20 September 2012

Greens launch their campaign with a bus plan

| johnboy
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buses

The Greens Meredith Hunter is celebrating her campaign launch with a transport package:

— An additional $21m for better suburban bus services: more buses, better frequency, addressing overcrowding, new Park and Ride facilities (Erindale, Wanniassa/Kambah, Gungahlin, Weston Creek, Molonglo).
— An additional $3m for better school bus services.
— $3m for early bus services to residents in Canberra’s new, developing suburbs.
— $2.7m to start introducing hybrid and electric technology to Canberra’s bus fleet.
— $774,000 for diesel particulate filters in all ACTION buses for cleaner and healthier air.

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Kiron2222 said :

Truthiness said :

Guys, you realise spending money is basically what government does, right? It is not really that much money in the scheme of the ACT budget, certainly a lot less than the libs $700million road package, and no one asked where they were pulling that from.

Agreed. Australians seem to have some fetish for Government Surplus that doesn’t make any sense, considering the Government isn’t a business nor does it run anything like a business.

When you have states cutting huge amounts into Infrastructure, Health and Education so they can get into “Surplus” despite their debt is totally manageable, you know there is something totally wrong with the economic discourse of this country.

It’s valid to argue that something is essential and shouldn’t be cut due to budget issues, but not borrowing money and paying interest on it that compounds to cost us heavily is definitely a good thing. The government, like any individual, should be expected to live within their means and not run up too much debt. It’s far more important for the government because it’s not me spending my own money, it’s them spending everyone elses’s money and nobody having the ability to have direct input into these decisions or to opt out of supplying their money towards it. When you are not giving anyone the choice about how much of their money is taken or what it’s spent on, you have a much bigger responsibility to spend it very wisely. Borrowing money costs interest and in the end it’s all just coming out of our money. So if you like handing money over to the banks for no reason, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you doing it directly, but otherwise I’d rather they manage our money effectively and not have a percentage of it each year going to the banks achieving nothing for me. It also has a crowding out effect on the borrowing market, which is bad for our economy, reduces output which would reduce prosperity and also tax revenues, making the debt take longer to pay off again.

Gungahlin Al3:07 pm 21 Sep 12

joingler said :

Here go the greens again. Okay ideas with no idea how to fund them. Also, where in Gungahlin are you going to fit a park and ride? And even if you do find a place, does anyone think it will actually be used?There is already one in Mitchell across the road from EPIC which is lucky to get more than 10 cars most days.

You do know don’t you that there’s now an Act requiring election commitments to be costed? And that you can peruse the treasury’s assessment of those costings online?
It’s all here: http://treasury.act.gov.au/Electioncostings/ACTGreens.shtml
Except that you’ll notice that the Greens are the only party – period – that has submitted any policies for assessment yet. Liberals page: blank. Labor page: blank.

Where to fit a park’n’ride in Gungahlin? The planning for that is already well advanced, following the Greens’ park’n’ride platform. Several sites have been identified as possible locations. My preferred is diagonally opposite the Police Station. Otherwise behind Big W. These sites were previously identified as part of the Gungahlin Town Centre Master Plan process, so I fail to see why it needed yet another consultant, but there you go…

Will it be used? Yes – there are already a stack of people catching the 200 buses from the town centre and parking in various places around the area. It’s why people further along the route (like me) seldom can get a seat in the morning.

Yes the EPIC p’n’r is still poorly patronised, but slowly growing. Unfortunately they put it at the bottom end of the Flemington Rd bottleneck rather than the top end as I proposed right back in 2007 on behalf of the GCC. But with better promotion it could be better used by NSW commuters currently rat-running through north Canberra suburbs. I suggested to the Roads ACT p’n’r consultants some months back (at a GCC meeting) an illuminated sign ON Federal Hwy up before the Antill St roundabout but still nothing.

Truthiness said :

Guys, you realise spending money is basically what government does, right? It is not really that much money in the scheme of the ACT budget, certainly a lot less than the libs $700million road package, and no one asked where they were pulling that from.

Agreed. Australians seem to have some fetish for Government Surplus that doesn’t make any sense, considering the Government isn’t a business nor does it run anything like a business.

When you have states cutting huge amounts into Infrastructure, Health and Education so they can get into “Surplus” despite their debt is totally manageable, you know there is something totally wrong with the economic discourse of this country.

Truthiness said :

I could be wrong, but I thought the idea was to recapture the energy lost to the frequent stopping busses do, not to make them fully electric. That kind of system could easily make its cost back in saved fuel.

There’s many options, and it’s a case of the more you add together, the better the outcome. Regenerative breaking and techniques to reduce strain on the alternator are two. Adding PV cells to the bus is another I’ve seen rolled out, I believe Adelaide has invested in that. The PV can be to power accessories on the bus and reduce strain on the alternator, or even further actually feeding power back in to the engine via batteries and a hybrid drive train. Then there’s full electric buses, which might not be suitable for inter-town services, but surely there’s a place for them on shuttle and inner city circuits.

schmeah said :

What a turn around, given I emailed the Greens about 18 months – 2 years ago arguing how abysmal bus services were in the suburbs and their response was … ‘yeah it’s rubbish, but what do you want us to do about it’.

I really should have kept that email.

Useless.

I bet a lot of us have emails from the Greens we should have kept.

What a turn around, given I emailed the Greens about 18 months – 2 years ago arguing how abysmal bus services were in the suburbs and their response was … ‘yeah it’s rubbish, but what do you want us to do about it’.

I really should have kept that email.

Useless.

I could be wrong, but I thought the idea was to recapture the energy lost to the frequent stopping busses do, not to make them fully electric. That kind of system could easily make its cost back in saved fuel.

@joingler Do you actually use Action busses? I take the bus to work everyday…and a park and ride in Kambah would be awesome as I currently have to park up a small suburban street, blocking the road a bit. (Even better would be more stops and more frequency currently if I miss a bus, I have to wait almost 1 hour for the next one)

@Rihno sure action is a money pitt, but we need something at least until a decision is made on the light rail.

Public transport in canberra is bad and needs reform people.

Hybrid and electric technology will just cost more money than it saves at the moment. It’s just more greeny bs without properly weighing things up.

Action already costs us heaps even if we don’t use it. Let’s just throw some more money at another money pitt.

Guys, you realise spending money is basically what government does, right? It is not really that much money in the scheme of the ACT budget, certainly a lot less than the libs $700million road package, and no one asked where they were pulling that from.

Here go the greens again. Okay ideas with no idea how to fund them. Also, where in Gungahlin are you going to fit a park and ride? And even if you do find a place, does anyone think it will actually be used?There is already one in Mitchell across the road from EPIC which is lucky to get more than 10 cars most days.

So … enough money to subsidise ACTION and run it free for a whole year? Or if you include the $200m for electric light rail, you could run ACTION for free for nearly two terms of government?

wildturkeycanoe10:12 pm 20 Sep 12

“The ACT Greens want to ensure the ACT has the most environmentally friendly, low-polluting public transport vehicle fleet. We’ve proposed a $200m initiative for electric light rail that can be powered by renewable energy. We will also start the transition of Canberra’s bus fleet to modern, low-polluting vehicles”
How much are rates going to go up to pay for that one….more than triple I suspect.

justin heywood9:52 pm 20 Sep 12

‘$774,000 for diesel particulate filters for all Action buses’

Must be a typo, given that at least 70 Action buses are CN Gas and thus have no use for diesel particulate filters. But I’m sure they knew that. I hope they knew that.

Depends on what highway speed is considered. All ACTION buses are speed limited to 80-85km/h.
I think it’s a good idea though, certainly for those who use the buses and are exposed to the fumes on a regular basis.

Also glad to see hybrid and electric on the cards. I’ve been puzzled why Canberra hasn’t done more in that respect. They purchased those stupid iMiev or whatever they’re called, but it’s interstate where they’ve been triallling solar electric buses, hybrids and so on.

Ironic given that Canberra was home to Australia’s very first electric, battery bus back in the 70s for a brief period – intended for the city-airport shuttle apparently.

A case of back to the future now.

How_Canberran7:03 pm 20 Sep 12

That is really nice Meredith…a lazy $3 mil here and $2.7 mil there.

Now, the hard part. How to make it really happen.

And since when would $774,000 worth of ‘diesel particulate filters’ (DPF) be of value to the ACTION bus fleet?

When a DPF is becoming full of soot (at around 80% load) it automatically cleans itself by initiating a process called regeneration. This is achieved during highway or high speed driving.

In some circumstances (e.g. like slowly driving in urban areas…which ACTION buses normally do), regeneration may not occur. In this case, a warning light illuminates, with a message “soot filter full – see manual (or Greens candidate?)

I got the above off the Volvo web site.

How Canberran.

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