This is a thread on transport funding to express ideas and highlight recent proposals, projects and models.
I know transport is a state responsibility but if you look at the federal government funds, we arent getting our fair share. Most federal funding is pouring into other states including Sydneys new metro and Airport, Perths Metronet program and the gov is clearly happy to give the victorians even more for their suburban rail loop east. Yet why has Queensland always had to fight and stand our ground to the federal government for funding. crucial projects like Sunshine Coast Rail, or Bruce Highway safety program etc dont get enough attention. And even worse, North Queensland gets virtually nothing in terms of infrastructure. Does this have to do with uncertainty regarding developments up here or is it simply because council/state gov are the blue team and the federal gov are the red team?.
By all accounts I have read, QLD is very poor at business case development. It tracks given how many half baked projects we end up with.
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Other states seem to do a better job with their project submissions to IA. Qld does get part federal funding for many projects. e.g B2N stage 1, LGCFR, GC Light Rail Stage 3, the Wave stage 1. Big investment for the Bruce Highway safety program feds are putting in $7.2billion. The sore point for me is no federal funding for Cross River Rail, basically the states fault though. They had a chance to resubmit the business case around 2017 to IA, but decided to go it alone.
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Submitting business cases to the Independent agency Infrastructure Australia with BCR values of below 0.5 (ideal >1), negative NPV indicators, having a track record of project costs being 2x greater than when initially announced, all works against major infrastructure project funding.
If you look at the business cases coming out of the WA PTA, they are solid, even under the more stringent 7% discount rate. And they are open about 15 min service all day from day 1.
In contrast, if you ask how many minutes say LGFR will save, you will get an ambiguous, deflecting non-answer. Itās fair to say the time saving will be <5 min. There is a lack of openness, and this can only increase risk it would seem.
The other thing is that projects that require Priority A ROW have gone up in cost per km massively. The length of track or busway you get from $1b is not much.
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Our projects are poorly managed and both the unions and the construction companies are charging prices through the roof here. And then thereās the whole āremember this is Queenslandā thing going on.
We may win the state of origin. We may of won both the NRL and AFL last year. But we donāt win in terms of business cases and transit planning. I think the reason infrastructure Australia are holding off is clearly due to the lack of certainty regarding our projects. And I donāt blame them frankly for that. I think we should seriously consider putting the blame on the state government.
Federally funded projects usually need at least matched funds from the state governments. Our state government/s have a poor appetite for PT spending, therefore thereās the feds have nothing to match.
I think thatās a poor argument, considering the cost of CRR.
A starting point [at least in terms of SEQ], away from any political colours, would be to establish and fully resource a proper transit authorityā¦getting that āin houseā requirement DONE is the start of better PT outcomes!
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You mean like something like Metronet or big build
You have to remember that WA is wealthy and benefited from the GST re-structuring thatās being reviewed again by the Productivity Commission. They also do not have as many large remote populations as Qld has. Yes they have remote communities, but not the numbers you have in Qld (and we have some of the poorest remote communities in Australia).
This is not a dig at WA, just a point that Australia has an extremely bad vertical fiscal imbalance that has been compounded by the horrible GST formula changes of the last Federal Government. Thereās a raft of reform across the three tiers thatās required.
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Agreed, it starts with good governance and having a one stop shop agency instead of three.
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If Queensland has some of the poorest people in the country, then care to explain why we are the most expensive state for real estate. Yes, if you subtract the cluster around Greater Sydney and the NSW Central Coast, we are the most expensive state for real estate.
Probably because we have very high internal migration, including to regional areas, having poorer people doesnāt mean that real estate is necessarily cheaper, and with how things are going now Perth is probably going to experience similar things soon in regards to real estate.
The state may have some of the most expensive housing in the country (driven by a lack of dense housing around transit, among other things) but the remote communities weāre talking about donāt. Queensland has a truly monstrous number of tiny, remote townships scattered throughout the state in various states of either stagnation, decay, or outright collapse. Donāt get me wrong, some are doing well but a huge number are not.
The industries out there are mostly agrarian or mining and, as much as I do love that landscape, the land is largely dry and desolate. Itās exceedingly hard to attract people to move there - Julia Creek was offering half a million a year + a free house for a GP and it didnāt work, and a house is only worth money if you have someone to sell it to. A lot of the wealth people in these communities do have is tied up in their homes and properties, which means that even if theyāre worth a decent amount on paper their day to day experience is pretty close to poverty.
Idk all I know with real estate is if a young person like myself wants any chance owning a home, I may have to pack up my whole life here and flee the country or at the very least, leave Brisbane
Numbers/areas of low socio-economic residents does not equal the provision of inexpensive housing.
If anything, the increasing cost of housing in many areas is one of the things that is leading to the worsening socio economic standing of many families.
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WA IS Perth and perth IS WA! Something like approx 85% of the stateās entire population lives in the Greater Perth area!
All a WA state govt has to do to retain power at an election, is look after the people in that region. If youāre living outside the Greater Perth area, youāre literally an after-thought!
Basically my idea is the bit in orange (Gabba Traffic Area), bit in yellow (Lang Park Traffic anrea) and bit in Blue (Brisbane City Traffic Area) would be tolled/congestion pricing. For the Gabba and lang park area it would be weekday peak only as well as during major events, whilst for Brisbane area proper it would be a full weekday congestion toll and will also apply on late Friday and late Saturday nights for the valley area. Both will be untolled on weekends and public holidays. Also local traffic could have some exemptions. Also think some streets like Adelaide street should be bus only during peak hour unless your actually got to park up there. Problem with this though is how do you enforce. Ultimately the council would be getting most the revenue from this.
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It wonāt happen, politicians are sh*t scared of annoying drivers. But if it did, I think the best opportunity would be on a smaller scale, like a congestion charge for entering or leaving the CBD during peak hours, and then perhaps increasing the size of the zone in future.