Toot Toot! Simon says the tram will be bulk ace!

One can only hope that the Feds National Infrastructure team can prick the bubble that Corbell and that ratty Green have come up with.

This is a total waste of ACT taxpayer money. May the Feds tell it as it is. No way will we be contributing!

Go away, you stupid, stupid people.

I have to say, the increase in traffic through Belco and particularly the inner North over the last 5-7 years has been enormous, Those of you who dont live inner North may not realise it, but there are roads that used to have hardly any cars that are now constant streams of rat runners; while Limestone Ave is permanently chockers (it was totally shut down for a year about, what 15 years ago, and that hardly caused a problem – imagine if that happened now). So the effects of Gunghalin are really noticeable. Are they such as to require additional spending? Not in comparison to, say, Sydney or Nairobi. But having lived in Asia, I can say they have much bigger cities with better traffic than Canberra.

An increase of 28% can be managed by widening Northbourne Ave to four lanes and having a designated bus lane with increased services during peak periods.Unless the plan is to construct high density housing along the entire corridor doubling population density then Corbell’s desire to bring this project into fruition is I suspect motivated more by ego rather than necessity

How come the movie Field of Dreams springs to mind whenever I read about the expected growth along the light rail corridor? Most of the light rail systems that I have seen tend to be in already built up areas. Eg, Copenhagens driverless trams run through relatively high density living areas. Vancouvers Sky Train is running through high density. But here in Canberra, if we built it (the metro), people (mostly developers) will flock to the area and cause EPIC to be put somewhere else. I read the ACTION annual report for 2012 and it just goes to show how much money the taxpayer ($91.49 million) puts towards Canberra’s bus services (fares accounted for $22 million) which services most of Canberra and the value of all the buses is something like $80 million. I keep reading that pension funds/superannuation funds are looking to invest in significant infrastructure projects in order to get a good long term yield so if the ACT government is so sure that the light rail is so good for Canberra, then why not let some private organisation build and maintain the light rail. It is pretty obvious that the government knows that there is no acceptable yield for private enterprise. So another movie comes to mind and that is the Castle where those famous words “Tell ’em they’re dreamin'” equates to the ACT governments plan to make significant economic growth with the light rail.

It’s not as if these, or any other projections matter – they will do whatever they like, but it is difficult to take seriously a projection which purports to give an employment figure, 18 years hence – to the nearest ten. With the uncertainties which Canberra faces, a projection to the nearest ten thousand would be more realistic.

In the meantime, all policies will be directed towards justifying the light rail decision – it will become the tail which wags the Canberra dog.