Governing for Access

Abstract

The only reason to locate anywhere is to be near some people, places, and things (opportunities) and be far from others.

Access quantifies the ability to reach, or be reached by, people, places, and things. It explains much of the variation in real estate prices and development density. It does so in large part because real estate capitalises into land value the ease of travel to desired opportunities.

Physical infrastructure networks like roads and rails exist to connect within and between places faster than travel without them. Transport agencies often plan networks as if the land use is given, and regulators plan and zone development as if the network were unchangeable. Since the efficiency of a transport network depends on the land use pattern and the efficiency of the land use pattern depends on the network configuration, systems which coordinate these may be more efficient than those where transport and land use are planned independently.

This is especially pertinent for long-term capital investments which are largely irreversible. While compared to some peer cities, Sydney has done a good job coordinating transport services and land development, it can do much better. This would lead to shorter commutes lengths, greater public and active transport mode shares, higher employment and incomes, and greater productivity. Overall Sydney would be a more desirable and convenient city.

This is also important as better coordinating transport with land development while better balancing jobs and housing will thereby reduce motor vehicle travel. Reducing private vehicle travel will remain critical to addressing environmental problems such as CO2 emissions and air and water pollution, and increasing traveler safety.

Modern urban planning confronts the challenge of coordinating policies in transport investment, land use and development regulation, budgets and taxation, and capital spending so that they reinforce instead of undermine each other.1

Several inter-related problems with transport - land use planning processes in New South Wales are apparent:

1. Mobility-centric transport planning and density-centric land use planning. 2. The uncoordinated and disjointed nature of decision making, wherein transport and land use decisions made by different organisations assume the other is unchanged. 3. Lack of systematic feedback in the infrastructure/land development cycle, so the gains in land value from new transport facilities don’t generate revenue could have helped fund the infrastructure in the first place. 4. The political cycle reversing long-term strategic planning decisions. 5. Lack of institutional knowledge caused by lack of long-term stability in senior staff and organisational structure. 6. Lack of domain expertise within operating agencies leading to: • Very high costs (and unexpectedly high costs) for infrastructure, reducing the capacity for investment. • Under-utilisation (over-forecast of demand) of many major new infrastructure projects. 7. Lack of transparency and authentic public participation in decision processes.

This report contains several major parts.

The next part, The Value of Access to Opportunity (chapter 2) discusses the framework of the Fundamental Model of Access. Then chapter 3 of the report, Operationalising Access describes formally how access is measured.

This is followed be an examination of how Infill Stations Expand Access (chapter 4), including an example that illustrates how access might change between two public transport service scenarios when an infill station is added, and a sample of some potential sites for Infill Stations on the Sydney network are provided.

Access-Oriented Planning Globally: Case Studies (chapter 5), discusses how integrated transport and land use planning is conducted in several key metropolitan regions globally. It looks at the governance structures in the Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague) in the Netherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.

The subsequent section, Governing for Access in New South Wales: A Future Sydney Commission (chapter 6), describes how long-term strategic transport - land use planning might be conducted in Greater Sydney, with an aim to address several of those inter-related problems.

The final section (chapter 7) concludes the report, showing how the proposed strategy addresses the key problems identified above.