Category: Letters to the editor
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Cars remain problem
The West Gate bridge carries 160,000 vehicles a day (”Trucks test structure of West Gate”, 18/3), but that is only a modest 15 per cent increase on 10 years ago, when it carried 140,000. Then, as now, traffic was forecast to increase by some staggering amount over the next decade. In fact, traffic finds its…
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Fares not too low
INFRASTRUCTURE Minister Anthony Albanese’s Major Cities Unit is completely wrong if it thinks Australia’s public transport fares are too low (Urban sprawl hits productivity, 4/12/2012). In fact, relative to cost of living, they are among the highest in the world. The real reason fares only cover one-quarter to one-third of the cost of the system…
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A legacy of poor decisions
A legacy of poor decisions November 22, 2012 JOHN Legge (“Transport planning off rails”, Comment, 21/11) hits the nail on the head when it comes to Melbourne’s transport planning failures. Our creaking train system and barely usable bus services are the legacy of decades of secretive pseudo-planning at all levels of government and in the…
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Broken promises
THE disappointing result for the Baillieu government in the latest Newspoll survey comes as little surprise if we recall the reason it was elected. Its promises included a clear commitment to fix public transport. The Coalition picked up a swag of seats along train lines that had hitherto been treated with indifference. There were promises…
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‘Balance’ is missing
THE secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Cesar Melhem, suggests Victoria can have the $10 billion east-west road link and still invest in public transport improvements (“AWU pushes for east-west tunnel“, The Age, 30/7). As Darryl Kerrigan would say, “he’s dreamin”‘. Such a massive road project would suck up all our transport funding for a…
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State quiet on train lines
THE Kennett government didn’t survive long enough to face the consequences of privatising the roads that became CityLink. It opened in 2000, a year after Kennett was voted out. Moreover, most of the losers from the decision to toll existing roads were in ALP-held seats. CityLink’s main effect was an explosion in private car travel…
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Badly advised
THE idea that the Rowville line can’t be built without a $5 billion metro tunnel is nonsense (”Monash Uni train line plan derailed”, The Age, 9/3). The line was included in the 1969 transport plan, which gave us the City Loop, but did not say an extra tunnel from South Yarra was required: only some…
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Eddington’s tunnel vision
Some things never change. Rod Eddington is still spruiking the east-west road tunnel, even though his own report in 2008 said it would return just 45c in benefits for every dollar spent on it. We can now see that the assumptions underlying the East West report were flawed. Metlink reports that public transport use grew…
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PT Problem of the Day: Hopelessly infrequent buses, or ever-growing traffic jams – your choice
In a letter in today’s Age, PTUA Secretary Tony Morton responds to the Auditor-General’s criticism of the Peninsula Link motorway, and the recognition of induced traffic — and asks why the road is being built when public transport is so hopeless. THE Auditor-General has officially confirmed what sustainable-transport advocates have long known: Victoria lags decades…
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Regional Rail Link: Many better ways to spend $5bn
JASON Dowling’s defence of the Regional Rail Link (Comment, 22/2) essentially asserts that a project costing about $5 billion must be a good thing. What began as a line on a map in the Eddington report has evolved secretly and fitfully. We still have no idea how train services will be organised, but we do…
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Co-ordination key – letter to the editor
MELISSA Fyfe (”It’s time to help commuters make their connection”, 3/10) points out the basic weakness afflicting Melbourne public transport: the lack of an independent, publicly accountable authority to co-ordinate trains, trams and buses. Groups as diverse as the Greens, privatisation experts and former train and tram operators support a lean, expert body to plan…
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Freeways so 1950s
CRAIG Langdon has kept his promise to voters to resign if a freeway through Heidelberg became Victorian Labor policy (”Freeway dissenter urges referendum”, The Age, 26/8). But how awkward that he’s left it until three months before the election rather than standing down in 2008 when plans were announced.