Professor William Mitchell – Director MIT Design Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Wants to “democratize” public transport. Judging by later comments I think he was getting at “transport equality”, where everyone, everywhere should have equal access to public transport.

Focus on urban personal mobility. In this case, mainly battery-electric ultralight foldable vehicles (2 seats), although other light vehicles (eg scooters, pushbikes) also figured in his vision. The vehicles were about the length of a Smart car (2.7m) while driving and half that folded for storage.

Banks of vehicles, basically the same as the successful Velib bicycle system in Paris, which for those unfamiliar operates by having racks of bikes around 4-500m apart around Paris. You pay (free for 20 min, then sliding scale) and borrow the bike, credit card used as security. You drop off at another Velib bike rack close to your destination and pay (electronically) any applicable charges. In the ultralight vehicle instance, the vehicle bay also serves as a charging station (inductive charging). They’d probably operate much like the current “car-share” schemes but look like they’d really only carry passengers (no golf clubs, bulky goods).

Proposed fix to the “last kilometre” problem, ie work in conjunction with existing public transport infrastructure. However, Mitchell also proposed these vehicles work in the outer suburbs more like a “last 5 kilometre” solution, operating as feeder services to train stations and the like. My take is that the inner-city scenario, with many cross-town, random direction trips would keep the vehicles evenly distributed, but that in the outer suburbs you essentially end up with a “park and ride” situation in which the vehicles only get used twice to get to/from the station to the charging bay nearest your house/estate, and that feeder buses (minibuses?) might be a better solution.

Suggested that the batteries could be used to store intermittent energy (ie renewables) and sell back to the grid when required. However, he had previously indicated that the batteries on these ultralights were small in view of their intended usage to save weight and in light of this, depleting the batteries to balance the grid might detract from their primary function – I’d probably call this one “greenwash” right now.

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Professor Rob Adams – Director, Design & Urban Environment, City of Melbourne

Adams indicated 80-90% of the infrastructure required by 2020 is already in place, such that we shouldn’t be expecting to build ourselves out of congestion/transport problems.

Suggested that viable PT requires a minimum density of 100-150 persons per hectare (pph), and cited Barcelona as a good example. Barcelona has around 7 storeys in built areas, but 40% open space and a density of 200 pph. This to me contrasts with Moreland in Melbourne, which is increasing substantially in density but has one of the lowest parkland/open space levels in the city, which will have long-term consequences for liveability.

Adams cites early planning failures for our “sprawl” but contends that growth along major transport corridors can help preserve the suburban block (which would be “green” – water tanks, solar panels etc). This would mean around 10% of the city would become high density (4-8 storeys) and the other 90% (current suburbia) let alone. This approach would permit an additional 2 million residents without any further subdivision (by which I think he meant land release…?)

High density housing proposed not just on train lines (as Melb 2030) but also tram and bus routes (eg Johnston St, especially east end). Indicated the investment had been made in the transport infrastructure and suboptimal outcomes were being achieved where they ran next to low density zones. He provided examples (the “wild west” – single dwellings on garden blocks) on tram lines within view of the city (eg 96 terminus, Route 70 Riversdale Rd east, etc). In my view it’s not surprising some of these are low density, as the time to CBD (assuming that remains the primary destination) is much the same as a train line more than twice the distance (these tram routes also have less opportunity than some for heavy rail interchange, meaning more one-seat trips and less passenger “recycling”).

Provided Curitiba as an example of what he would like to see – dedicated bus lanes, bus/tram combinations (ie extend buses past tram termini, but have them run on the tram route once they encountered it, alternating with the tram service. Wanted more buses pronto, thought heavy rail had too long a lead time to be useful right away.

Wanted no “big ticket” PT items – things you could take a photo from 4km away. Preferred distributed improvement.

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Dr Jago Dodson – Senior Research Fellow, Urban Research Program, Griffith University, Brisbane

Approached transport/ planning from the energy (read: petroleum) security perspective. Used VIPER (Vulnerability Index for Petrol Expense Rise) and VAMPIRE (Vulnerability Assessment for Mortgage,Petrol and Inflation Risks and Expenditure) assessments to gauge geographical vulnerability to fuel price rises.

High vulnerability in both cases were essentially areas with poor PT, low socio-economic status, and outer metropolitan / growth areas. Low risk were the inverse – old “rail” suburbs, inner Melbourne, PT-rich areas.

The high-risk areas were also indicated (through budgetary and planning constraints) as having the least capacity to switch to non-car modes of transport (ie walking, cycling, PT).

Dodson described the current urban structure as regressive and socially inequitable. Most 2030 “nodes” are planned for the inner PT rich suburbs, already low-risk on the VAMPIRE index. Asked the question of what to do in the outer suburbs, which are essentially being let be rather than integrating into a non-radial network of PT (many linked nodes – “network effect“).

He also noted that any gains from increased PT ridership/mode switch from cars through higher density housing could easily be offset by efficiency losses in that housing mode – current high density housing is built to very low standards (3 star, maybe 4 star efficient) and no legislative requirement exists to do any better (despite negligible cost difference to 7 stars).

Dodson suggested improved PT network planning could solve many urban transport problems but currently the focus is too much on infrastructure (built out of the problem) rather than planning.

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Professor Nicholas Low – Director, Australasian Centre for Governance and Management of Urban Transport, University of Melbourne.

He reviewed the proposed Brumby Transport Plan (ostensibly leaked) indicating a South Morang rail extension, 100 new buses, DART upgrade, Melbourne Central loop changes as proposed by Mees, Tarneit line, increase in Smart buses, and (medium term) Melton electrification.

He then contrasted these incremental improvements to the road projects expected to be announced – Frankston Bypass, Eddington road tunnel, Ring Road “Missing Link” via Heidelberg/Banyule Flats.

He quoted David Metz, a former UK transport planner who presided over massive roadbuilding during his tenure but now believes roads are not the answer. Bottleneck removal (used to justify most road building) can simply move the bottleneck somewhere else, and Metz believes bottlenecks in fact can play in important role in regulating congestion, and sometimes moving it can make things worse.

Australian data indicates despite massive road projects in the period 1991-2006, typical commute times have rises slightly for men (71 to 74 mins) and substantially for women (54 to 74 mins). $29bn of federal funds (our money!) was spent under the Auslink roads program under Howard, without any going to PT projects.

He believed greater Melbourne should have a Mayor – a metropolitan group that covered Melbourne proper, not just the limited Melbourne Council or State Govt (which presumably sees Melbourne as individual electorates rather than a cohesive whole). He talked about the utility of the political process – we elect Governments, not policy, and if the alternative Govt has the same policy we have no choice.

Since a dollar spent can’t be spent again he also orated on the need for proper consultation with the community on where it would like the money spent (ie on roads vs PT or whatever – a large road could provide a lot of supported childcare, for instance).

Low also discussed the costs of 2^nd/3^rd car ownership vs yearly PT - $6,400 (small car) to $16,000 p.a. (SUV) versus $1722.00 (Zone 1 and 2, 10% cheaper through PTUA!). He asked if the $6bn car industry assistance package would instead be better spent on more PT, giving people a choice between the more expensive car or cheaper PT ticket. However, Low did not discuss the ongoing cost of subsidy to PT required for this but clearly this begins to fall in the “PT as welfare” realm.

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Cath Smith - CEO, Victorian Council of Social Service, Melbourne

Indicated VCOSS is interested in the 15% of the population who don’t drive at all, and for whom roads can be considered mostly useless. Also costs of travel and “locationally disadvantaged drivers” (e.g. high-risk VAMPIRES).

Considered PT as an “essential service” along the lines of hospitals and schools. Claimed the current DDA compliance pace was “glacial”. While able-bodied myself I have seen a lot of improvement in this area and wonder if Smith is making ambit claims here.

She expressed a wish for improved co-ordination of door-to-door / community based transport (I assume mainly minibuses). I think she was getting towards the fact at the moment most of these are council or community group run and there is no overarching control to extract maximum efficiency from these operations (nor provide funding to do so). She also discussed the anomaly of school buses bypassing TAFE students, and although I can think of some reasons this occurs discriminatory PT does seem a contradiction in terms.

Advocates 7 day / ½ hourly bus services with emphasis on connections (trains), and mentions that many bus routes follow historical paths with little regard for current traffic movements, reducing their utility. Mentions as Peter Parker noticed recently that NightRiders now run more frequently than day buses in some locations.

Smith tried talking about speed vs modal connections, and again I think she was getting toward true end-to-end journey time here. With a ½ hourly bus service I’m not sure this is going to happen though…

With regard to climate change, she indicated that only 1.3% of carbon reduction is anticipated to come from modal shift (car to PT) and that this is going to need to be much higher for a decent emissions reduction.

Smith also believes that the current housing affordability debate should become an “affordable living” debate in which housing and transport costs are taken into consideration. In this context urban planning providing employment opportunities close to housing for a reduced commute is required.

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Respondents:

Robin Batterham (former Chief Scientist)

Believed common elements of the talks to be to provide mobility on demand in an equitable way, with emissions reduction.

Increase in population density required, increase spending on network to “fill gaps”.

Traditional PT is not the only way to provide mobility on demand. One of the other speakers earlier discussed Malcom Turnbull, who pushed legslative change that permitted him to use taxis and PT instead of a Govt car (19k p.a.).

Batterham mentioned we don’t just move people but also goods, but that more efficient people-moving usually leads to better goods movement. Wanted an increase in bike tracks.

Believed cars have their place but noted that Australia’s average fuel performance is the equal worst in the world; Europe’s is half ours. He noted legislative change could quickly remedy that.

David Eddershank (Kensington resident)

I’ve only a few notes from this one but noted that Eddershank discussed that when left to itself the private market does not necessarily deliver what’s best for livability or efficient use of space/resources. Highlighted the dichotomy of “Cranbourne Man” (apparently an ALP construct) whose #1 issue is roads (Cranbourne woman’s is services, but that doesn’t seem to rate) versus the inner-city “chattering classes” desire for more PT.

I’ve noticed that Peter Parker has posted a similar summary over at his blog while I’ve been writing this that covers the questions well so direct you there for them (although I’ve included some of their question responses into the speaker summary). Also Peter might have a few points I’ve missed and vice versa.

Dave

One tendency amongst Australian urban rail systems is to run an infrequent daytime service using high-capacity rollingstock, as opposed to overseas examples and even Perth’s example of running a more frequent service using shorter trains (see the 7.5min offpeak service from Whitfords to Cockburn).

The suburban rail networks in Melbourne and Brisbane operate six-carriage trains on all daytime services with only a few exceptions.

Sydney’s CityRail now operates eight or six carriage DD stock on all suburban services, with the exception of a few shuttle runs. The policy of operating four-car evening services was scrapped in 2005, citing the operational inconvenience of needing to split trains after the evening peak, and needing to re-join them for the next morning.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with a railway operating well-loaded long trains, but there are some instances where poorly-loaded six or eight carriage sets operate at infrequent intervals during off-peak periods.

Arguments for running services more frequently with less capacity per service would be:

• Public transport demand is supply led and not fixed. If you run a bus every hour and it carries an average of six people, boosting it to 10 minutely will not mean that each bus carrys an average of 1 person, but that more people will decide to use the service as the offering is vastly better.
• Higher patronage will be attained by operating a turn-up-and-go frequency using smaller vehicles than something with the capacity for 2000 pax every 30 mins.
• Running a frequent service at all times avoids the gradient effect.

Arguments against it include:

• If longer trains are still required at busier times, dividing and re-coupling trains is an operational inconvenience, and requires two crew members to perform taking a few minutes. (only applies to trains)
• If higher capacity vehicles are still required for peak services, you cannot maintain two fleets of buses or trams for each time of day.
• You only need one driver to run a six carriage train every 20 minutes, but you need twice the number of drivers to crew a three carriage train every 10 minutes, and they still only carry the same number of people.
• In locations where track capacity is an issue, it may not be feasible to run trains more frequently, hence you need to run longer trains but at less frequent intervals to carry the pax.

I’d say that the positives outweigh the negatives. On railways that presently operate trains with both a driver and guard, such as QR Citytrain or CityRail, the crewing costs of running twice as often would not be any higher than present costs if driver only operation was utilised (one very controversial topic).

Where you have less-frequent but well loaded six or eight carriage trains, I wouldn’t suggest running trains with half the capacity twice as often as you will only be providing enough capacity to carry existing patronage with little extra room for extra users. This would be most appropriate for scenarios where existing capacity and infrastructure is underutilised.

Potential usages

A perfect example for where this may be appropriate might be the Upfield Line in Melbourne. Weekday off-peak trains were boosted from three to six carriages earlier this year, but the frequency is still 20 minutely and there would still be empty seats on most trips with only 3 cars. It would not require
any extra rollingstock to boost the frequency to 10 minutely if services reverted to three carriages, but would require twice the number of drivers and twice the number of train paths (requiring every second train to terminate at Gowrie due to the single track).

Peak hour services on that line are regularly overcrowded, not surprising given the 20 minute intervals between services. I don’t know if enough inner city paths would be available to run a 10 minute service in peak hours (possible if other lines were taken out of the stupid loop), and running a non turn-up-and-go peak service would be ridiculous, even if the capacity provided is still the same.

Another example could be the Richmond Branch in Western Sydney. The average Saturday passenger flow between Marayong and Blacktown in either direction is 2,000 per day, and all services are operated using eight-carriage double deck sets with a crush capacity of almost 2000 people, running every 30 mins all day, so it should be evident that these services carry plenty of fresh air.

Although most of the line is single track, double track has been extended to Quakers Hill, which along with Marayong makes up for 40% of the line’s patronage. If this line were to run either as a shuttle or through to the Cumberland Line as opposed to forming services through to the CBD, there would be no excuse for not running twice the frequency at least to Quakers using shorter trains and DOO.

My final potential example would be the Cranbourne Line in Melbourne. This line presently receives a 30 minute daytime service of trains from the Melbourne CBD that are always operated as six carriages, which is overkill for the patronage on this branch. Although the single track would still be a bottleneck, twice the frequency could be provided with no extra rollingstock if it were operated as a 3-car shuttle from Dandenong.

Of course, some of these proposals are reliant on passengers not being hostile to changing vehicles during their trip. Melbourne passengers in particular seem hostile to change and expect a direct service from each CBD station to every pocket of sprawl, while passengers in Sydney do not consider it an issue to need to change at Central to get from Circular Quay to Parramatta, or to change at Strathfield if they want to get from Ashfield to Blacktown.

Final thoughts

I will conclude this with saying that it is generally wasteful to have high-capacity rollingstock continuing onto some branch line in the sticks in order to provide capacity further in. Any thoughts?