Re: Sydney transport: formidable task ahead for NSW Labor?
  TP

The ignorance of that John Austen about public transport is staggering. How
fortunate that he's no longer in Infrastructure Australia.

Population policy is in the hands of the Federal government. If there's a
policy of growth, then the states have no choice but to plan for it and
build the infrastructure and services for it, hopefully with some
assistance from the Feds, but otherwise go it alone like NSW has. There are
two ways to go on that. Either you can plow ahead at full speed like the
present NSW government has in the last 11 years, or you can make a lot of
announcements then do nothing, like the previous Labor government did for
16 years, creating a gigantic backlog.

What would a new Labor government actually have to do for public transport
if elected? Basically, sit on its hands and relax because the present
government has set it up for them. Three metro lines are locked into
contracts and underway, with enough work till 2030. Bus contracts have
recently been renewed and locked in until 2030 afaik. Sydney suburban
trains will have a heap more capacity when the Bankstown metro conversion
opens in 2024, so Labor will be able to claim credit for improved suburban
train services enabled by the Coalition. All of the currently-planned light
rail lines are either in operation or heading towards completion. Stage 2
of Parramatta light rail has been kicked off, with Labor's only substantive
public transport proposal, motivated by a desire to win the seat of
Parramatta, being to complete it. I think that will be thrown into doubt
when they discover they will have to breach their Australian-made policy
when no tram manufacturer will manufacture a handful of trams locally, so
they'll turn it into a busway.

There have also been huge fleet renewals and service improvements over the
last decade, so Labor won't have to worry about those, but no doubt will
unpick some of it. The metro and the many new motorways that have been
built in the last decade have not cost the taxpayer anything, so, since
Labor doesn't believe in giving taxpayers a bit of relief, either they'll
be borrowing or hitting taxpayers ($1.1 billion for roads from taxpayers
promised already) to do anything new, which means, on past record, they'll
do nothing.

Anything actually new from Labor that the Coalition hasn't already set up
for them? Buses - lots more of them, including wondrous "BRT". Drivers will
be miraculously plucked from the sky by a working party. Plus cancellation
of business cases for two important additional metro lines, plus motorway
toll relief and demerit point reductions for drivers to encourage them to
drive more instead of using public transport. That's it folks - a luxury
cruise for Labor, a few ribbon cuttings on Coalition projects and a rough
ride for taxpayers. What an easy life for Labor.

Tony P

On Friday, 24 March 2023 at 08:54:46 UTC+11 Matthew Geier wrote:

> The problem is that BOTH major parties are believers in the infinite

> growth economic model and both are desperately trying to grow the

> population faster than it's possible to build supporting infrastructure.

> Never mind the consumption of finite resources (particularly water) all

> this extra population will consume.

>

> I still don't know what jobs they expect all this extra population to

> perform given that everything is automating as fast as they possibly can

> deploy it - and recent advances in AI technology are moving into the white

> collar workforce too, after the robots took all the blue-collar jobs.

>

>

> Given that a 'universal income' is also not something they are

> entertaining either - just where is all this extra population going to get

> the money to pay for their consumption that feeds the great economic cycle ?

>

> Our favoured public transport mode is just a minor side show in the big

> game.

>

>

>

> On 24/3/23 08:23, Greg Sutherland wrote:

>

>

> https://johnmenadue.com/sydney-transport-job-ahead-for-labor-links/

>

>

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