Government keeps options open on light rail route through Parliamentary Zone

bj_ACT, it is not the total rise that matters but the gradient. The industry standard is apparently 8%. I do not know whether the CAF Urbos meets this.
Analyse your point with gradient, not rise.

Ummm thanks scoop.

Fairly obvious statement here but the raising of London cct is about the land not about the capabilities of light rail. At the end of the day bridge or land bridge (which is what is essentially being built) the rise is the same. This is all about freeing the land in the clovers and having a flat junction at Commonwelath Ave.

Also your transport expert is very wrong or inexperienced. Light rail is capable of climbing greater gradients compare to heavy rail. Basic physics should tell you why. So no heavy rail is not used in lieu of light rail on larger gradients nor cable cars for that matter. What determines light vs heavy is patronage and route in terms of population.

That was the 2nd plan which the NCA foist upon the ACT gov. The new plan is a rehash of the original one.

It’s like the work they have commenced at Woden, in anticipation of a train turning up there one day.

Who even knows whether LR to Woden will even get built?

For me, LR with a maximum speed of 70kph is perfectly fine in a densely occupied part of town, but when travelling along side a road with a 100kph speed limit (in places), it’ll be a joke.

Whilst the works on London circuit are being done in the name of lightrail the real game there is freeing up the land in the cloverleaves. And approval to do that was granted separately from stage 2A approval.

Likewise the works at Woden Interchange again whilst being done in the name of lightrail is really about rebuilding the interchange and freeing the land that was on for other purposes.

Roger,
No the light rail times still don’t stack up because the exact same right of way that light rail receives (as on stage 1) could similarly be provided for buses at a fraction of the cost.

The development you mention is also only occurring because the government is attempting to create the demand for light rail that would partially justify its existence.

Its a solution looking for a problem.

And even if light rail was justified in this potential future (10-20 years+), there is nothing stopping the government from implementing cheaper options now and planning (and reserving alignments) for the future rail option when/if it’s needed. The opportunity costs of building it now are enormous.

Sorry to disappoint, a new roadway lane for the buses is not a ‘fraction’ of the cost. To be durable (and note the condition of the buslane in Barry Drive) all the pavement and subgrade works necessary for light rail are much the same. As is obtaining extra road width (said to be the problem at State Circle), and relocating services.
Construction history shows the cheapest time for a project is nearly always now, not 10 years or so down the track.
And if you are implying the bus lanes can be provided in the same time scale, well we carry on with situation described in my post.
The real shame is that the physical work was not started when stage I was completed.

“Sorry to disappoint, a new roadway lane for the buses is not a ‘fraction’ of the cost”

Don’t worry, you didn’t disappoint me because your points are just flat wrong.

The capital cost of light rail is far higher than any bus equivalent, as even the government’s own assessment for stage 1 showed, which is a far easier alignement.

Buses can not only use existing roads but are also far cheaper to build new infrastructure for and more adaptable to issues like the grades that exist on Stage 2. The costs are not remotely close and you seem to have completely forgotten the large amounts of other supporting infrastructure required to support light rail, such as the massive electrical requirements, particularly around Stage 2 which will be operated on battery requiring high capacity charging at each station.

“Construction history shows the cheapest time for a project is nearly always now, not 10 years or so down the track.”

This is not remotely correct and you would have to ignore all opportunity costs to think it’s correct. The benefits of capital deferment are enormous. No one with any knowledge of large engineering projects would claim what you have.

“And if you are implying the bus lanes can be provided in the same time scale, well we carry on with situation described in my post.”

No, I don’t think it could be provided in the same time scale, bus options would clearly be far quicker to deliver.

“The real shame is that the physical work was not started when stage I was completed.”

Well, you know, except for the billions of dollars in funding required that don’t exist.

Which ironically is the real reason Stage 2 is being delayed, the costs involved are enormous and the government is still working out how to pay for it. Note their attempts listed to get the Feds to fund it outside of normal infrastructure funding processes.

@Roger Shelton
“The current bus service can only get slower and slower and significantly less reliable, as development occurs and traffic near inevitably builds up (and speed limits are reduced?)”

Sorry, I don’t follow your logic, Roger. If buses were given the same priority lanes and traffic light priority as the ight rail (i.e. like what happens on Northbourne Ave), how can they (buses) get progressively slower compared to light rail?

While I think the dedicated “track system” for light rail is a great idea for public transport, I wonder if the LR planners ever consider a similar approach as Adelaide’s O-Bahn busway? The O-bahn effectively achieves the same outcome as LR but uses buses at a fraction of the infrastructure costs.

I’m sorry, Roger, I don’t see why the buses must get slower, given they’re infinitely more flexible than the trams. The recent traffic jams on Commonwealth Ave are caused by the closure of the exit ramps to extend the tramline to Floriade, when it should have stopped at the ANU.
I would also encourage you to carefully read the tram promotional material. If you do not live AND work on the tram line, travel will be slower for almost all Canberrans. All trips will involve a bus to an interchange, a tram ride and a bus to your destination, so every journey will include minutes to hours of waiting for the next service on top of the travel time.

There are far too many points in the responses to reply in detail. Also this thread must be close to timing out in the Riotact.
Never-the-less I don’t resile from my underlying points. Just a couple of comments. You referred to right-of-way provision not an entire system. Consequently I addressed the cost of bus lane construction versus light rail lane construction up to the pavement surface. They are essentially the same effort to that point. Thus not much cheaper.
Current bus service means just that. Not a new separately constructed lane service. This morning my R4 City Interchange to Woden Interchange took 21 min with NO delay at the works area – even the traffic lights were all green. Delays commenced partly across Commonwealth Ave bridge all the way to State Circle.
When a project in an urban area gets deferred for decades or more the works normally get much more complex with added impediments of many sorts. The comparative costs thus normally increase disproportionately. This has been commented in Engineering circles, not something I just imagined. Had the Woden stage been got on as a run on to the first stage, and thus before the recent disproportionately large construction industry cost increases, it would have so much cheaper. The defence rests.

Roger,
The threads don’t time out, you can’t just escape from the fact that your points are wrong.

Light rail vs bus costs don’t just mean tracks, you cant just exclude all the other infrastructure required to make a light rail system work. The capital costs of light rail are simply far higher than an equivalent bus system. This has been shown consistently around the world and in Australia. It’s not up for debate.

The argument typically used to support this additional cost for light rail is around increased capacity, smoother ride and other secondary benefits that don’t relate to transport.

The government has already tried to assess these in their business case which shows a woeful return on expenditure that cannot be justified, even when they’ve deliberately tried to manipulate the assessment in ways that are outside normal economic assessment processes.

“Current bus service means just that.”

So you want to compare a theoretical light rail system that makes fundamental changes to the current road operation (to benefit itself) against a bus system that must operate under current road conditions with no changes

And you think that’s a reasonable comparison to make?

“When a project in an urban area gets deferred for decades or more the works normally get much more complex with added impediments of many sorts”

Yes, it can increase costs if you don’t adequately plan for the future upgrades. Hence why I said:

“there is nothing stopping the government from implementing cheaper options now and planning (and reserving alignments) for the future rail option when/if it’s needed”

The government can easily complete early design work and enact planning provisions to protect the future rail alignment to minimise and eliminate the problems you mention.

“Had the Woden stage been got on as a run on to the first stage, and thus before the recent disproportionately large construction industry cost increases, it would have so much cheaper”

You do realise that before the large increases in construction costs over the last 2 years, increases were low for many years previous? Or do you want to forget about those to only focus on years that partially support your argument?

Or perhaps you think that the government has a crystal ball to accurately predict future construction cost index prices and should only invest when conditions are predicted to be advantageous?

The discount rate used in the Government’s own economic analysis for stage 1 was 7%. You do know what that means for expenditure that could be delayed until the demand actually exists right?

The opportunity costs of expenditure today are huge, particularly for projects that even under the government’s own assessments aren’t justified, with extremely low cost benefit ratios that aren’t supported by significant social or other non cost benefits.

The vast majority of benefit under the government’s own figures is around land development. Nothing to do with public transport.

It’s obvious the “defence” was resting, perhaps they should have been researching better arguments.

Again, I’d refer you to the promotional material for the tram. The proposed tram will be slower than the R4. If it goes through Parkes and Barton, it will be even slower again. If you are trying to get from anywhere currently serviced by a Rapid bus to any interchange, the tram wil be dramatically slower. So I ask again, what is the point? Why are we building a slower, more expensive transport option?

I agree in a sense, however I would argue people are only worried about Woden to civic times but totally ignore the route is equally about servicing what is on the way not what is at each end. Workers in the Parl triangle will benefit the most from this but yes at the expense of end to end commuters.

I get howled down everytime I mention this but Belconnen to Civic used to be 15 minutes on the original route of the 333. Years later they re-routed that via UC and Haydon Ave which at the time added about 7 minutes to the trip but serviced a hell of a lot more people. Oh and that 7 minutes extra has now blown out to 10 and sometimes 15 due to extra traffic in peak hours.

My life when studying at Bruce CIT would have been better with a bus every 5 mins down Heydon rather than every 30 with a 25 minute wait at Belconnen interchange for the connection. Ah the good old days.

JC,
There are more workers in Civic and surrounds than anywhere else in Canberra, so crueling the north-south linkages by running light rail through the parliamentary triangle significantly reduces its value

And it’s not like you can’t equally service the Parliamentary Triangle with a loop bus linked to a light rail stop if you want to improve that connectivity as well.

The green route is not State Circle, it is Capitol Circle through the 3 Lane wide tunnel under Federation Square an then through the also 3 Lane Kings Ave. underpass. This way would only work if the tunnel and underpass is ripped up and rebuilt wider or if cars were restricted to one lane. This route will never happen. The fact that a map with such a ridiculous route exist is proof that the ACT Government hasn’t got a clue how to get the tram to Woden.

Great idea! Unfortunately much too sensible for the Green/Labor Government.

For once in their woke lives, Green-Labor are thinking mug voters, not “gender equality” and “net zero”.

This has been endorsed at the 2016 and 2020 elections. Yawn, now we do it all again, in 2024.

Well yes, I’d have thought having a workable/viable plan for the whole network would be a reasonable precondition for starting any work. And does anybody not think that stage 2A is all about applying moral pressure on the Commonwealth to allow stage 2B? ie we’ve spent $x squillion on this, it would be a shame to waste it (and your fault) by not allowing it to be completed now.