RiotACT Podcast episode 2 - The saga of light rail and how it will shape the days of your lives

gazket said :

she just admitted that the light rail is being built to drive up opportunities in land development. Land owners get richer and the public pays for it.

I think I read somewhere that in many other cities with a tram, there is a ‘levy” or some such imposed on nearby land/units, etc. Seems fair enough to me actually to help offset the cost over time – that would have been a stand out revenue item as an economic benefit in the Benefits Costs Ratio (BCR) Busiess Case.

But the ACT Gov’t has ruled that out. Can they can be trusted ?

she just admitted that the light rail is being built to drive up opportunities in land development. Land owners get richer and the public pays for it.

The chief minister says “There’s people with a lot of views and I guess Government’s job is to try and balance all that up and work out what’s the most reasonable way forward.”
Apparently, the most reasonable way is not the way that a majority of people think, nor the way that studies have shown to be more effective either. It really means, “the way we promised at the election.”
Has anyone considered that they only won because we only voted for them to keep Liberals from ruling our country? We ended up with a white elephant AND a government we didn’t want. Talk about a lose lose situation.

Essentially the government has talked up a ‘problem’ we don’t have, to justify the ‘fix’ they have prescribed for us.
If the bottom-line desired outcome is genuinely to increase public transport use, as the government claims, then the obvious and most comprehensive way to do that would have been to set up a massive bus route improvement project covering all of Canberra (as opposed to a p!ss-weak 12 km that is useless to most Canberrans and completely duplicates existing bus services), by using the resources (buses and extensive road network across Canberra) that we already have. And of course sell it to the public in the same way they have been propagandising the light rail. Remember the Pluses of Buses campaign?
I’ve said it before: there is none so blind as those who WILL not see.

@rommeldog56, she’s delusional indeed, and I’m completely disregarding party affiliation here. Building an extremely rigid tram infrastructure at that enormous cost for the value of “improving public transportation” (without any quantifiable goals to reach) is borderline corruption. I too want to improve public transportation, but a light rail seems like the wrong way of doing it.

Not to mention that in order to demonstrate an artificial success, the gov. would likely diminish current cars infrastructure (e.g., removing parking lots) making everyone’s life more miserable.

Here’s an idea, Chief Minister, if you’re so passionate about public transportation and you’re so confident it’s the right way to go, how about you run a policy that staff working for your directorates are required to not use cars (I’d say you’d to the same too, but I know you’re too mighty important to practice your own preachings). I’m confident all the relevant feedback will reach your desk awfully quick.

The essence of this is that the developers want it, some consortium of infrastructure developers can hoik a billion out of us via a government that can’t add up or analyse, so believes said developers’ dodgy business case. Canberra has no effectively no economy other than based on what it can raise from ratepayers. That, my dears, is the picture. It is going to cost us. It will be like the Sydney monorail. However, the cost of the Sydney Monorail was worn by a population ten times as big as ours. We will pay hard, we will pay long. Katie is making damn sure the contract can’t be undone, so keen is she to please those developers (who, remember, have been making massive donation to Labor’s coffers).

Well, all I can say is that I wish I could have some of what ever it is that the Chief Minister, the ACT Gov’t and their Greens overlord are taking to spin this sows ear into such a necessary (right now) and city transformational thing ! After listening to this interview, it confirm to me that they are delusional.

Also, as an aside, so the ACT Lib’s (and I’m certainly not a supporter of them !) havent put forward a viable alternative ? So, what about Rapid Bus Transit – over all of Canberra. Utilise some of the existing bus infrastructure/fleet. Much more route flexibility, almost same travel time Gunners-City, less than 1/2 the cost to Ratepayers ……..oh, why bother.

Roll on the election in 2016 – it can not come fast enough.