Page 2838 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
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inadequate consideration of reform options such as reform of parking provision and pricing, reallocation of road space to bus/high occupancy vehicle lanes (i.e. T2 and T3 lanes) and other bus priority measures.
And further:
The case for favouring light rail over bus rapid transit has not been strongly made, especially when the submission itself points to the stronger economic performance of a bus rapid transit option.
If Infrastructure Australia, the experts in this space, do not support it, who will? On 3 July this year on 2CC, the Chief Minister said:
We’re not relying on Infrastructure Australia’s support for light rail. We would like Infrastructure Australia’s support for it and we would like Commonwealth funding but the project is not contingent on it.
This means that if the commonwealth does not support the project, it is highly unlikely that the private sector will invest, given recent changes to tax laws. On 18 April this year the commonwealth Assistant Treasurer announced the following:
We are removing tax disincentives to encourage more private sector investment in infrastructure projects … Projects will need to be included on Infrastructure Australia’s … Priority List …
Whilst private sector investment in the ACT’s light rail project was always going to be difficult, if investments in projects elsewhere around Australia receive tax concessions and ours does not, it is highly unlikely that Canberra will indeed attract private sector investment.
This means that the project will either not go ahead or that ACT taxpayers will have to pay for the whole project—that the ACT taxpayers will have to take on all the risk. Therefore the more than $600 million price tag for the project will have to be carried by ACT taxpayers, which equates to $4,419 per household, whether they use light rail or not. This information should be included in the budget.
However, the issues do not stop with the price alone. In an answer to a question on notice from estimates, Shane Rattenbury, the number one proponent of the project and member of the cabinet subcommittee on light rail, admitted:
I have seen a summary of the cost benefit analysis but not the original, complete cost benefit analysis.
This is a worry. What governance arrangements are in place for this project if a member of the territory’s executive has not seen the full case study or the full case and cost-benefit analysis for the project?
However, we now know why Minister Corbell was not using the cost-benefit study as his main weapon: it showed a stronger return for bus rapid transit over light rail. In fact buses scored 4.78 and light rail was less than half, at just 2.34. However, I think
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