Page 3588 - Week 11 - Thursday, 23 October 2014
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We need to redress the transport imbalance in our city and invest more in good public transport if we want to maintain our high standard of living. Light rail is the major shift that this city needs to catalyse sustainable growth and increase the use of public transport. We know that buses alone will not attract people out of their cars or encourage sustainable urban development.
Evidence from cities across the world demonstrates that different approaches to transport result in different land use and urban development. Back in 2001, Austroads stated that there is no question that transport influences land use development and that the effects of each of these needs to be considered in an evaluation.
The territory’s increasing population means that we will need to accommodate an additional 200,000 residents by 2050, increasing the city’s population to over 600,000. As a territory that has a relatively small land area, we need to think about where those people will live, how will they move around the city and how can we efficiently provide access to high quality affordable services in a sustainable and equitable way?
To achieve this, the government recognises the need to closely link transport and broader planning strategies. This will encourage transit-oriented development and urban infill along public transport infrastructure corridors. We understand building the right infrastructure prior to the significant population increases we will see in the future creates a great opportunity for the community, investors and the government.
Light rail supports a long-term increase in the value of property along its route, and this increase will allow the redevelopment and revitalisation of public housing stock in progressive stages along Northbourne Avenue. New public housing will provide accommodation which has higher construction standards, lower running costs and better amenity. In addition, there will be an increased proportion of two-bedroom stock to provide increased capacity for tenants to age in place. It will also provide an opportunity to renew public housing right across Canberra as the government replaces the housing along the capital metro corridor on a roof-for-roof basis with the corridor and reinvests to regenerate the public housing stock across Canberra.
Light rail is a proven city-shaping tool. It changes the value of the land and activity surrounding. Buses do not have the same effect. Governments are now clearly aware of this phenomenon and are changing their approaches to ensure land use and wider impacts are included in the appraisal of projects.
In January this year, the UK Department for Transport provided guidelines that state that if you only look at direct user impacts, significant broader economic impacts will be missed. These guidelines show us that indirect impacts can be significant and are important in the overall appraisal of any transport project.
Earlier this month the federal government released a framework that emphasised the contribution of the infrastructure projects to broader economic benefits such as improved productivity. The federal Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Jamie Briggs, said the guidelines would lead to a more holistic approach to assessing development that would better reflect community expectations and achieve value for money.
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