Liberals ask where the light rail beef is?

2604 said :

Bugle said :

I wish we had light rail. I catch the red rapid busses to work and they are often packed full. It can reach the point where it takes five minutes at some stops for people to get off and on. I can see why people drive. Light rail would pretty much end that.

We could add more buses for about 100th of the cost.

Firstly, busses cost around $500,000 each the trams cost about $5 million each, so that is about 10% But for that price you get something that had much more passenger capacity and can load passengers much more quickly.

Tracks cost money, but so do road works. It isn’t uncommon to spend a few tens if not hundreds of millions on roadworks.

Felix the Cat said :

Article on ABC website suggests it will cost around $200M just to move utilities along the route and it will cost around $7M per year to run. There are a few other interesting cost figures there too.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-25/canberra-light-rail-costs-mapped-out/4777632

I don’t get why they would be moving so many utilities. Can’t lay the tracks down the islands between Gungahlin and Civic? My understanding is that the utilities down the sides of the roads.

But they have budgeted $27 million for each station! Trams don’t need stations, they can use glorified bus shelters.

This is why we can’t have good things.Instead of spending money wisely, the government wastes money on unnecessarily over engineering certain parts of the infrastructure.

knuckles said :

beardedclam said :

farout said :

2604 said :

We could add more buses for about 100th of the cost.

yeah thats just what we need. More buses on the road in peak hour. Think bigger people, environment, well being, I am sure a vehicle set on a fixed track would be safer than having people in control of free moving buses on the road.

Sydney commenced building their rail network in 1855 with a population of approx. 40,000. Imagine if they had said cars are the way of the future and all we will ever need.

This isn’t just about us. It’s also about Canberra’s future residents.

If they said thar cars are all we need back in 1855 I would have been very impressed.

Just keep throwing up the houses in West Belconnen, they are so affordable they don’t need light rail.

I have a lot of trouble reconciling the idea of light rail in my head.

What I think we really need is medium rail, running not down Northborne, but between the town centres along routes which pass over/under the main road without effecting their traffic. Then we also need stops in between the town centres with big arse car parks so people can genuinely park and ride if they can’t get a reasonable bus from their house to a town centre.

The only part of my plan to seems to be hard would be somehow putting a spur line which goes past the city centre – but running along parks way should be possible, and it could go past the airport then too.

Or maybe a loop arrangement?

beardedclam said :

farout said :

2604 said :

We could add more buses for about 100th of the cost.

yeah thats just what we need. More buses on the road in peak hour. Think bigger people, environment, well being, I am sure a vehicle set on a fixed track would be safer than having people in control of free moving buses on the road.

Sydney commenced building their rail network in 1855 with a population of approx. 40,000. Imagine if they had said cars are the way of the future and all we will ever need.

This isn’t just about us. It’s also about Canberra’s future residents.

Article on ABC website suggests it will cost around $200M just to move utilities along the route and it will cost around $7M per year to run. There are a few other interesting cost figures there too.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-25/canberra-light-rail-costs-mapped-out/4777632

farout said :

2604 said :

We could add more buses for about 100th of the cost.

More buses during peak hour and smaller mini-buses or vans during off-peak, is what I say.
In the afternoons or late evenings, the buses running past my house are almost empty. Surely with all the data Action is gathering from its MyWay system, it can work out which routes / times only need a mini-bus or van, and which peak hour services need more buses thrown on.

yeah thats just what we need. More buses on the road in peak hour. Think bigger people, environment, well being, I am sure a vehicle set on a fixed track would be safer than having people in control of free moving buses on the road.

Has no one considered running a skywhale shuttle down Northbourne?

2604 said :

We could add more buses for about 100th of the cost.

More buses during peak hour and smaller mini-buses or vans during off-peak, is what I say.
In the afternoons or late evenings, the buses running past my house are almost empty. Surely with all the data Action is gathering from its MyWay system, it can work out which routes / times only need a mini-bus or van, and which peak hour services need more buses thrown on.

2604 said :

Bugle said :

I wish we had light rail. I catch the red rapid busses to work and they are often packed full. It can reach the point where it takes five minutes at some stops for people to get off and on. I can see why people drive. Light rail would pretty much end that.

We could add more buses for about 100th of the cost.

If there was another bus right behind the one taking 5 minutes to load, unless you are one of the lucky ones getting on the first bus, you still have to wait for the second or third bus, so it wouldn’t be a great deal quicker. Then when you get to the end stop, the first bus is holding up the ones behind, unless the platforms are made longer.
No light rail, how about a subway, or skytrain to match the skywhale’s “out there” philosophy?