a joke. To get your 3 hrs between SYD and MEL requires an average speed of close to 300kph, thus doesn't include the slow down out of SYD and into MEL, or any additional stops. People keep forgetting this isn't a suburban train and passengers will still need to make their way into a central location, that being the CBD, will still need to park and still be required to go through security so that pre train prep time will not be much different to an airport, 'But advocates point out that while Australia has been debating high-speed rail many countries have been building it, especially in Europe and Asia.  “What do we know that they don’t know?” asks one economist'.
Really, is this an argument? I guess that's why "one economist" didn't put his name to it!
I find the congestion time argument a little hard to believe, if travel times haven't changed as stated how about how long peak demand is over a day. I know from experience that Perth peak times have blown out considerably this 1990. Peak into the CBD is now around 2 to 3 hrs, so trying to travel at different times for a "normal" job is pretty difficult and working from home more, that has to be one of the biggest lies going.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with infrastructure projects is too much input from vested interests and cost blowouts because the PS has lost its ability to assess and write contracts leaving the door open for continual cost increases from the contractor at tax payer expense.
We need the equivalent of the PC to assess and make these decisions.
* As for high speed rail.. It's an awesome convenience, but again you have the scale issue in Australia..
We're talking about building thousands of kms of very expensive fast rail to connect what are quite small populations..
There are 400,000 people in Canberra... How much would a fast rail cost from Sydney to Canberra? maybe 20 billion? That's $50,000 invested for every person in Canberra..
The financials just don't add up... We either need an order of magnitude reduction in cost-to-build (unlikely) or we need an order of magnitude increase in the population served (maybe in 100 years)...
Sydney to Melbourne? Maybe it'll cost 50 billion? With a rate of return of 4% it should generate 2 billion (+ operating costs) to pass the investment hurdle... Currently there are 10 million people flying between melb-sydney.... So that's $200 per ticket of profit required to cover the return on investment, NOT considering the cost of actually operating the trains and assuming everyone switches from plane to train. (and a 1 hr flight to a 3-4 hr train ride)...
Not likely.
* The biggest issue I think cities like Sydney and Melbourne have is how they transition to the highly dense cities that can benefit from mass-transit (like London, New York, Tokyo etc.)
Our cities are sparse with roads providing transport.
As we increase population, the roads simply can't scale to cope... Mass transit seems like the answer, but unless you're connecting dense populations of people, they're very expensive to build for the return they provide.
The interim solution appears to be densifying regions around stations (chatswood, st leonards, etc.) which makes sense - those residents have a mass transit option available, but it's not like the mass-transit system is a panacea for these residents given that the only destination is the CBD... You need a network of rail to provide the options, and so they have to go back to cars to get anywhere else. But of course you've now boosted the population density in a small place with no road capacity increase, so the problems remain..
No easy solutions really... We either have to decide to stay the same size (cue the anti Big Australia people) or we have to rapidly scale up density so that mass-transit can have a much better return on productivity.
(Of course no mass-transit system runs at a profit, except I think for a couple of Tokyo's metro lines)...
* Mass transit operates at a massive profit when you factor in the indirect costs of congestion. Congestion affects an urban population over just about every metric you can think of. The difference between a city with mass transit like Paris, London and Berlin and one without like Sydney is a quantum one.
* Some OK ideas here like demand management, justify before build, and small-medium projects
And some stinkers like what would be a slow bureaucratic fudging exercise “revisiting” projects, and the recipe for making projects even more of a political football than they already are nonsense of requiring parliamentary/bipartisan support.
* "Bipartisan political support" … in what universe will that happen?
We are a large nation with few people, in other words with a lot of space between cities very fast trains make a lot of sense if it doesn't send us broke.
But judging by the way large projects get done not only will pigs start flying but politicians will actually look after our interest instead of their own.
* Out will come the people who insist on comparing sydney and melbourne with other cities around the world that have better public transport, but are not even remotely similar in population, population distribution, geographic area or geography itself (think: sydney harbour fragmenting the city).
Oh, and they wont believe the statistics either. they dont suit their whinging narrative.
* The VFT is a wasteful fantasy, but improving the existing tracks so that the trains designed to run at 100 km/hr can actually do it makes sense. Public transport by heavy rail is a no-brainer. No successful city in the world operates without it but go underground. Costs more (although not in the case of the Eastern Suburbs Light Rail - $3billion for 12 kms must a world record!) but it is worth it because of avoiding surface congestion and disruption.
* No successful city in the world operates without it...except Newcastle after the LNP government shut it down so developers could build on the land.
* light rail at $3 billion for 12 km. Yep and Shanghai was building 20 km for half a billion dollars - for metro not light rail - not so long ago.
* We have seen 20 years of disaster projects, designed for ribbon cutting and not for benefits. Consistently, government departments have fed wrong schemes to governments of both flavours: straight out of 'Marge & the monorail'. At all times, they have failed to maximise the benefits of existing infrastructure. Much of this has been the result of importing managers from UK in conjunction with privatisation. For urban transport, politicians, journalists and hence the gullible public are besotted with the term 'metro', without knowing what one is, what one does, or the urban geography for which one works. Melbourne has blocked future improvements with wrong design; Sydney has gone backwards. Existing lines are not at saturation until double-deck trains are running on 2 min headways: 60 000 passengers per hour per track (double current standards). For long distance, everyone dreams of Chinese-style high speed, and so we have nothing. Existing lines can take trains at 200 km/h with proper track standards (rail, sleepers, ballast, canting) and with tilting trains (cheaper than realigning curves). That doesn't deliver 3 h Melbourne -Sydney, but could deliver 8 h. Making the constant failure worse is the constant delivery of spin into outright lies.
* The fact that you cited the "UK connection" (pfft) and know some rail terminology leads me to think you actually know what you are talking about!
* Double deck trains can never run at 2 minute headways in our network, regardless of signalling. So that will never happen
You’re wrong about sydney “going backwards”. Choosing the latest technology (automated trains and moving block signalling) for a new railway is absolutely the right choice
By the way, 30 double deck trains per hour is not 60K pax. It’s about 50K. Even if you could run at that frequency, which, as per the above, you can’t. So it’s moot
* of course the difference is we had it not bad for such a long time .
and some idiot started telling everyone how good it was to own a car and how you were king of the road .
the rest of course is history !
* Unfortunately with only 25 Million people and huge distances on our continent we simply can't collect enough tax to fund huge transport infrastructure projects Australia wide. Then we have to turn to Private Public Partnerships for funding, and we all know how that turns out, excessive fares and tolls that people struggle to afford, take Sydney Airport Train for example, crazy price for such a short distance. Imagine a PPP funded VFT fare for Sydney/Melbourne....flying would most likely be cheaper. Air is free, railway lines are not....no simple solution I'm afraid
* We could collect enough taxes for it but then we might have to use those tax dollars for things like a transportation system suitable to the nations needs. Instead we spend those dollars on more sporting stadiums, over priced submarines, and a federal government that meets only 7 days in 8 months.
* Unfortunately most projects in Sydney are to little to late because like the very fast train projects they have remained as ideas to be repeatedly dragged out at election time for years after they should have been completed and an economic benefited gained. A new road project that doesn't provide any long term congestion benefits because it's to little to late becomes an expensive white elephant. Talking about elephants, the elephant in the room is immigration. Continuing with high immigration while infrastructure remains behind the eight ball just makes any new projects a costly money wasting exercise subsidised by existing tax payers and providing little if any long term benifit as the new comers to our cities rapidly take up any new capacity provided by the new projects. Worst of all in Sydney is the absolute waste of public money on new sports stadiums. The estate government has sold public assets to tear down the existing viable facilities and rebuild them for zero gain. That is an unproductive disgrace.
* This is 1960s technology. We really need to be moving on to looking at the next type of transport like loop or hyperloop that elon musk is working on. These fast rail are good ideas but only if they're up to the latest tech over the last 50 years.
* Aside from it being a good idea or not, I wouldn't like to see Gladys getting involved in this just in case Alan Jones calls her and wants high speed rail stations at each race course.
* For a second there when Matt mentioned "small" and "medium" -sized projects I was thinking maybe there was going to be a bit of vision and enlightenment and will mention that there are thousands of cycling and walking projects out there that WILL make a difference, not only to congestion but livability, our physical health, and greenhouse gas pollution (the transport sector is our highest emitter).
Alas, its more of the same old same old assumptions that "infrastructure" must mean (large and expensive) road and rail projects rather than a multitude of connected green-spaces, corridors and liveable streets.
For one tenth the cost of westconnex you could have the best green grid city in the world. State government have done the green grid planning but only a few paltry million has gone into building anything. The billions in funding still goes to tollways.  We need to change the mindset, not just the way we assess "big" projects to look at the entire transport, environment and health tasks as an integrated issue.
* And these projects are not only cheap, they reduce congestion on roads too.
* Part of the reason we spend so much on infrastructure is that we almost never get it right the first time. Especially when it comes to roads, we build comically undersized highways, motorways and bridges which are at capacity 10 years later and need upgrading.
I mean, who on earth thought that the M5 East should be just two lanes? Or that the Alford's Point Bridge should be one lane each way? Or that when Homebush Bay Drive was completed, we should just throw in a set of traffic lights at each and every intersection rather than build a flyover?
Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane should have had a dual lane continuous highway connecting them 30 years ago. And if we'd gone ahead with Bob Hawke's VFT in the 80s, we'd now have a high speed rail corridor for peanuts compared to the billions needed today now that property prices have skyrocketed
* It's so the contractor knows there will be ongoing work to pay for all the heavy equipment they purchased.
* There's always an opportunity cost in "overbuilding" infrastructure. Upgrading a road 10-15 years later might be better use of funds than building in the capacity ahead of time... You've spent the money but the capacity may not be required for another 10 years... You could've used that money somewhere else in the meantime. I don't know the history of the M5East, but sometimes it's difficult to estimate the impact it has... (I agree it's an abomination of a tunnel, but I also know that it carries far more than was ever estimated at the time it was planned).
* The VFT planning started in 1985. A company I was working for signed up with consortium in 1986. The the plan was too ambitious for pollies and they forced a new unviable route and killed it off.
* Cost of build, whether it is roads or rail, needs to be audited as every project seems to cost the tax payers in billions. Toll company is making billion dollar profit and the investment bank which has monopolized the infrastructure sector is making billions of dollars of profit every year along with companies which provides the advice to the government. There is clearly unholy alliance which is not going to think for the community. Cost has to be brought down and more public transport options has to be given priority.. People are willing to travel by public transport, especially in the West, government needs to do act fast.
* In the 1980s a fast train journey from Newcastle to Sydney took about 2 hours. Now, the same journey takes more than 3 hours - and that's on a good day.
A lot of people live in Newcastle and work in Sydney, so a proper fast rail service would make a huge difference in their lives. We could get to Sydney in about 30 minutes. Even if it took an hour, that would be a huge relief for Novocastrian commuters. It would also open up an affordable housing market to all those Sydney people who can't afford to buy their own home. It's time to stop building roads and start planning a new, well designed and strategically planned very fast train network for the regional centres.
* Sounds reasonable, right? But your argument is about as valid as any other paragraph-sized rationalisation...
There needs to be a far more thorough examination of the cost-benefit..
* Worse than that, you can't even get to Newcastle CBD any more. The rail network has been dismembered to make way for another white elephant light rail property development scheme.
* "Gladys Berejiklian has announced that if the government is re-elected it will “start work” on a fast rail network"
I don’t get Gladys’s joke. It’s definitely not side-splittingly funny. It doesn't even raise a smile, so she isn't joking. Taking into account the NSW State Government’s bumbling delays and cost blowouts in the light rail projects we must stop her otherwise NSW will go broke. She and her government are incompetence par excellence.
* As opposed to NSW Labor who solved the problem by not building anything.
* The government can't do full planning then make announcements because the media and other politicians will skewer them for doing things behind closed doors.
They can't even plan for the future by publicly identifying and reserving future transport corridors.
Even *propose* to *gazette* a corridor in the outer north-west and people go ballistic about property value impacts.
* The biggest culprit is lying politicians.
* Sometimes how things get done or not get done in Australia make me think how I wish it is as quickly as it is done in Japan or China! Every man and his dog will be consulted and have a say on removing a tree in Australia. At a court Christmas party last year, the residents brought up topics on infrastructure projects which were marked 50 years ago and still nothing get done but more feast talks! This year, one of the elderly will not be at the Christmas party because he has gone to a better place (no longer need to waste his saliva on those empty government promises!). With more talks not translating into actions, a lot more elderly people will not live to see the much talked about infrastructure projects!
Whether it is Melbourne Airport rail link (possibly the only major city in the world without a rail link!) or East West Link (possibly the only major city in the world without the road or rail link connecting either sides of the city), many younger ones will also not get to see the so much needed infrastructure built in their lifetime. What a shame on the governing bodies of the day!!
* 1995 to 2018 Is 23 years. Where do you get 35?
* Ansett promoted the first major VFT proposal in the early mid '80s, (1984?) but needed Govt help, which was declined. Business case was based on freight, with loss making passengers only to make it politically acceptable.
* BS the traffic isn't as bad as we think. My road used to be a dead end dirt road. Over time, it was cut through, then paved. It's now part of the local 'rat run'. Despite being a 50kph road (which is optimistic as it is very narrow and poor sightlines due to hills in the road) the council stats show about half the motorists whizzing through are speeding. I've nearly been killed just putting out my bins, and each of us have nearly been hit trying to get out of our driveway, or just by driving in our road and meeting trucks speeding the other way. All of this because the arterial road is always busy, and selfish motorists think that speeding past peoples homes and endangering their families and the local wildlife is ok, because they are "in a hurry". If the road network was capable of handling the demands placed on it, this wouldn't happen.
* Yes, because what is happening on a single street is more than enough evidence to make generalisations about an entire city...I also can't really see how motorists driving down a road that they are perfectly entitled to is selfish.
* Excellent article Matt. A balanced pragmatic summary of the situation in our largest cities. Key highlights of both what's been accomplished, and what work needs to be done.
* I don't agree. For example congestion pricing only works if there is an alternative to using your own car. Look at Singapore for example. The have congestion pricing systems in place they are mostly turned off. With an abundance of reliable public transport that is inexpensive and fast using public transport is most of the time the better option to begin with.
In places like Sydney this doesn't apply. Public Transport without a doubt will add significant travel time to a journey compared to a vehicle even with the congestion.
* Cars are something like 4 times as expensive in Singapore as here. Private car ownership is muuuuuuch less common. This also acts as a congestion pricing system. It's not one that car obsessed Australians would cope with, though.
* Heavy Rail just makes sense. Particularly electrified heavy rail, given how much our emissions have been going up in the transport sector.
The Melbourne-Sydney air route is in the top 5 busiest air routes in the world. It won’t get less busy. An electric TGV like option is probably now viable.
Both cities are now around 5 million people, and unless a whole bunch of us move to bikes (motor, scooter, push bike, electric assist push bike) … we are not going to get any more space on the roads. Unless people opt out from driving, and use Public Transport. As another article on today’s Age site shows, long distance bus commutes simply don’t work. We need to vastly and rapidly improve out heavy rail network. In Melbourne, this would mean total modernisation of the signalling system and a massive increase in rolling stock. And more and more buses, running more and frequently to train stations from surrounding suburbs. If the buses were Hydrogen or electric … so much the better!
* It's not just State government that manages all the public transport woes.. It's local councils that control the street parking, and that in too many cases in Melbourne is a major cause of congestion. I've tried and tried to write to my local council of Boroondara in Melbourne's east with the simple request to 'Clear the Roads'. Try to catch a 285 bus down Balwyn Road and the bus is constantly having to duck and weave around endless parked cars and vehicles, and at many stops vehicles are allowed to park too close to bus stops meaning buses have to either pull up at their stop (legally correct) and have the bum of the bus stuck out in the middle lane blocking traffic, or they just can't get into the allotted bus stop unless they backed into it (just not on) - Rochester Road, Canterbury. Or major roads like Belmore Road should be a full Clear Way for the peak periods. And many tram routes should have much longer Clear Ways on their routes, because they work quite well when cars can safely pass trams instead of the dangerous ducking and weaving caused by congested roads. Please 'Clear our Roads' and get Melbourne moving...
* yep agree thats a lot of road taken up by cars parked on the side - a two lane road becomes one - expensive car parks we all pay for.
* So our roads are not as congested as those in London or the mega cities of Asia. And this is meant to be cause for celebration?
The test of our infrastructure is not how it compares internationally but how it compares to our recent past. On this we are unquestionably failing.
There is no doubt that congestion is getting worse both traffic and on public transport.
Not only is it getting worse but it can only continue to get worse while we rapidly increase the population. It is a complete fantasy to imagine that we can have population growth of close to 400,000 per year and have infrastructure keep up.
It takes decades and billions of dollars to build the infrastructure that we all use today. You simply cannot rapidly increase the population by the rate we have and expect infrastructure to keep up.
Unaffordable housing, inadequate of infrastructure, growing household debts, sprawling cities, pressure on our natural environment, this is what rapid population growth looks like. There is no other fantasy version.

Trams running again after CBD power fault saw services grind to a halt 10 December 2018.
Trams on a number of lines running through Melbourne's CBD have resumed after earlier being brought to a standstill due to a power fault.
Services running along Bourke, La Trobe and William streets have resumed, Yarra Trams tweeted at 4.15pm.
An aerial shot of the stopped trams Credit:Nine News
But commuters are warned that delays will continue as trams return to their normal frequency.
The power failure shut down trams in the heart of the city for more than an hour.
The outage was reported just after 3pm when a power failure occurred at a Yarra Trams substation in the CBD, a spokeswoman said.
"The cause of the outage is yet to be determined," she said.
"We are currently working to restore services as quickly as possible."
Trams along Elizabeth and Collins streets initially came to a grinding halt, but were restored shortly after the outage.
Flinders Street and Swanston Street trams remain unaffected.
14.00:  What’s going on with the 82 tram at Union and Maribyrnong Road? It’s been sitting here for ages holding up other 82 and 57 trams as well as traffic.
15.11 There is a disruption affecting trams in the city (a power fault).
15.20 Melbourne in the summer.  All trams have no power in Melbourne CBD.  
15.30 Let's hope it fixed before peak hour. I guess this also affects route 12 & 109 to the city from North Richmond and route 109 from North Richmond to Box Hill.
<www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/power-fault-in-cbd-causes-trams-to-grind-to-a-halt-20181210-p50lbz.html>


Late every second trip: Life on the delayed 232 bus 10 December 2018.  34 comments.
In numbers:
54% - Buses on route 232 that arrived on time in March this year
80% - Transdev buses on time in the first half of this year
Once a week, Toby Chan's bus arrives about 20 minutes late.
This leaves him waiting for 40 minutes for the Transdev 232 bus to arrive at his stop outside Southern Cross.
Passengers board the 235 while Toby Chan waits for the delayed 232 bus outside Southern Cross station.Credit:JOE ARMAO
Mr Chan is also often kept waiting while he's on the bus.
Two weeks ago, the 232 got caught in a traffic jam on the West Gate Bridge.
The 12-kilometre bus trip from Brooklyn to the city should take about half an hour, but spiralled out to two hours.
"The trip is quite challenging most of the time," Mr Chan said.
This is what life looks like when you ride the 232 bus.
Mr Chan doesn't have a licence so driving to the city is not an option. Nor is the train – a 45-minute walk away.
He takes the bus twice daily and estimates that the service linking Altona North and the city is either early or late every second trip.
And he's just about correct.
Fresh data obtained under freedom of information laws reveals that only 54 per cent of buses on Mr Chan's route were on time in March this year.
Video Why is Melbourne's peak hour so bad?
The ABS stats are in, revealing what's behind congestion in 'the world's most liveable city'.
The 232 bus is the most delayed Transdev service, with two-thirds of buses this year arriving more than five minutes late, or one minute early.
French-based multinational company Transdev signed up to a $1.7 billion performance-based contract with the Victorian government in 2013.
Unlike other bus operators, Transdev was rewarded or penalised for its performance, similar to Metro Trains and Yarra Trams.
But over the past five years, the company that covers nearly a third of Melbourne's bus services including the city's busiest routes has just once met its contractual target of 85 per cent punctuality.
Transdev operates 46 public bus services throughout Melbourne.Credit:Daniel Pockett
In the first half of this year, only 80 per cent of buses were on time.
Performance was particularly low on specific routes, including:
• Only 57 per cent of Route 220 buses linking Sunshine and Gardenvale were on time in February. Punctuality has remained less than 65 per cent for several months since 2013.
• Just 57 per cent of Route 350 buses connecting La Trobe University and the city were on time for the year 2015.
• Route 216 buses linking Sunshine Station and Brighton Beach were on time in 55 per cent of cases in 2014, rising to 71 per cent this year.
It comes as complaints about Transdev to the Public Transport Ombudsman increased by 51 per cent this year.
Managing director Warick Horsley left Transdev earlier this year in the wake of the company's poor performance and a serious safety blitz that saw a dozen Transdev buses taken off the road due to serious and potentially dangerous defects.
He was the third person to hold the role in five years.
Mr Horsley's replacement, acting managing director Nikki Allder, blamed delays on worsening congestion and competing road works.
"With the majority of our bus routes running through the city, our services have been particularly impacted by the significant infrastructure works under way in Melbourne over the last 12 months," she said.
The six years of data released to The Age includes punctuality performance of other major bus companies – information that is otherwise kept secret.
Major bus operator Dyson Group maintained 80 per cent punctuality for the first six months of the year – below the 82 per cent contractual target , which was not enforced.
At Ventura – the state's largest bus company – buses were on time in 84 per cent of cases this year, down from 85 per cent last year.
New contracts for Dyson and Ventura, along with another 10 bus operators, effective from August 1 for the first time include penalties for poor performance (up to 2 per cent of the year's pay) and bonuses (up to 3 per cent) for punctuality, reliability, patronage and complaints.
In another first, performance will be tracked by GPS technology fitted to the buses and monitored by PTV, instead of relying on bus operators' own reports.
But the government has refused to release the tougher performance targets, citing commercial concerns.
Public Transport Users Association spokesman Daniel Bowen said reliability was "appalling" on some Trandev routes and called for more bus priority on Melbourne's roads.
He called for "dedicated bus lanes and traffic light priority, better policing of existing bus lanes, more frequent services to reduce crowding and wait times, [and] route reform to simplify and optimise the network".
"It's time our growing city took buses seriously – not just upgrades, but also greater scrutiny, including regular publication of performance and crowding data," Mr Bowen said.
Dyson's group service delivery manager Paul Giusti said the government routinely rejects proposed timetable changes that would boost patronage and save time.
The company is now lobbying for more services in Epping but has so far been unsuccessful.
"All we can advise our customers is that we are lobbying TFV and PTV to consider [timetable] changes. PTV advise they have limited resources and budgets," Mr Giusti said.
"It's a difficult message to deliver to our customers who have a service that they would like to utilise but find difficult due to unreliability."
Next year, Transdev will have the option to extend its contract for three years.
A government spokeswoman said: "Our new contracts for the first time will put the passenger experience first – and we look forward to working with the contractors to deliver better outcomes for our bus network."
Related Article Don’t assume more expressways and trains will fix traffic jams.
<www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/late-every-second-trip-life-on-the-delayed-232-bus-20181204-p50k0l.html>
* The results of the 220, 216 and 219 bus routes are now academic anyway. Until further notice, there is a 4km chunk between the city and the Alfred Hospital where the buses no longer run. Passengers have to walk a block or two to get trams, instead.
* I walk whenever I can and when I look at the lines and lines of cars around me there are so many carrying one person per vehicle. They aren't tradies and can't all be community workers. This is the cause of traffic jams and public transport running late.
* "In another first, performance will be tracked by GPS technology fitted to the buses and monitored by PTV, instead of relying on bus operators' own reports."
I expect we'll soon discover that the reality was/is substantially worse than that which was reported.
* Yes, I used to live near the end of a long bus line. The buses in peak hour were always late, but off-peak buses would often leave the designated stops early, when they were supposed to wait until the scheduled time. I always suspected this was because bus drivers wanted a longer smoke break at the end of the line.
Very frustrating when the next bus is more than 30 minutes later.
* The sensible thing to do would be to ride the 16 kilometres to the CBD via Footscray road bike path. Takes about 45 minutes
* Dyson are awful. They won't admit when they stuff up, they won't admit when they short shunt buses. They won't admit their drivers do wrong (ie decide not to stop when the button is pressed and instead stop three stops later, claiming there's no dedicated stop til then). When they do receive a complaint you get back a response that's full of excuses, and blaming Metro if they can, that's barely legible. The last two complaints I've put in, the responses I've had back don't even make sense.
But now I realise, it's because nothing is enforced, so they really don't care. Why should they when they're still getting huge amounts of money from the Government and whoever else, no matter what happens? The timetable is just a suggestion and they're only there to service themselves! Not the paying public!
* I'd suggest to Toby Chan ,that if train travel is out of the question because it's a 45 min walk, then get yourself a pushbike and ride to the train station.Most places have a bike lockup and what would take 45 mins to walk would be about 10 on a cycle. Walking or cycling keeps you fit and healthy as well.
* Why is anyone surprised? The first thing to go in a search for profit is service - the myth that the private sector can be more 'efficient' is exactly that, a myth, particularly when the metric should be 'effective'. Even Adam Smith knew that - check "Wealth of Nations" to see the full mantra.
* Buses have always been the poor relation of the Melbourne public transport network. The government seems to be almost exclusively focused on trains, even the trams don't get much of a look in.
* Bus routes are like a maze for drivers - street furniture, tight corners, traffic islands, little suburban round-a-bouts, parked cars - the list goes on. I'm amazed that drivers do this patiently day in and day out, while also trying to deal with timetables, irate passengers etc.
Bus routes need to be given planning priority and plenty of room to operate unhindered.
Buses bunching together on routes and travelling in "convoy" needs to be banned and having bus inspectors along the routes would help that. Obviously more regular buses on all routes would help as well, even if these buses were slightly smaller.
Buses are unsung and a good way to travel if the problems in timetabling and bus route management were fixed.
* We're adding an entire new tunnel and bridge with the WGTP to the CBD and yet we can't somehow find a dedicated bus lane in any of the new or existing infrastructure? Not enough toll money in buses I guess.
* No. It's because things like priority lanes and timetable changes have to be approved by the Department of Transport which is basically run by the car lobby and fiercely resists anything that might advantage buses and trams..
* It would be good if the PTV app’s supposed GPS tracking actually worked. Often I’ve decided to walk 20 mins to my destination than wait for the 220 bus which has been “2mins” away for 15 minutes and counting.
* I'm not sure what the point is of having a timetable for a type of public transport that does not have its own dedicated road, as too many daily variables render it useless almost immediately. That said, the GPS seems to work ok for trams so that you can rely on when the next one is due (or not), the least they could do is tell people reliably how on time or late the bus is, even if the actual cause is out of their control.
* Bus timetables are often unrealistic because they don't take into account differing travel times during the peaks (which start earlier and finish later than they used to) and routes are often set by people who have no idea. Try talking to anyone in government about anything to do with a bus route, and you will get gibberish. Ring the bus company, and you will get a straight answer. The people who deal with the routes (both drivers and support staff) know of the idiosynciacies of each one.  Probably only about half of bus passengers tap on. So the reason for the underfunding is partially because of all the freeloaders. If you are one, stop it.
Not only is it disgusting to leach off everyone else, but PTV use 'touch on' data to determine how widely used routes and individual stops are. If you don't tap on, then your journey doesn't count, and if they are rationalising a route, you might find your stop discontinued because as far as PTV are concerned, it doesn't have enough people using it.
* I'm on the 350 route and not surprised to see it mentioned here as one of the worst routes in Melbourne. Even though it is more convenient for me to get this bus the unreliability has long since pushed me away from this bus and onto the train. Busses 20+ minutes late or not showing up at all is common, Busses breaking down on the side of the road is also common. Unlike trains when you are warned that it is running late or cancelled the first hint of something wrong is when you have been waiting for 30 minutes and still no sign. Transdev needs a serious kick in the backside, not all of this is down to traffic a large part of it is also down to poor maintenance, poor scheduling and in some cases substandard bus drivers.
* Late buses wouldn't be such a big deal if they just put on enough services. a 20 minute wait for any form of public transport is just asking for trouble. They should be every 5 minutes, on all routes.
* I totally agree with you. I can understand what with accidents, road works, etc, buses cannot keep to timetables, but this wouldn't be so bad if there were buses every 5 or 10 minutes. I often find the bus I'm aiming to get just doesn't turn up or is early, and the next bus is 20 minutes late, and then gets later throughout the journey in peak hours - when that happens, I am late to work or picking up kids from childcare. If busses were coming every 5 or 10 minutes, it wouldn't be so bad!
* Transdev, a multi national more concerned about aggregating contracts to send profits back overseas than actually running bus services for commuter benefit. May as well bring back nationalised state owned bus services - another example of the oh so wonderful benefits of privatisation.
* Appreciate your optimism, but already it shows a breakdown on the Westgate Bridge, the tunnel and Mr. Chan's journey goes pear shaped. More population = more cars = more breakdowns. These end up blocking up bus lanes etc. as well as the tunnels and bridges. Roads seem to have about a max 10 year capacity life span before they take on the look of a parking lot. That follows with a 2 year widening project which always swallows up emergency lanes and bus lanes while under construction. Then the whole sad cycle starts again. I feel modern rail systems are the only long term solution to move people and improve our productivity. Melbourne is now a huge city geographically and certainly not small in population. We deserve better than the current buses and museum train set.
* PTV refuses to supply all Greater Melbourne Bus stops - only so called major stops —- what is really going on?
* The great irony is that the bus at the centre of this article, the 232, originated at the site of the former Paisley Station, on the Werribee line, demolished in the 1980s. Rebuild the station, and many of the problems disappear! As other posters have said, buses are best used in two ways: to get people to their nearest station; or to provide links between our radial train lines. We shouldn’t rely on a buses to move people long distances into the CBD.
* I'm on a bus line not overly affected by infrastructure or congestion, even pre-peak hour services are unpredictable - early, late, don't come at all. The service centre has no idea where the bus is (look down the road, should be there soon). I treat the timetable more as a general guide, not a real timetable.
* It was the previous LNP government that signed the contract with Transdev, not the Andrews government. This was because the Liberal Party Transport Minister at the time said that the Liberal Party was committed to Compulsory Competitive Tendering. It resulted in two Victoria companies, Ventura and Melbourne Bus Link, losing their contracts and being replaced by a company controlled by the French government which under bid and over promised. The result has been chaos and yet the Liberal Party has refused to apologise to those affected. Then again, they couldn't care less about public transport. The Andrews government negotiated new agreements with all other individual bus companies as they promised and did not use Compulsory Competitive Tendering. The comparative service results are there for all to see.
* Buses probably have the same problem as other road users-too many people in Melbourne clogging up the place, and getting worse
* What I find galling is when I use the PTV app to plan a journey, get to the bus stop with time to spare, only to see the bus already driving off 2 minutes early.
* Leaving Early should never be tolerated in Melbourne’s PTV —- WHY is it?
* The entire bus network needs to be reviewed as the current system is totally ineffective.
Trains are the only efficient public transport in Melbourne. Trams might be useful for the CBD but everyone who spent, eg. 1.5 hours to go from Bundoora down to the city have undoubtedly questioned themselves of better ways to commute.
The bus network should be restructured to mainly support people to go to and from train stations and from train stations to other major infrastructures, such as organisations that have xxxx number of staff. It's mind-blowing that nearly all major shopping centres and large university campuses don't have their own train stations. Yea, I know budget constrains and all that but then there should be express busses every 5 minutes going back and forth from the closest station(s).
* Unfortunately this service often gets caught up on the Westgate bridge because there is no dedicated bus lane. It seems faster for Mr Chan to take the train to Altona and then switch to a bus.
Altona North used to have its own train station in the form of Paisley station but this was closed back in the 80s. With the demand for trains on the rise again, I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to reopen the station if not for all day at least from morning to the early evening.
* It's not just lateness, either - frequently entire services don't seem to turn-up at all, making the next service on the route even slower, since there are so many people waiting at each stop due to the missing one. Complain to PTV about it and you're told that they had sick-leave, or a mechanical, but here's the thing - people need communication, in real time. It's not satisfactory in 2018 to leave people standing at a stop for upwards of half an hour, wondering what's going on. The teams have service information available at many stops, and the buses need that too. If Transdev won't do it, but the contact back out for tender and give them the boot.
* Melbourne doesn't take buses seriously. They're seen as the poor cousins of trams which you only take as a last resort, unless you have no other option. I live on the 216/219 route although there's also a train station nearby. Whenever I tell new housemates they can take the bus to the city too if they prefer because the stop is closer by than the station, they look at me like I'm some kind of weirdo.
* 2018 and the buses operate as if it's the 1950s. To get from auburn station to Hawthorne Institute where the IELTS and OET exams are held on a Saturday is very difficult considering the bus runs once an hour and in my experience of catching the bus approximately 15 times over a two year period it's always late anything up to 20 minutes late. Those exams are attended by people from all over the state and from Tasmania so they need to be able to get there on public transport. If you want to attend an exam on a Sunday forget getting the bus there is no bus down Auburn Road on a Sunday. As I said the buses are run as if it still the 1950s and people only go to church on a Sunday and all the shops close at 12 o'clock on a Saturday. Congestion is a constant topic of conversation on the radio and in the newspapers and buses are of no help whatsoever in relieving traffic congestion.
Travelling on the 903 to get to Doncaster Shoppingtown to go shopping on a Saturday is also as if it is still the 1950s. The bus is only runs every half an hour and is very very crowded from 10 o'clock in the morning into the afternoon. Once again the timetable is stuck in the past. Newsflash : The shops stay open till 5 o'clock on Saturdays and Sundays now and people want to be able to get to the shopping centres and do the shopping because everybody works during the week now including women. The entire bus network needs to be re-examined and re-scheduled to meet the needs of 2018, so come on Dan you can do it .
* Yet we still get clever politicians telling us we can fix our public transport woes with buses, as a more economical solution to trains. With the population projections for Melbourne, buses and will never alleviate congestion on our roads. A comprehensive modern network of rail is the only solution. The only thing in Mr Chan’s favor is that he only has to take one bus. Try a journey where you have to change buses and it’s in danger of becoming an overnight expedition across the burbs!
* Buses may work if they dedicated ways such as bus lanes, busways or BRT infrastructure. Unfortunately a lot of politicians think they can just introduce buses without any changes in infastructure and hope it will somehow alleviate traffic magically.

Why New York is a warning for Sydney's train system.  10 December 2018 182 comments.
Sydney trains are moving more passengers than ever, topping 200,000 in total across the one-hour morning and afternoon peaks, but the punctuality of services is sagging under the pressure.
Morning and afternoon rush hours pushed about 3 per cent more people into carriages in March 2018 compared to March 2017. And across the Sydney rail network, new passengers are boarding at twice the rate they have historically, up by 5 per cent in the past 12 months.
Town Hall train station suffers from congestion at peak hour.Credit:Ryan Stuart
This runaway growth makes the system more "fragile", but it is also a "good problem", senior lecturer at the University of Sydney Institute of Transport and Logistics Dr Geoffrey Clifton said.
"We're going to see a network that's busier across the day than ever before and it will be a bit more fragile, so when things go wrong it will have more of a cascading effect," Dr Clifton said.
"New York is a warning for Sydney, they didn't keep up with the investment as numbers were growing, and the quality of service there has deteriorated so much that the number of people using the subway is dropping, and people are forced to look for alternatives like Uber."
Investment in buses and light rail will take pressure off the train network, but, improving public transport brings more people to it, so more investment will be needed to keep up with growing demand, Dr Clifton said.
"The government is doing some good things like opening up new entrances to stations such as at Redfern to help the network cope with bigger numbers," Dr Clifton said.
The NSW Auditor-General reported there were six lines where passenger crowding was above the benchmark in March 2018 and Rail, Tram and Bus Union NSW Secretary Alex Claassens said overcrowded trains can become a "significant" safety issue.
"Not only does overcrowding cause considerable stress and discomfort for passengers, but it also increases the risk of things like crushing and puts passengers and workers at increased risk in the event of an emergency situation," Mr Claassens said. “For a year now, Sydneysiders have been thrown into commuting chaos because of a network that has no contingency room and is forcing more commuters to take multiple forms of transport just to get from A to B."
NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance said network growth of 30 per cent over the past five years is set to continue.
"In November 2017, the NSW Government introduced a new train timetable with around 1,500 extra weekly services, including 750 on weekends and 180 late at night in response to unprecedented demand," Mr Constance said.
“We couldn’t sit back and do nothing, this was the timetable that Sydney needed."
The new timetable has reduced journey times by a minute, on average, for two in three trips across the network, and platform waiting times are down by about 5 per cent, an assessment released last month found.
“Our focus was to provide more capacity during the peak to key areas where it was needed most, as well as giving customers more services during off-peak periods to respond to changing travel patterns,” Mr Constance said.
“Customers now have more choice and more options for travel across the entire day. They’re voting with their feet and coming through the gates in droves, proving that train travel is a convenient option at any time of the day."
<www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sydney-train-network-becoming-fragile-20181128-p50iw4.html>

What you need to know about the inquiry into Queensland's new trains 10 December 2018.
A lack of consultation, animosity between Queensland Rail and Transport and Main Roads and a reluctance to share bad news contributed to the roll-out of new trains that were disability non-compliant.
An independent inquiry into the procurement of the $4.4 billion New Generation Rollingstock, led by retired judge Michael Forde, found the design of the trains was flawed from "day one".
Retired District Court judge Michael Forde delivered his findings into the New Generation Rollingstock inquiry on Monday.Credit:Jack Tran/ Office of the Premier
The trains had disability access issues, including the toilets and pathways being too small for wheelchairs, but they were rolled out in December 2017 as the NGR were needed for the Commonwealth Games timetable, despite a pending application for an exemption to the Australian Human Rights Commission..
Among the people interviewed during the inquiry were current Queensland Rail CEO Nick Easy, former QR chief executive Helen Gluer, former LNP transport minister Scott Emerson, former LNP treasurer Tim Nicholls, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad.
Here is what you need to know:
The procurement process.
Procurement for the NGR was unnecessarily prolonged and marred by delays, disruptions and failures to adhere to policies, guidelines and frameworks, the inquiry's report said.
The procurement process took five years - four years longer than it should have - after starting in 2008.
There was a project "pause" for six months in 2012, before which the NGR project was characterised by a "lack of rigour, continual slippages and missed milestones", which was during the Bligh Labor government.
The model was changed to a public-private partnership under the Newman LNP government, with the change coming so late in the process it created disruptions and difficulties for the two shortlisted proponents.
Changing the project lead from Queensland Rail to Projects Queensland, acting on behalf of Transport and Main Roads, in 2012 was disruptive and created animosity between the two agencies.
The disruption, break in continuity and resulting animosity may have contributed to non-compliance with disability access as a result of information not being transferred and not shared across agencies later in the project.
There were 75 NGR trains ordered as part of a $4.4 billion project.
Decisions to allow non-compliant trains were made on the basis of incomplete information as those issues were not escalated to senior decision-makers.
How did this happen?
A cost-saving decision to require only one toilet on each train at the leading end of accessible car B made it impossible for the trains to be fully disability compliant.
The decision was endorsed by the transport executive committee and former transport minister, Mr Emerson.
But the report said the decision was endorsed on the basis of incomplete information, as non-compliance issues were not escalated to senior decision makers.
"CBRC and the former minister for transport and main roads, who made decisions regarding the procurement of the NGR trains ... cannot fairly be blamed for the decisions," the report said.
The narrow gauge of the Citytrain network made disability compliance challenging but it was possible to design a technically compliant train.
Related Article State government's new trains were flawed 'from day one'.
The procurement process asked for non-compliant trains and the contract was awarded to Bombardier on the basis of non-compliant designs.
That means Bombardier was not to blame as they built the trains to the contract's specifications.
The subsequent design process did not effectively manage or resolve non-compliance.
A decision to remove QR as the project lead created a degree of resentment and animosity, resulting in a competitive relationship during the delivery phase.
"The tense relationship hindered the effective management and resolution of compliance issues," the report said.
There was a persistent failure to inform project governing bodies and senior executives of the issues regarding non-compliance with the disablity legislation.
The procurement and delivery of the NGR trains spanned from the Bligh Labor government, the Newman LNP government and Palaszczuk Labor government.
However, Mr Forde said people working in middle to lower management did not escalate problems higher up the chain and "were perhaps afraid of giving bad news at different stages".
Mr Forde said there also seemed to be an attitude of "it might be fixed down the track".
Consultation was inadequate
No specific consultation was held with the disability sector about the NGR during the procurement phase.
The report argued if the NGR project had undertaken genuine consultation before or early in the procurement process, it would have led to a highlighting of key accessibility requirements.
"It would certainly have been more cost effective than rectification of the trains," the report reads.
Where to from here?
The inquiry made 24 recommendations, all of which were accepted by the Queensland government.
Work to fix the disability access issues will be carried out by Downer EDI at its Maryborough facility, with a full completion date expected in early 2024, at a cost of $335.7 million.
The modifications will include installing larger toilet modules in the middle carriages across the entire 75-train fleet to allow passengers who use mobility devices to access the toilet from both accessible carriages.
The number of priority seats will be doubled from 24 to 48 per six car train, and there will be revised seating layouts.
The Human Rights Commission earlier this year rejected a human rights exemption application by the state government over the trains' non-compliance with disability access laws.
<www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-inquiry-into-queensland-s-new-trains-20181210-p50l9q.html>

State government's new trains were flawed 'from day one' 10 December 2018.
The design of the Queensland government's new trains were flawed "from day one", with middle management blamed for being afraid to share bad news up the chain.
Retired District Court judge Michael Forde has released the findings from his inquiry into the procurement of the $4.4 billion New Generation Rollingstock trains and their failure to comply with disability laws.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, Transport Minister Mark Bailey and retired District Court judge Michael Forde.Credit:Jack Tran/ Office of the Premier
The trains have disability access issues, including the toilets and pathways being too small for wheelchairs.
Ordered from Bombardier under the previous LNP government, the first NGR trains were due to be operational in mid-2016, but after the discovery of significant issues, including problems with braking, airconditioning, sight lines for drivers and disability access, delivery was halted in March 2017.
The inquiry made 24 recommendations, all of which were accepted by the Queensland government.
Mr Forde said the design of the trains, in terms of disability compliance, was flawed from "day one" but there seemed to be an attitude of "we'll fix it down, later on, as an appendage".
"The nut of the problem is, in the first instance, failing to have genuine consultation with disability groups," he said.
"Upon that failure, at the stages of the contractual negotiations, was to allow non-compliant terms, that is, terms that did not comply with the disability legislation, to be part of the contractual arrangement between the state and the supplier — thinking, of course, that it might be fixed down the track."
Mr Forde said people working in middle to lower management did not escalate problems and "were perhaps afraid of giving bad news at different stages".
He also said the procurement of the trains took four years longer than it should have, after starting in 2008, with the first train delivered in 2017.
Mr Forde said the issues with disability access were known as early as 2013, when the contract was signed.
However, Mr Forde said Bombardier built the trains to the specifications that were agreed upon with the state government.
It comes after Labor ran an attack ad ahead of the state election campaign blaming issues with the NGR on the Newman LNP government's decision to have them built in India by Bombardier.
Asked if that ad campaign was fair, given Bombardier built the trains according to its contract, Transport Minister Mark Bailey said it was no secret the Labor government did not support the decision by the Newman LNP government to send the work overseas.
Previously, the LNP has pointed to the former Bligh Labor government approving the business case for the NGR and shortlisting Bombardier and AdvanceRail, with Downer EDI withdrawing in early 2011 under Labor.
In March 2013, Downer EDI asked to be reincluded in the process of procurement, but Transport and Main Roads declined the request.
LNP leader Deb Frecklington said the attack ads during the election campaign were lies and xenophobic.
"This process has run for 10 years in which Labor have been in charge for seven — it is time for Annastacia Palaszczuk to accept responsibility and deliver these trains," she said.
Mr Bailey said the work to fix the toilets, which was yet to begin, would be done in Maryborough by Downer EDI, and aimed to be completed by early 2024 at a cost of $335 million.
The rectification plan includes a second toilet on all 75 NGR six-car sets, increasing the size of toilet modules by 10 per cent.
During the state election campaign, it was announced the then-$150 million contract for modification work on the NGR, including fixing disability access issues, would be awarded to Maryborough-based Downer EDI.
The factory is within the electorate of Labor member for Maryborough Bruce Saunders, who was fighting to keep his seat, with the contract to support 100 jobs.
Mr Bailey defended the decision to hand the contract to Downer.
"It's the most economic and sensible thing ... and the quickest to get Queensland workers to do this rectification work," he said.
"To send them back overseas makes no sense whatsoever."
The Human Rights Commission earlier this year rejected a human rights exemption application by the state government over the trains' non-compliance with disability access laws.
<www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/state-government-s-new-trains-were-flawed-from-day-one-20181210-p50l9p.html>

Gold Coast to copy Kuranda in new cable-car bid to hinterland 10 December 2018.
<www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/gold-coast-to-copy-kuranda-in-new-cable-car-bid-to-hinterland-20181210-p50ld6.html>


Poor government planning risking Melbourne being defined by overcrowded trains, congested roads
Mon.10.12.18 Herald Sun.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants state governments to contribute to population planning.
Houses are sprouting up in growth areas more quickly than the infrastructure, including public transport, roads, hospitals and schools, needed to service them, a report warns.
The nation’s independent roads and rail advisers are urging major reform to future planning as booming population projections and mass interstate migration risk Melbourne being characterised by congested roads, overcrowded trains and buses, over-enrolment in schools and hospital bed shortages.
Today’s report by the independent advisory body, Infrastructure Australia, says the nation’s largest cities are growing and changing at a rate not seen for more than 50 years.
IA’s executive director of policy and research, Peter Colacino, said the infrastructure deficit was due partly to rapid population growth but also to poor consultation and “siloed” planning and decision-making.
This transformation will bring economic, social and cultural opportunities, it says, but local communities must be involved in the planning if living standards are to be preserved.
Poor planning is risking major cities being defined by congestion. Picture: Tony Gough
“It is absolutely possible to grow our cities and maintain their character and world-class liveability, but we need to be smarter about how we plan for it,” Mr Colacino said.
“Too many communities have witnessed the delivery of poor-quality housing development which is not well ­integrated into the local area and not accompanied by the infrastructure and services needed to support it.”
He said the report made a clear case for a “place-based approach” that would allow for more diverse housing, ­including at higher densities, in a way that supported the character and identity of each area..
“This approach will enable governments to link the delivery of infrastructure and housing — to ensure people have access to a good local park and playground, a well-located school and health service, and a frequent and reliable local bus,” he said.
Victoria’s population, now 6.3 million, is tipped to reach up to 8 million by 2027, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Crowded trams will become the norm unless public transport is addressed by governments of all levels. Picture: Jake Nowakowski.
video: Andrews attacks federal government for failing to tackle population growth
And Melbourne’s booming population puts it at risk of a future characterised by congested roads, overcrowded trains and buses, school over-enrolment, and hospital bed shortages.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has asked the Victorian government to outline at tomorrow’s Council of Australian Governments meeting in Adelaide how it plans to cope with this growth, and the roles skilled migrants should play.
In a letter to Premier Daniel Andrews, Mr Morrison has requested figures on what is considered to be Victoria’s population-carrying capacity, complete with regional breakdowns.
He has also asked for the state’s future needs under the Commonwealth’s migrant program and what skills it anticipates businesses will need over the next 15 years.
“We need to carefully manage population growth to protect the quality of life enjoyed by all Australians,” Mr Morrison said.
“This means working to avoid congestion in our major cities while supporting the growth of regional areas, where it is important to maintain and expand service delivery and create more jobs.
“It has to work in Melbourne as well as Darwin. In Rockhampton, as well as Bunbury.”
VICTORIA’S POPULATION GROWTH OUTPACING THE NATION.
OVERSEAS MIGRATION DRIVING POPULATION BOOM.
<www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/poor-government-planning-risking-melbourne-being-defined-by-overcrowded-trains-congested-roads/news-story/ae91c4dfbe08d0a6274b7e8140f90d95>

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