Do you think your $321 a year to pay for ACTION is worth it?

I don’t object to paying an extraordinary $321, which I digress is an extraordinary amount given that not all adults contribute to tax. What I do object is contributing 40 cents per year, my rough calculation, to nitwit Coe’s salary.

No doubt he will save the Territory a huge amount of money if Lib’s get in power. How would he survive, he’d have nothing to fault

You know, Gungahlin Al, light rail needn’t be all that expensive – Venice recently installed a system, using French-built trams, for roughly 9 million Euros per kilometre – which translates to about $12 million Australian dollars – most main road construction in Canberra costs at least $10 million per kilometre – Parkway is way more than that and nobody has ever built a parkway that can carry the kind of people numbers of light rail – so it’s actually not unreasonably expensive – if someone can scrape up the starter capital and the nerve to do it.
Given that all the evidence from every city in the world is that, beyond a basic minimum level, building bigger roads solves congestion problems for about six months at most, then th eincreased usage cancels the benefit and you’re stuck on an upward spiral – so it certainly IS a good thing to sink serious money into public transport.
And it’s worth checking out RMIT transport researcher Paul Mees’s work – he argues with quite strong evidence that you actually CAN run really good public transport in lower density cities like Canberra – the Swiss manage it – you just have to be very well-organised and careful in the way you plan and run the system, so that you maximise network linkages to make it convenient to use and therefore competitive with private cars. And the LAST thing you do is sell it off or split it up, as they so diastrously did in Melbourne under Kennett!

frontrow said :

Can somebody tell me the difference between an extraordinary $321 and an ordinary $321?

If you find $321 in the gutter it’s extraordinary but if you are the loser of $321, it’s pretty ordinary….

basketcase said :

It would be better to hand Action over entirely to Deans (sic) at no charge. We would all be $321 a year better off so it would be a good investment strategy.

Good idea. Because privatising Public Transport has worked so well everywhere else it has been tried!

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/private-operators-raid-public-transport-purse-20100923-15otb.html

Erg0 said :

frontrow said :

Can somebody tell me the difference between an extraordinary $321 and an ordinary $321?

Political affiliation.

ex·traor·di·nar·y/ik?strôrdn?er?/Adjective
1. Very unusual or remarkable.
2. Unusually great

Seems pretty straight forward

frontrow said :

Can somebody tell me the difference between an extraordinary $321 and an ordinary $321?

Political affiliation.

Genie said :

verbalkint said :

I think $321 is eminently reasonable, given the size of the budget and the necessarily inefficient layout of Canberra (for public transportation purposes).

I use ACTION every day and the services are on time, clean and efficient 98% of the time. I saw last year that action has a 90% approval rating (or perhaps even higher) for those that actual use the service but a very low approval rating for those people who don’t use it.

Seems to me like people that don’t use the busses dislike the service on principle because it makes them feel better about driving their cars every day…

Do you catch buses in peak time !? I dont think my buses are ever on time.
Yesterday the 5pm bus didn’t arrive until almost 5.10, which meant everyone waiting for the 5.15 bus also got on thinking the next bus was early. No standing room on a long bus is usually a sign the bus is late.

And this morning my bus was roughly 5 mins early… at almost every stop after mine I watched people running to try and catch the bus.

As for clean most def never clean in the evenings… they are usually quite gross and disgusting.

Everybody definately has a different experience. I dont expect any bus in the middle of its run to be exactly on time. Up to 5 minutes either side of the designated time is reasonable as far as I am concerned as I always organise myself to be ready at least 5-10 minutes prior to getting on the bus. I guess my expectations are less.

As far as cleanliness is concerned, a bus that has been on the road all day from 5:30 in the morning doing say a 3 series run from one end of town to another would probably see close to one thousand passengers per day (correct me if I am wrong given they seat 56 & stand 15 at any given time but they tend to squeeze more on than that), it could be forgiven if its a little dirty/messy. In the 7 years I have been travelling at peak times I cant say I have actually ever been on a bus that I can say was filthy enough to disgust me.

They are certainly cleaner than any Melbourne tram or train I have been on.

Genie said :

No standing room on a long bus is usually a sign the bus is late.[/QUOTE]
So basically its because people take ages to buy a ticket. MyWay (or whatever its name) should fix it.

Genie said :

And this morning my bus was roughly 5 mins early… at almost every stop after mine I watched people running to try and catch the bus.

i will admit that’s frustrating.

verbalkint said :

I think $321 is eminently reasonable, given the size of the budget and the necessarily inefficient layout of Canberra (for public transportation purposes).

I use ACTION every day and the services are on time, clean and efficient 98% of the time. I saw last year that action has a 90% approval rating (or perhaps even higher) for those that actual use the service but a very low approval rating for those people who don’t use it.

Seems to me like people that don’t use the busses dislike the service on principle because it makes them feel better about driving their cars every day…

Do you catch buses in peak time !? I dont think my buses are ever on time.
Yesterday the 5pm bus didn’t arrive until almost 5.10, which meant everyone waiting for the 5.15 bus also got on thinking the next bus was early. No standing room on a long bus is usually a sign the bus is late.

And this morning my bus was roughly 5 mins early… at almost every stop after mine I watched people running to try and catch the bus.

As for clean most def never clean in the evenings… they are usually quite gross and disgusting.

Can somebody tell me the difference between an extraordinary $321 and an ordinary $321?

Gungahlin Al said :

Because expenditure on public transport should not be looked at in isolation – it should be considered as part of the holistic transport solution. Money spent on PT is actually an investment in reducing road construction and maintenance costs.

Thank goodness for the holistic approach to problems, guarantees that they will never be solved!

It would be better to hand Action over entirely to Deans at no charge. We would all be $321 a year better off so it would be a good investment strategy.

I suspect that for every driver, there is at least one supevisor, two mechanics and three bureaucrats. It is just a big jobs for the boys organization.

Shut it down, cut the losses and let the forces of market capitalism sort it out.

Ian said :

I accept that a public transport service will normally require some level of taxpayer support. What I object to is it costing $321 when it could and should be (for arguments sake) $150 if it were actually run efficiently.

If you think it’s run inefficiently, what do you think could be improved?

Also I’m not sure you’ve correctly used the figure of speech “for argument’s sake”…

The elephant in the room is clearly the industrial relations side of ACTION, or is that poking the Bear right in the eye.

On a positive note we should privatise all the major trunk routes then quietly take the blowtorch to the myriad of empty busses that circulate through our subarbs at night. This could perhaps be accompanied by some sort of compensation for the genuienely disadvantaged.

Poor politics and even poorer economics.
Sure the ACTION service has gaping holes all through it.
But to fix these holes (or replace parts of them with a better more appropriate solution like rail) would actually cost more.
And that would be a good thing, not a bad thing.

Because expenditure on public transport should not be looked at in isolation – it should be considered as part of the holistic transport solution. Money spent on PT is actually an investment in reducing road construction and maintenance costs.

Anyone can home in on any single piece of the budget and pick it to shreds with pointless “it costs each of us” exercises. Someone more interested in solutions than politicking will look at the entire picture and see if that is delivering.

And I don’t see evidence of this from either ALP or Liberals in the ACT.

Kids say the darnedest things.

rescuedg said :

I would like to see how that cost per capita is determined. These figures are usually nonsense. I think I would be very happy if I was actually paying that much per year for the bus service as I would probably have had to have a very very big pay rise.

I suspect it’s just total cost divided by total (adult) population.

I think $321 is eminently reasonable, given the size of the budget and the necessarily inefficient layout of Canberra (for public transportation purposes).

I use ACTION every day and the services are on time, clean and efficient 98% of the time. I saw last year that action has a 90% approval rating (or perhaps even higher) for those that actual use the service but a very low approval rating for those people who don’t use it.

Seems to me like people that don’t use the busses dislike the service on principle because it makes them feel better about driving their cars every day…

Hit everyones rates by a few extra bucks, and make the buses free. Then we won’t have to pay for ticketing services, accounting for ticket sales, and usage will almost certainly increase.

Those who want to drive can still do so. I still will.

Ian said :

I accept that a public transport service will normally require some level of taxpayer support. What I object to is it costing $321 when it could and should be (for arguments sake) $150 if it were actually run efficiently.

(cockney festival accent required) “Ladies and gentlemens of the community… we have a new chief for ACTION, soon to be appointed, who will bring to you a cheaper bus service run more efficiently than the one we have now, by applying the oft-ignored mantra of ‘arguments sake’ to the difficult and rather complicated business of running a business such as what we have had up til now.”

Why the guvmnt didn’t simply think of this miracle cure-all before now has economists from London to Hong Kong scratching hteir heads, and already Macquarie Bank has taken out several patents pertaining to the concept. Well done Ian, I hope they reward you for your idea.

Ian said :

I accept that a public transport service will normally require some level of taxpayer support. What I object to is it costing $321 when it could and should be (for arguments sake) $150 if it were actually run efficiently.

you have some data to back up that number?

no doubt the service could be improved–everything is capable of improvement. i think sticking a number out there without any sort of context is the sort of silly, grandstanding, empty gesture that politicians are so fond of. so what does the pollie suggest? get rid of it? and people who don’t drive can walk? and what does the politician think will happen with traffic and parking issues as a result?

nothing in this world is perfect (except for my home made pizza) so if you are going to point out defects, it would be good to suggest solutions at the same time or it is just a waste of time. Yet what does Mr. Coe suggest? He says this:

“Given that the vast majority of Canberrans don’t use this service, questions have to be asked about the effectiveness and the efficiency of that service provided.

“Taxpayers money needs to be used wisely and clearly move needs to be done to improve the efficiency bus network so that more Canberrans are using the system,” Mr Coe concluded.

His solution is to ask questions. Great. Why doesn’t he go and ask a lot of questions, find out what the key issues with the bus service are and come up with viable solutions to fix them and THEN come back and tell us about it. I think we should be asking questions about how much politicians and their staffs are being paid, i think there is far more room for improved efficiency and effectiveness there.

clp said :

You’re always going to have problems delivering a great bus network to a city like Canberra which is spread out – there isn’t the economies of scale with having denser population – and its one of the most car-friendly cities around so hard to compete on that front.
People won’t get out of their cars for buses in general – you’d find the same thing in Adelaide.

Nail on the head.

The problem we have at the moment is that the current public transport system (aka buses) are inefficient and therefore underutilised. Trying to use that evidence in support of a billion dollar upgrade to a more effective system (like trunk rail) makes raising CapEx funding difficult, nigh on impossible.

Whatever the proposed solution, the end result needs to be a system that provides a method of transport cheaper than using a car and nearly as convenient. The hour it took me to travel 20km to work on an ACTION bus this morning would suggest that the Government are currently an epic distance from this target.

How much would that figure have to increase in order to stop charging for the service?

Those who don’t take the bus might feel better thinking of it as a traffic reduction service – paying to keep the roads a little less car-clogged than they might otherwise be.

Ok, so he’s saying we shouldn’t subsidise Action. ie defund it. What? It needs more funding! What does Alistair think we should do instead to make sure Canberra has a good public transport system?

“”Taxpayers money needs to be used wisely and clearly move needs to be done to improve the efficiency bus network so that more Canberrans are using the system,” Mr Coe concluded.”

Um…

I think the reality is that Alistair would prefer to abandon public transport. He’s always hated buses.

I would like to see how that cost per capita is determined. These figures are usually nonsense. I think I would be very happy if I was actually paying that much per year for the bus service as I would probably have had to have a very very big pay rise.

clp said :

BTW I don’t get the comparison with child care centres – have you seen the fees they charge? I don’t know of too many heavily subsidised child care centres around the place.

Apart from the federal government subsidies paid to parents to help pay the fees?

I accept that a public transport service will normally require some level of taxpayer support. What I object to is it costing $321 when it could and should be (for arguments sake) $150 if it were actually run efficiently.

I dont have a problem with it – while I personally don’t use buses the kids use them an awful lot, and Mrs Snarky too.

That per adult cost does seem quite high though – thats about 20% of my annual rates more or less, and I don’t think I’m contributing to ACT Gov coffers any other way am I? Drivers licence only comes round once every 5 years, I don’t get fined for traffic or parking more than once every five years or so.

So, it’s a very useful service for my family, but that does seem expensive.

You’re always going to have problems delivering a great bus network to a city like Canberra which is spread out – there isn’t the economies of scale with having denser population – and its one of the most car-friendly cities around so hard to compete on that front.
People won’t get out of their cars for buses in general – you’d find the same thing in Adelaide.

That said – it doesn’t mean we should do away with a bus service – there are plenty of people who can’t drive – it would discriminate against the young and the poor.

BTW I don’t get the comparison with child care centres – have you seen the fees they charge? I don’t know of too many heavily subsidised child care centres around the place.

I don’t object to paying the $321, I do object to being forced to use the bus through a system of financial penalties if I don’t. Increased parking fees etc…

Isnt that what the government is there for, to supply essential services?

Mr Coe should look back to the days of Rosemary Follett & Cate Carnell as this is not a new issue. It is an old chestnut that is attacked by the opposition every time there is a slow news week (& was done by the Stanhope opposition if I remember rightly).

Ok, the bus network does not suit the needs of everybody but it does serve a great number of the community, the buses I take regularly have standing passengers, disabled passengers, public servants, tradies, students ect. It does the job it can do well & I have never been stranded without a bus.

I would be interested to see what the stats are for public transport subsidies provided by other state governments.

Same could be said for people who never use other facilities like child care centres, drug rehab centres and the like.