Training to Fly

I'm back from foreign parts!

As coincidence would have it, just 3 days after I caught a train home from the airport, I saw this story pop up on twitter:

Full story at SMH

My wife and I both paid the utterly exorbitant fare to get from the Airport to Central because, frankly, it's cheaper and easier than the alternative.

Parking at Sydney Airport costs so much you feel a compulsion to check that they got the decimal point in the right spot. A cab to our place (or, realistically, even to central station) was still far more expensive, and likely would involve far longer queues.

At the end of the day, the Airport Line is the obvious option, And, on the rare occasion I get to fly anywhere, it's the option I almost invariably use.

The high fares date back to the opening of the Airport Line. The Labor government's enthusiasm for building infrastructure without having to pay for it gave us toll-roads all over the city - but how were they going to get a rail-line built in the same way?

Simple - charge an eye-wateringly high fee to use only those new stations. It creates an absurd situation and further complicates an already convoluted fare system, but I suppose that's hardly a priority.

From a purely commercial point of view, it makes sense. Millions of commuters (including myself) still find the airport line to be "good value" in the sense that it is cheaper and easier than the alternative - so why not?

Well, the answer should be obvious - governments have, as part of their role, the provision of public infrastructure. Building lines like the Airport Line are why we pay taxes.

Sydney is lucky enough (or unlucky enough, if you live under a flight path) to have an airport within a short train trip of the city. That it took as long as it did to build a train line is more than a little ridiculous.

Many people complain what an awful greeting the enormous fees are to an international traveller - what the complainers don't realise is that the typical traveller would happily drop $30 to get to their hotel from the airport. That's a pretty small number compared to many cities in Australia and internationally.

My gripe, however, is that "People will pay it" is not a good argument to charge people for something that falls well with the ambit of governmental responsibility.

Last weekend, as I left London to catch a Virgin Atlantic flight home, I caught the tube to Heathrow Airport. It cost me a little over 3 quid.

Of course, I also got to use the outstanding Oyster Card system, but that's another discussion.

People will pay more to use the Airport Line. But that doesn't mean that they should have to pay it.

Australian governments need to move away from the idea that public transport should be priced such that "user pays". When I use public transport everyone benefits - the car I don't use doesn't clog up the already over-crowded roads.

Of course, the only way this problem will get fixed is if the government buys the airport line, and given the (real or imagined) budgetary constraints, that hardly seems likely.

So, on we go, no doubt to the relief of the owners of the airport and taxi plates across the city.

Accessing the Anger?

Some people will say we shouldn't be surprised. They are a Liberal government, after all.

Could O'Farrell really be planning to fund the North West Rail Link through an "access fee"?

Earlier today the Hills Transport Group put out a press release that quoted RailCorp CEO Rob Mason as saying in a memo that "a private sector entity will design, construct, commission, operate and maintain the North West Rail link... for a period of 20 to 30 years." The press release goes on to explain that this will operate under an "access model".

In plain English, that means that there will be a special station surcharge for travel on the line, similar to the hated Airport Link surcharge.

As a caveat, I should say that there has been no formal announcement or acknowledgment from the government.  O'Farrell may deny any such plans, and it will be anyone's guess whether he has had a quick change of heart or whether Mason was speaking out of turn.

But the plan really does seem crazy.  Ridiculous, unbelievable, hubris-fueled crazy.

The North West is Sydney's biggest growth area.  These people need access to public transport, as the constantly worsening traffic chaos on the major feeder roads attests.

This is why the North West Rail Link is essential if Sydney is to manage its growth.  A government cannot simply keep releasing more and more land to developers and not build heavy rail to get these people around. It should have been built by now, but we can't blame the Coalition for that.

Map of the proposed route.  Taken from the line's website

To be fair, it is true that a privatised line would be cheaper for the government (and, therefore, the people). The government should spend our money carefully, and if there is a cheaper and equally effective way to move people around then it should be investigated.

Equally, I'm a believer in user pays, to a point.  Tolls on roads are appropriate if the tolls are used to fund said roads.  There is no particular reason to encourage people to drive, and anyone who lives in the North West and drives to the city for work knows what they are signing on for.

Rail, however, should be encouraged (and yes, subsidised) by government.  Rail is cheaper, it is better for the environment, it takes up less space, it is clean and it is far more expandable. We cannot just keep jamming more roads and tunnels into our city - we need a good network that grows as the city grows.

While a private model would cost less money up front, under an access model the people who use the line would simply make up the difference.  In other words, the private model would shift the cost away from the rest of the state and towards those people who will actually use the line.

On the surface, that makes sense.  They're getting the benefit, right?  No.

Those people who get the train stay off the roads.  Their polluting cars stay in the garage.  The fuel they would buy stays in the bowser. More bridges, tunnels and parking lots stay on the drawing board. The CBD is that little bit nicer, less crowded, and easier to get in and out of.

Moreover, people suddenly have good reason to live in the North West, knowing that they will have a way to get to work.  The rest of Sydney will have a little less pressure to grow and shoe-horn in even more people.

The rest of Sydney has access to heavily subsidised public transport.  Why do those in the North West deserve any less?

This revelation is particularly surprising in light of the Infrastructure funding models that I wrote about less than a week ago.  In that interview O'Farrell explained quite clearly the value of doing things the "hard way". He was right.  The North West Rail Link needs to be built, and he needs to find some other way of paying for it.

Public transport (and particularly heavy rail) is the skeleton on which a city is built. And, like an animal without a good skeleton, a city without a good skeleton is liable to collapse.

Putting a massive surcharge onto the line to fund it will simply mean far, far less people will use the line.  They will keep driving and paying those tolls because, suddenly, the train trip isn't as economical as it was.  

The North West Rail Link has the potential to be O'Farrell's greatest achievement in government.  It was one of the key promises that got him elected.

If he blows it by making it horrendously expensive to use, I have no doubt he'll not be allowed to forget it.

UPDATE.  The Herald and the Telegraph both have stories about this today.

Additionally, O'Farrell responded on twitter late last night:

Flying High

Tonight I am not interested in writing about Keneally's "gaffe" that the Coalition has saturated the airwaves with. If you haven't heard about it, I wouldn't bother.  It's all about whether Keneally's view on the compensation to be offered under Gillard's Carbon Tax plan is different to Gillard's view.  The fact that Keneally may be a little too busy being slaughtered in her state election to worry about Federal issues appears to not matter very much.

Rather, I'm very interested in Keneally's announcement today about slashing the fees for the Airport link.  Well, that's not quite what she did, but I'll come to that later.

First, some background.  For those of you not aware, the price of a ticket to disembark at one of the stations on the Sydney airport link (Green Square, Mascot, Domestic and International) have always been, in my view, extortionate.  By way of example, a ticket from Town Hall station to the International terminal costs $15.80.  If there are two of you, a cab is cheaper.

This is compared to a ticket from Town Hall to Bondi Junction that costs $3.20

In fairness, travel to the airport from other parts of Sydney becomes economical compared to a cab as the fare doesn't increase much as you get further away, but I think it is fair to say people are generally put off using the line because of the price.

The relevant detail is that there are two other stations on the same airport link (see http://bit.ly/i9dGnY for a map, if you like) that, despite not being in any way part of the airport, attract the same surcharge.  Until now.

Keneally announced today that, from Monday, the government would be "subsidising" the fares to the two non-airport stations, effectively bringing the price of tickets to that station in line with the rest of the CityRail Network.

A number of reports today have commented on the fact that these two stations lie within Keneally's electorate of Heffron.  The Opposition Transport Spokesman Gladys Berejiklian called the move "cynical pork-barrelling" (SMH), although I can't see why it would be necessary - Keneally holds the seat by 23.7%, and no matter how awful things go for Labor on 26 March I think we can mark this one into the Labor column.

Labor of course tried to sell the move as being the chance to correct a "legacy" from the previous Liberal government, although why it took 12 years to correct this was conveniently not explained. Keneally even went so far as to explain that at the time the airport link was signed off, O'Farrell was chief of staff to the Liberal transport minister, which seemed a silly point to make as it only emphasised just how long it's been since the Coalition were in power.

In truth, my theory on the announcement was simply that it was a way to get people thinking positive thoughts about Labor and transport.  One of the concerns we constantly see ranked highly by voters is transport - by announcing this new subsidy, the government has had pretty solid coverage of them "doing something" to improve the transport system.

According to the SMH story, this move will cost $4 million per year, just 10% of what it would have cost to include the Domestic and International Terminals in the subsidy.  Odds are, many people watching the story won't notice the distinction between the two pairs of stations and will simply understand that the government has done something to decrease the fares on the airport link.

The Coalition can't say anything much because they don't want to be on the other side of a CityRail Fare Reduction Story, so the move is really a certain win for the government.  And I suspect it would have gotten a lot of airplay if not for the distraction of Keneally's non-gaffe.  Not doubt she'll be livid that this savvy bit of politicking has been drowned out by the carbon tax issue, which was always going to get traction because of the present controversy about the carbon tax in the Federal arena.

It remains to be seen how many more state issues are drowned out by the Carbon Tax, and which side of NSW politics will profit the most from it.