Toot! Toot! Simon seeking light rail experts

We’ll all be rooned

This will be a terrible waste of money. No quicker than a bus with dedicated lanes down Northbourne Ave, but the latter a fraction of the cost. Remember, the tram will have to stop at all the traffic lights, just like a bus. So no quicker, so why will it suddenly generate passenger numbers? It will be a financial disaster.
Sat next to a Labor MLA recently. This MLA stated that the reason it would make money is because it would promote land development (i.e., get rid of EPIC and the Racecourse) and allow the Gov’t to make money to more than recoup the cost. WTF? This is not 19th Century railroads opening up the interior of the USA or Australia. Also, apparently people hate ACTION – something about the TWA. So,because the Gov’t cannot or will not tackle the problems with ACTION, the solution is to build a tramway??? And which union do they think will represent the tram drivers???!!!
I was hoping that this exploratory phase was a sop to Minister Rattenbury, to get him to give the Gov’t the numbers, then after a suitable time and investment of a small sum of money, tell him – whoops, sorry, mate, it won’t work. Just like Labor’s plan in opposition to reroute the GDE through Bruce instead of O’Connor Ridge. But this conversation makes me think the Labor Gov’t is serious.
This is just such a stupid and ill-thought out scheme. As a Labor voter, I will join any protest group to challenge and hopefully overturn this madness.

IrishPete said :

But I do think they’ve chosen the wrong route. Airport to Civic and Parliamentary Triangle (a loop would be obvious). Guaranteed high level of patronage across a broad range of days and times of day. Add on branches to the suburbs later. Public transport is always going to struggle to get people to use it, who need to drop kids at school or child care, or want to shop or do anything else (gym, pool, sports) on the way home.

IP

This.

I don’t even care if it’s a bus or a tram. It just needs to be reliable and professional, otherwise we will continue to reject it. I took the bus to work for ages before finally the boss couldn’t stand having the entire team 30minutes late on days the bus broke or didn’t come. So we drove and a couple of the girls started carpooling. There are also some easy hops that just can’t be done on a bus like a zoom around the inner South which used to be my commute from job a to job b or the trip home if you are out past midnight or 7pm on a sunday. Until they find a way to make transport user friendly it won’t matter what technology they use.

Ben_Dover said :

We don’t want it Simon, can you not get that through your thick head? We’ve enough white elephants thanks.

I want it. Admittedly I don’t live in Canberra, but I do work there, so I kinda pay taxes (payroll tax, GST etc).

But I do think they’ve chosen the wrong route. Airport to Civic and Parliamentary Triangle (a loop would be obvious). Guaranteed high level of patronage across a broad range of days and times of day. Add on branches to the suburbs later. Public transport is always going to struggle to get people to use it, who need to drop kids at school or child care, or want to shop or do anything else (gym, pool, sports) on the way home.

IP

Perth’s light rail train also looks bigger than the A.C.T.’s. Artist impression of an A.C.T. train is much smaller than this

http://max.wa.gov.au/documents/MAX_align_Impression_HayStreet_Mall.jpg

This is going to be a massive fail.
Perth light rail is 22km and costing $432 million over four years.
Canberra light rail 12km $614 million god only knows how long, probably 4 years

“Stations will be spaced approximately 750m-1.5 km apart”

I’m not a expert from what I know of trains they don’t accelerate very fast and take forever to stop.
if we are lucky the train should get up to 40 kph for at least 100m on the longest section between stations before having to start slowing down again.

This is a 2004 study on the SA O’bahn system by the Brits. An interesting report.
Have never used it myself. Only seen it when flying in. I guess Mr Corbell would have canned this study and others on O’bahn in lieu of light rail.

http://www.persona.uk.com/ashton/Core_docs/New/D75.pdf

maxblues said :

It is not used in any tunnels in South Australia.

Which is exactly why it’s a waste of money for Adelaide. The O-Bahn could have easily been built as a two lane road and achieved the same result with the additional benefit of not having to buy buses designed to run the O-Bahn track.

Billion dollar construction project being done through crowdsourcing.

Maybe they get some Braddon hipsters helping out.