Why ‘Rail Now’ ?

Because it is the change we need most.

In transport, as in other areas, you need to choose the right tool for the job. There are times when a car is the best means of transport. There are other times when it’s smarter to walk, or catch a bus. And when you need to move large masses of people, or large amounts of freight, you need rail. Only a fool tries to use the same tool for every job.

Somehow, the major political parties have never understood this simple truth. For decades, they have given us roads, roads and more roads. Is there a bit of a bottle neck? Let’s widen the road. Still a bit of a traffic jam? Well, let’s bulldoze some homes for a motorway. Is the traffic slowing down again? Oh, we just don’t have enough motorways!

Between 1977-78 and 1986-87, the Federal Government spent 8 times more on roads than it did on rail.(1) The State Governments followed their lead. Billions more has been spent on roads. The result in Sydney has been a plethora of motorways and widened roads, and only 3 paltry additions to the rail network since the 1920s. Billions more has been spent on roads. (Look at some of the comparisons which have been made.)

Buses have fared no better than rail. To keep to a timetable in a city, a bus needs priority over other traffic. Yet Sydney has only 61 kilometres of bus only lanes(2).

Sydney - and Australia - now has a totally unbalanced transport system. We use cars and trucks when they’re the right tool for the job. And we use them when they’re not - because we’ve been given no other choice. To transport a mass of people and goods we need a mass transit system. We need rail. But all we get are roads.

And the result? Congestion. Pollution. Longer travel times. Accidents. Dependence on oil.
A quarter of Sydney buried under roads. And more plans for motorways! Somehow the failure of any new road to solve the problem of congestion is always seen as the justification for a new road - which also fails.

That means that when thousands of people need to move, there is virtually one vehicle movement per person. When freight needs to be moved, there’s one truck movement per container. That’s manageable in a small town. But not in a city of 4 million people.

The major parties refuse to change. Labor has completed the M5 and is building the ‘Orbital’, the Cross City Tunnel and the Lane Cove tunnel. The Liberals don’t disagree, and have added a plan for a tunnel at the Spit. Whatever they might say, what they deliver is roads.

But reliance on roads is the problem. The solution is complex - read our suggestions here. But the single most important element in the solution is recognition that our approach must change. Stop thinking of new roads. Think rail instead. Suspend the road building, put buses on the roads we already have, and put the money into rail. We need to plan for Rail Now.

Footnotes:

(1) This figure is used because it was prepared by an official Government source, the Commonwealth Department of Finance and Administration, in its submission to the Productivity Commission. The figure is cited at pp.195-196 in “Progress in Rail Reform”, Productivity Commission draft report, 1999, Ausinfo, Canberra. See Government Spending on Road and Rail for more comparisons.

(2) Figure attributed to the Roads and Traffic Authority in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27/01/2003, p.2.