Toowoomba Regional Council has implemented a Council Public Transport Levy
A new levy aimed at improving accessibility to public transport services across the Toowoomba Region has received strong backing from the highest levels of the Queensland State Government.
Toowoomba Regional Council’s (TRC) new Public Transport Levy, introduced with this week’s adoption of the 2024/25 Council Budget, has received praise from Queensland Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Bart Mellish.
This includes partnering with the State to deliver key elements of the TRC Sustainable Transport Strategy 2023which simply would not be able to be delivered in a business-as-usual approach.
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“TRC now has skin in the game when it comes to public transport and I look forward to continuing to work with the State Government to improve the approach to public transport services across the Toowoomba Region,” Mayor McDonald said.
Of course the State is happy. It’s somebody else raising taxes.
The State could and should collect a levy determined on a Statewide basis for any LGAs with public transport services. It can be done very easily through rates notices, same as the emergency services levy. No reason Bulloo or Pormpuraaw residents should be paying it but those in the bigger councils should, and it would be a good way of getting the ball rolling on some other parts of the State with no or only limited public transport but which should have it - Mt Isa, Emerald, Ayr / Home Hill, Oakey, Roma, Charters Towers, Mission Beach, Moranbah etc.
Toowoomba has adopted a scaled-down version of the BCC approach where LGA money funds bus operations within the LGA. This is expected to give an edge against the other 11 LGAs also asking for more PT funding in their LGA.
This is a new levy in 2024/25. It has been introduced taking into consideration community feedback over many years. It will give us greater leverage in advocating to the State Government on improvements that are much needed to our Region’s public transport network.
We can then multiply by Toowoomba’s $39.80 levy per property to see what revenue this could raise assuming no business revenue funding.
‘Before Leverage’ LGA PT Levy Revenue Estimate (assuming Toowoomba levy levels).
Toowoomba - $2.8 million
Ipswich - $3.9 million
Moreton Bay - $7.9 million
Logan - $5.8 million
Sunshine Coast - $5.7 million
Gold Coast - $10.39 million
Now this might seem modest, but as a contribution the LGA funding would be used to attract and leverage more Queensland Government funding.
‘After Leverage’ Estimate
Let’s set the contributions to a similar level to what BCC has, where 25% is BCC funding and the remaining 75% is State Government funding. The figures below are the estimated totals for LGA + QLD Government funding assuming a similar ratio as for what BCC has currently:
Toowoomba - $11.35 million p.a. => 2 High Frequency bus routes
Ipswich - $15.6 million p.a. => 3 High Frequency bus routes
Moreton Bay - $31.8 million p.a. => 6 High Frequency bus routes
Logan - $23.5 million p.a. => 4 High Frequency bus routes
Sunshine Coast - $22.84 million p.a. => 4 High Frequency bus routes
Gold Coast - $41.58 million p.a. => 8 High Frequency bus routes
(assuming $5 million p.a. High Frequency bus operating costs, and assuming these are new routes and not top-ups of an existing bus route)
Conclusion
Assumptions and limitations - this is only an exploratory model for the purposes of discussion, and which relies on assumptions about future Queensland Government policy.
However, if the larger LGAs within SEQ (a) raise a modest PT levy, (b) succeed in attracting Queensland Government funds on a similar subsidy ratio as to what BCC has, and (c) focus on only contributing to specific high-frequency, high patronage bus routes rather than diffuse low patronage coverage services / flexi link services, the impact of introducing these new services enabled by the levy and the Queensland Government funds attracted could be significant.
The differences in pay are one of many reasons why I think contracting out services leads to worse outcomes compared to if the state government simply owned and operated the entire system themselves. Could get some real economies of scale there and eliminate pay differences for staff. Or they could even pay a bonus to drivers willing to be based out of depots with a severe lack of them.
It may be better if the contracts were legitimately put to a competitive tender each time it goes up for renewal. There is little incentive for contractors to improve their driver availability (and in turn conditions) if they get the new contract regardless.
Bringing fleet ownership into TMR and simply leasing buses out to operators is a good step in the right direction when it comes to enabling competitive tenders.
I mean with the 400+ buses they’re building (currently leasing out to private operators and for rail replacement) I imagine this is the path we’re heading down, at least for non-BCC routes.
Owning the state fleet is a good first step, but I can see a future where TMR take over from Kinetic, Bus QLD and all the smaller operators. It would be a logistical nightmare in terms of workforce, rostering, etc but in the long term, probably a good outcome.
I’ve lost count of how many bus operators are operating in just SEQ alone, each with their own fleet, maintenance, rostering, workforce, network control, enforcement officers, etc. It seems so inefficient.
Having TMR take over the actual operation of bus services would be a major case of “nationalisation” (‘municipalisation’ I guess would be more accurate) of multiple private operators, as well as a transfer of a major department of BCC to state control.
I don’t think TMR would ever go that far - they might provide all the vehicles and possibly some depots for a service area (and maybe take over these type of assets from TfB at some point down the track), but I don’t think they would ever bring the operation of bus services completely in-house. They will continue to tender out the operation side of things, as they are doing now with the tender for the new services in Logan’s west.
To be fair that’s why I said non-BCC operators. I could see TMR relatively easily taking over bus routes outside BCC once the respective contracts expire, in a few years they will have a big enough fleet to do that.
BCC is really the biggest obstacle, they’re an absolute behemoth when it comes to bus services and they won’t give that up any time soon. The closest we’ll ever get to a single unified state bus network is probably BCC continuing routes in their LGA and TMR running everything else.
It would be interesting experiment at the very least to see how the translink network would run with just two bus operators. I definitely think when it comes to staffing the current model of a bunch of small companies running contracts is a bit a handicap.
Even if we exclude TfB from the equation, I still can’t see TMR taking on the day to day running of the wider SEQ bus network. That is still a significant nationalisation of private business, and a major extension above their current operating remit.
Honestly, I don’t know if we would want to see it - when Governments try to undertake business operations, they often end up being a less efficient and more costly operation due to the bureaucracy inherent in Government-controlled commercial operations.
It would almost certainly not happen under an LNP Government at any rate.
Wouldn’t this only serve to turn the individual service areas into their own little fiefdoms, in much the same way the BCC has gained effective control of PT services within their LGA?
Ipswich, Logan, Redlands and Gold Coast aren’t going to want to spend their own ratepayers’ money on operating transport routes running outside of their own LGAs, at a time when what we need is more services crossing the border between these LGAs.
It would be more of an issue if LGAs were responsible for 100% of operational funding, which is not being proposed here.
BCC has the most frequent service of all SEQ LGAs and that’s because they top up the funding ~ 25% to get premium service levels.
They can invest in new depots, driver pay, infrastructure, new buses and service innovation in ways that private operators on fixed value contracts simply cannot afford to.
BCC also didn’t ‘gain control’ as BCC always was the PT agency since they ran trams. Is was only in the 1970s and 1980s when passenger numbers dropped and state subsidies were required that State Government took a greater role.
You mention service between LGAs but right now there is a huge problem with bus service levels within LGAs. That is the much bigger problem to solve.
If we look at bus service between non-BCC LGAs such as Logan and Gold Coast or Logan and Redlands where the QLD Government has 100% control of service across LGA boundaries, is the bus service between LGAs any better?
The train network is what really carries passengers between LGAs. If the Qld Government wishes to improve PT between LGAs they could fix that.
Most frequent service does not automatically mean the best service. They may be making some improvements in recent times with the introduction of the Metro Routes moving the Busway a bit more towards a proper trunk and branch operation, and the associated New Bus Network changes on top of that. However, they still shoot rockets everywhere in peak, carry air on duplicated runs along certain corridors as noted ad nauseam over many, many years, and consciously avoid connecting to train stations.
If TfB started looking at ways to operate more cooperatively with rail rather than in competition, trim out some of their duplicated, air carrying routes and look at grounding some of their rockets, they may not need that level of funding top up, or Translink may be able to reallocate some more of their funding towards the other LGAs which are less able to afford top up transport funding (as an example, Logan Mayor Jon Raven has just announced that the Council’s operating surplus of $23 million has almost completely evaporated in the face of rising costs for providing council services. Council is expecting to fall into deficit in a month or two - I don’t see them adding any money into transport services when they are struggling to fund stuff their own responsibilities).
Not all LGAs are Brisbane City Council, and have the ability to finance new depots, new bus fleets, infrastructure, etc out of their own budgets. As we have seen with the tender for new Logan Bus Services, the State Government is chipping in the bus fleet and the depot for the services, meaning that these is no requirement for the private operator to do so. Public transport is part of the State Government’s remit, so their supplying the fleet and depots makes sense - dumping that responsibility onto LGAs does not.
I’m talking about in more recent, post-Translink times (2013), when BCC worked out that they had the clout to actively override the State Government - who has the responsibility for Public Transport provision across the state - and kill a wide ranging, network-wide bus review in favour of their own much narrower review that, IIRC, didn’t really produce much that was beneficial at all.
The bus service between LGAs isn’t adequate, but forcing Councils to operate their own bus services isn’t going to improve matters. Councils don’t want to provide funding derived from their local ratepayers, towards anything that is outside their boundaries. This is probably a large part of the reason TfB services only make minimal incursions across BCC borders.
As for the train network, it has a primary aim of transporting people into/out of Brisbane City specifically. It doesn’t facilitate direct transport between LGAs like Redlands and Logan, or Logan and Ipswich, without requiring you to go via the inner city. If I want to travel from my home out to Ipswich, Translink tells me that the best option to do so is a 2 hour journey via Central Station - this is a distance I can drive in 45 minutes. Trips like these show that we simply are not a truly interconnected region in terms of PT.
LGAs have a hand in every other mode of transport. Simply repeating that ‘PT is a state responsibility’ isn’t really a justification because it can always be amended not to be.
LGAs are State Government agencies and exercise State Government powers delegated to them. They exist to exercise State Government functions locally.
LGAs are starting to realise that leaving PT up to the state only will only get them the basic package of service and that their lobbying efforts for more service will be generally crowded out by the other competing 11 or so SEQ LGAs who are also vying for funding.
The current state of affairs is not optimal and I can see other LGAs follow Toowoomba LGA and start to provide operational bus funding.
I’m talking about best practice examples of public transport networks - there is more to having a true world class transport network than just throwing money to boost frequency across a network where major inefficiencies exist and overall connectivity is lacking.
And there is a big difference between LGAs providing transport funding above and beyond state infrastructure spending, and forcing LGAs to become the transport operators themselves. That was the crux of my argument - the status quo of contracting out bus operations to those in the business of running said operations in an efficient manner, is a better outcome than forcing it into the hands of Councils (if such a change was to take place, Councils would likely just contract it out themselves rather than attempt to run it in house, no different to council services like landscaping or rubbish collection, etc.)