NSW Government: Urban Transport Statement: Some Comments

Abstract

This paper, a sequel to Stone (2006), comments on recent New South Wales Premiers Department’s papers on transport policy matters in New South Wales. It focuses on the Urban Transport Statement, which is set in the context of State Plan: A New Direction for NSW, State Infrastructure Strategy, and Sydney Metropolitan Strategy March 2006 – City of Cities, which were all published in 2006. The comments highlight the continuing use of a number of distortions in language and concepts plus some notable absences such as the discussion of congestion pricing and planning for freight that limit the State’s prospects for optimizing Sydney’s transport service. Among the distortions are the continued separate discussion of demand for road and rail as if they are not related, and also the lack of appreciation of how demand expresses itself as firstly a demand for accessibility and secondly as trips. The continued use of demand forecasts without explicit recognition of the constraints on land availability, especially in the CBD is noted. The shift from project orientation to products and corridors is applauded. However this paper makes a plea to move the discussion to the supply of network service that meets the demand for accessibility. But the absence of explicit discussion of both congestion pricing and the urban freight challenge is a major omission given the ambition to set the scene for urban transport with the Statement. The discussions about a Metro draw comment for what is not said about the existing rail system, and the governance arrangements for coordination planning and operations draws comment for the continuation of an apparent ambition to spread responsibility as broadly as possible.