The contentious construction progress of light rail continues to evoke responses from CityNews readers, most of whom are refusing to lie down and let the government’s tram spin roll over them. Here are the latest letters. 

As former chief surveyor for the consulting engineer to Melbourne’s 1980s underground rail project and being familiar with alternative transport requirements, I analysed the ACT government’s 2016 Business Plan for the City-Gungahlin tram project.

Labor’s business plan only broke even by including an alleged “health benefit” of $50,000 resulting from passengers walking to the tram stops! The tram only came about because of political horse trading to get Greens candidate Shane Rattenbury into the minority Labor government.

Neither Rattenbury nor the Labor Party considered the cost to ratepayers. It was the apotheosis of “political correctness”, straight out of Yes, Minister. 

In the early 19th century, in European cities with dense Industrial Revolution populations trams worked well enough when the only alternatives were a horse-drawn omnibus or walking.

When Canberra developed under the “garden city” concept, seen as a healthy improvement over former cluttered apartments, and when the motor bus was invented, a more flexible public transport system arose.

The major cost of an electric tram is its inflexible track work and electric power supply restricting the tram to a fixed route. 

In Canberra’s garden city, the capital cost of tramlines restricts their routes. Tram tracks are the reason for Canberra ratepayers’ current debt.

Where buses share the existing road network with other traffic, there is substantial saving in infrastructure cost, as bus routes don’t need costly rail tracks to be convenient to most homes, schools and workplaces. Bus routes may be readily altered to account for passenger variations. 

Climate catastrophists have saddled Canberra with a costly albatross that will make no difference to our world except keep property rates higher than they need to be. 

Maybe in future, when Canberra is a teal-Labor social paradise, where most residents live in congested, garden-free, Shanghai tower blocks, trams may become viable once again.

Residents will get a “health dividend” from climbing stairs at night when the wind is not blowing and instead of the garden city, will grow pot plants on their tiny balconies.

Tens of millions of Chinese do it!

Anthony Hordern, Jamison Centre 

‘Madness’ proceeding with light rail to Woden

On ABC media, the chief minister claimed that the changes that the ACT government made to taxation arrangements in 2011-12 in relation to abolishing stamp duty on house and vehicle insurance by increasing general residential rates was revenue neutral. 

He also claimed that, eight years on, this was a matter now rarely discussed.

There are a few issues with his claims. Firstly these changes were by no means revenue neutral as long-suffering home and apartment owners and also renters in Canberra will know.

ACT residential rates have increased exponentially since 2011-12, until around 2021-22 at about 7-10 per cent annually for average lots, with smaller (still above CPI) increases since then.

Moreover, as we are still only halfway through Barr’s changes to taxation arrangements, we can expect to see continuing increases to our rates until well into the 2030s. So much for his revenue-neutral claim.

Secondly, ACT residential rates notices, while they exclude stamp duty, now include a police, fire and emergency services levy as well as a safer families levy. 

As columnists Jon Stanhope and Khalid Ahmed have previously pointed out in CityNews, the ACT is the only jurisdiction in Australia to include police in this levy category. 

Critically, it’s been reported that the government intention is to fully fund ACT police through this specific levy category and that the direct consequence of that intention will be to see huge increases in this levy payable by ratepayers in forward years (as the funding costs of maintaining a police force increase).

As for Barr’s comment that this is a matter now rarely discussed, I beg to differ. Most ACT ratepayers await with trepidation their annual rates assessment notice and the additional significant cost to household budgets imposed by these annual increases.

In view of the overall structural deficits that the ACT budget is now facing for decades to come and the generally narrow revenue raising capacity that the ACT has, would not it be prudent to now critically consider the ideological madness of proceeding with the light rail stage 2b extension from the lake to Woden.

Ron Edgecombe, Evatt

Assembly is failing by not demanding tram costs

The politicians present at the recent sod turning at the commencement of stage 2a of light rail – Andrew Barr, Katie Gallagher, Chris Steel, Alicia Payne and Federal Minister Catherine King – were effusive in their praise of the project almost to the point that it could be viewed as a solution to all urban issues.

Mike Quirk, Garran

When stage 2 being economically viable disappeared 

Columnists Jon Stanhope and Khalid Ahmed (“Stop treating us with contempt on light rail costs”, CN March 18) can learn a lot from reading both the 2019 City to Woden Light Rail: Stage 2A Business Case and the Auditor-General’s Report 8 of 2021.

From those documents they will be able to deduce that light rail stage 2a was expected to cost $268 million plus a bit extra, and to offer only $150 million worth of benefits.

Stages 2a and 2b together were expected to provide less than $44 million worth of net benefits.

Any prospect of stage 2 being economically viable disappeared when the transport minister signed a $577 million contract for construction and operation of stage 2a.

Figure 7-7 of the business case projects 1.4 million daily network kilometres of public transport travel in 2046 if we build stage 2a but not stage 2b. Building stage 2b would reduce public transport travel by 6 per cent and cost $905 million.

The Australian government got a much better deal when it introduced pay parking in the Parliamentary Triangle. It increased Canberra’s public transport patronage by 2 per cent and generated $18 million a year in revenue.

Leon Arundell, Downer