tcpip | Public Transport, Commonwealth Games, real gaming, crazy links

Public Transport, Commonwealth Games, real gaming, crazy links

A couple of weeks ago The Age raised possibility of free public transport (paid through rates) as a means to relieve congestion adn pollution, Prosper Australia have asked me to write a an article on said topic. Anyone have some clever ideas on how to break this proposal? (special kudos to

severina_242 for some good ideas). On a related matter I've discovered that two previous articles on a similar theme have made their way to the School of Cooperative Individualism library. Prosper Australia have also approached me to do more public relations work for them.

All systems go for the Ballarat Install Fest. I've written general public and IT literate press releases and have started some modest distributions. This weekend will see it crank up a couple of notches with training on Sunday. The event itself is all happening during the Commonwealth games, which look like they'll be a bit of non-event, with the exception of the graffiti event (hat-tip to

adricongirl and the StolenWealth games. Interesting reference to previous paragraph - what will be the net loss of the Commonwealth games? Will it be more than the $340 million required to provide free public transport for a year?

Three gaming events since my last post; Outbreak of Heresy last Sunday has led the party to Wallachia after escaping the castle of the lich of Vlad Tepes (hey, the body was never found!), last night was Dogs in the Vineyard which involved convincing the local Steward to let two "Mountain People" (read: Amerindians) marry and pray with rest of the faithful as his refusual was allowing demonic influences into the town (very cool narrativism), and finally, I've started composing a RuneQuest II module for RetroCon. Adventures continue on Sunday with GURPS Australian Noir. Hell that's a lot of dice-rolling and cooperative storytelling.

Want to go on SBS's Insight program? Register here. Ten worst dictators (hat-tip

artbroken. Death of a Liberal Party Nazi. Korea calls for a Linux city. The USA really is going theocratic.

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Quite simply it comes down to social justice. Free public transport would cost today $340 million (more if it came into effect). Suburbs with a good public transport services/ public transport market share are more well off/richer etc suburbs then those suburbs with poor transport choice.

Its my strong view that I would prefer to spend the $340 million per annum (or even more) in providing genuine transport choice to suburbs of acute disadvantage. VCOSS has done some excellent work on how lack of public transport in disadvantaged areas helps to entrench inequality. It seems to me that a better use of government money, and indeed of rates, is in expanding transport choice to all of Metropolitan Melbourne (and indeed regional areas as well).

Another factor is that the cities with free public transport (like the Belgian example citied by the Sunday Age) are almost exclusively small cities. Melbourne has one of the world's most extensive tram and train systems. It is not a small city and the economics of dealing with increased capacity demand arising from a free system would be almost too much to bear.

ALSO, the actual impact on congestion seems to be rather minimal. Free Public Transport is adressing the price points of transport from the wrong end of the stick. Consumers of public transport largely pay a fair price - the big problem is that users of private road transport do not! The massive externalities of provate road transport are not born by users, but by society as a whole and we need to make private road transport users bear more of the costs before we should address the public transport user costs (ie, removing tax incentives for car use, congestion charges anyone, remove GST on public transport fares)

And only after this is all done, then we should we have a debate about ticketing/free public transport.

When I posted some thoughts to my LJ on free public transport a few days ago, a friend raised the issue of infrastructure and said its lack is holding-back patronage. I agree that that is the case and think more needs to be done, but also think removing the cost of tickets will encourage more people to use public transport and make the system more efficient (ie: ditch the expensive associated gumf like ticket-machines and ticket-inspectors and hire some conductors/security staff).
In other words, the two needn't be mutually exclusive, as implied here: http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/free.shtml

We need both -- free trains/trams/busses and improvements to the range (more routes) and frequency of service.

It's a crying shame that there's still no train-line to Rowville. The same is true of the extension to the recent tram-line down the Burwood Highway. It stopped at Vermont South (they started building it outside where I used to work a couple of years ago) when it should keep going to Knox.

On a positive note, it looks like the government is taking the SmartBus seriously and is investing millions in it. They're going as far as crediting the SmartBus with the need for road-widening and changing traffic signals/traffic-flow in the City of Monash. Interestingly, they're taking an integrated approach and including dedicated bicycling paths (about time!) [info at VicRoads]

I like the idea of free public transport. Any system which has a significant proportion of its costs created by the mechanism of collecting the price of usage irks me. This is why I don't like the council rates method of funding it. Different councils (often inherently inefficient little empires in their own right) collecting different amounts all over the place. We have a state budget in surplus, so let's just have it paid for at a state level.

Also, I believe the economic cost of free public transport is over-estimated by just looking at current system costs. The fare money wouldn't just disappear into a vacuum. If public transport were free, more people would use it to go places and spend money on other goods and services.

If it increased usage, and one did not invest in more rolling stock, you would just replace rationing by price with rationing by queue. (Think hospital waiting lists, which are endless precisely because they are rationing by queue rather than price.)

That the advantage is very unevenly distributed is also a reason not to have free public transport. (And the payment-by-rates idea strikes me as messy and hit-and-miss in a narrower way. Rates probably already reflect access to the network, as do rents, so it is reasonable to add in a usage charge.)

Experience around the world suggests that about 10% of journeys being on public transport is all one can expect, particularly given such a small percentage of jobs nowadays are where the public transport goes to. Add in the carrying-inconvenience, the small-child inconvenience and the personal security issues to the coverage-inconvenience and I doubt that the effect can be made worth the cost.

I hate to say it but I'm inclined to think free public transport wouldn't change much.

I suspect most people who don't use PT aren't troubled by the price. After all, they are presumably driving cars instead.

And I suspect that most PT users are commuting to work, which suggests they can afford to pay something. (And let's not forget the ease with which you can dodge paying now that we don't have conductors...).

I wonder sometimes about more flexible PT arrangements - somewhere between a minibus network and a taxi system.

Well it'd be nice if it were "more public" or more extensive.

I don't have direct access to public transport. I thought I did when I moved here, but turned out to be a PRIVATE bus company. And that makes a huge difference. Just to get to Glendale costs me $2 concession one way. Once I get there I can go anywhere (including down to Sydney) on the buses/trains/ferrys for $2.50, because I'm a disability allowance.

Now you'd think that wouldn't be such a big issue, but it is. The private bus company doesn't run onpublic holidays, and the latest bus home is about 7pm on weekdays. If I could catch a public bus from where I'd live, I'd use it a lot more than I do now. That's the main reason I still keep a car running, even though (just right now) the engine's blowing A LOT of smoke - something I'm unhappy with, but don't have the resources to fix.

If the pubic bus came here at decent hours, I'd do food shopping via it; I'd go to uni via it (even though it would take 3 times longer). But it doesn't, so I HAVE to run a car as long as I can.

About 10-15 (or more?) years ago the Bureau of Transport and Research Economics (I think that was their name), produced a study which said that making public transport free Australia wide would result in savings of $2 billion annually. Due to factors such as reduced accidents, reduced wear on road infrastructure, increased population fitness (more exercise), reduced pollution, no need for expensive ticketing systems, no need to pay for fare enforcement officers, etc.

I've since looked for the paper in the past but haven't had any success. I think it may be paper number 71 on this list from 1985 http://www.btre.gov.au/op_index.aspx but it's only available as hard copy, so don't count on it. There might be some other info on that site that's useful though.

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