The ACT Auditor-General has released a damning report into Canberra’s bus network the former ACT Internal Omnibus Network (ACTION).
ACTION consistently runs at a huge loss – an estimated $77 million in 2010-11. It has 8 per cent patronage and runs at an 80 per cent subsidy.
Canberra is not suited to public transport, no matter how efficiently run. Canberra covers a huge geographical area and has a small population. Some people find that a bus schedule would involve 2 hours compared with a 15 minute drive (the longest distance between any two points is an ACTION bus route).
It is time to implement a modest proposal.
First, close down ACTION entirely. Donate (or sell) the buses to Sydney Transport.
Second, open up all bus lanes to cars and other vehicles.
Third, deregulate the taxi industry – driving the price of taxi licenses to zero.
The focus on improving public transport should be in the large cities such as Sydney and Melbourne.
Canberra does not need public transport. It needs a good road network and flexible and inexpensive taxis.
Unrealistic.
Alternative:
1. Get more people here by opening up land supply
2. Raise the fares
bianconieri
27 Aug 10 at 8:01 am
Raising the fares would probably reduce patronage further.
Samuel J
27 Aug 10 at 8:09 am
With sufficient competition, taxi drivers could even start running multi-person taxis that fit 10s or even 100s of people! You could call them BROAD URBAN SURFACECARS, or BUSes. Much better than the current system…
TimT
27 Aug 10 at 8:18 am
A system of multi-person taxis is how it happens in Indonesia. a cross between a bus and taxi system.
Adrian
27 Aug 10 at 8:40 am
Yes, of course we should sell all the buses. So, you know when I was growing up/teenager I totally had my own car and I could drive where-ever I liked. Me and my friends did not use it to get around Canberra, to allow us to have a social life, to get to and from work/school. Yep, totally useless.
….idiot.
Dave
27 Aug 10 at 8:46 am
Just privatise it by gifting it. Either it will service the community, become profitable or be divested.
I am sure that (at least one of) the private Sydney bus lines run at a profit with no subs. It’s in the IPART data (see p.21
).
.
27 Aug 10 at 9:25 am
I’ve used ACTION and found it to be a pretty good service. If you have to get to Civic or Braddon and you’re a 5 minute walk from a bus stop, it works well.
Having said that, the buses are rarely full, and they don’t run as frequently as you’d like.
daddy dave
27 Aug 10 at 10:13 am
If you deregulate taxis will it not drive down services . Any yob with a shonky car can ply for hire and drive out clean and knowlegable drivers.
john malpas
27 Aug 10 at 10:34 am
“Any yob with a shonky car can ply for hire and drive out clean and knowlegable drivers.”
No offence, but the taxi industry doesn’t really inspire me. Thier titular head in NSW admitted the licensing was a exercise of monopoly.
.
27 Aug 10 at 10:37 am
Come on, the answer is a monorail network.
steve from brisbane
27 Aug 10 at 10:37 am
I certainly agree about deregulating the taxi industry, but shutting down ACTION would be horrible policy.
The many students (esp the international ones who are a substantial industry for Canberra) and the elderly who use ACTION often have no ways of using cars (and even deregulated couldn’t afford taxis).
Despite its large size/small density Canberra is well designed for public transport, and buses cause little congestion on the roads (It’s also worth noting that steps are in place to move the bus lanes into the wide middle strips of Northbourne, Adelaide Avenue etc)
Given climate issues and the lack of adequate parking in the city/parliamentary triangle, it would be ill-designed policy for the ACT to discourage the use of public transport. Ideally as Canberra increases in population/density it will move to a system of light rail between the hubs & then a smaller bus service amongst the suburbs.
I doubt a private system could run in the ACT but if a decent trial could be set up without interfering with existing services it would be worth pursing. Otherwise ACTION while certainly with its faults, is a necessary public service. If you think otherwise, just look at Canberra roads on days of heavy rain. They are much much slower and parking a nightmare as people take the easy option of driving in. ACTION takes a solid chunk of vehicles off the road. If anything I’d say the govt should expand it so as to encourage more use in the face of this report, rather than cutting it down.
Andrew Carr
27 Aug 10 at 10:41 am
the answer is that no self-respecting libertarian should even be living in a planned, artificial city like Canberra
jtfsoon
27 Aug 10 at 10:42 am
“I doubt a private system could run in the ACT but if a decent trial could be set up without interfering with existing services it would be worth pursing. Otherwise”
Doubt it all you like but Western Sydney has profitable private providers.
“They are much much slower and parking a nightmare as people take the easy option of driving in.”
Maybe they can use those high local taxes to you know, build more parking?
.
27 Aug 10 at 10:43 am
So, let me get this straight:
Cars = individualism = good.
Buses = collectivism = bad.
But the town planning and wide roads that make Canberra so well suited to car travel are not some kind of natural state – they are the result of political choices and public subsidies that favour road transport.
So why is privatising or shutting down public transport the obvious libertarian solution here? How about tolls that reflect the costs of building, maintaining and policing the roads? Then we’d see how popular public transport really is.
Sam Roggeveen
27 Aug 10 at 10:57 am
Steve:
is there a chance the track could bend?
TimT
27 Aug 10 at 11:35 am
Andrew, for $77m per year, you could give all the poor, busted-arse flat broke students a second hand car and a fuel card and still be in front. You know all those clunkers Gillard wants to buy? Give them to the students instead.
Although since Canberra wants to go green, they should all be given a cargo bike instead. They’ll need to exercise to keep warm as they won’t be able to afford the heating bills.
boy on a bike
27 Aug 10 at 12:02 pm
Not sure I get the reference, Tim.
Anyway, it could be designed as a giant Pentagram. No bends needed, and the clear demonic import would drive Steven Fielding over the edge.
steve from brisbane
27 Aug 10 at 12:17 pm
Not on your life my Hindu friend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw
jtfsoon
27 Aug 10 at 12:25 pm
Why do we mess around spending billions of dollars on stupid public transport that everyone says they will use in polls but never do unless they have to.
We’re a car culture. We use cars because they’re damn comfortable.
Public transport for the inner city is fine. Build better roads in the outer perimeters and stop the waste.
JC
27 Aug 10 at 12:30 pm
JC…. sigh. No, never mind.
Jarrah
27 Aug 10 at 12:34 pm
Canberra does not need public transport. It needs a good road network and flexible and inexpensive taxis.
Of course it doesn’t. It was never set up that way. The idea is preposterous.
Samuel, you should try to explain all this to your local member elect, Andrew Light and see if he can whip up a CBA along the ABC-is-right-wing but in reverse.
JC
27 Aug 10 at 12:35 pm
oops sorry… It should read Andrew Leigh… instead of Andrew Light. It wasn’t my computer that made the error. It did that myself in a sorta freudian slip.
JC
27 Aug 10 at 12:38 pm
The focus on improving public transport should be in the large cities such as Sydney and Melbourne.
Samuel, you gotta stop this stuff as it seems it’s a virus that’s hit everyone.
Public transport will NOT work in Sydney or Melbourne except inner city because commuting is diffuse. Only 15% of the population travel to the CBD and 85% of commuting is cross crossing the burbs. We simply need good cars and lots of roads that are efficiently priced.
Read Alan Moran’s piece on what a stooge this public transport stuff is.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5052
JC
27 Aug 10 at 12:47 pm
ACTION is terrible. It’s also many people’s only option, particularly the young, aged or infirm, and adults who can’t afford a car. BOAB’s solution will work for the last category, but not the first two. We can’t empty the city of kids and pensioners, so what to do?
Public transport is only feasible with a certain density. Canberra has been designed to have a particularly low density, which won’t change anytime soon.
The only thing to do is accept subsidised buses as part of the cost of low-density living. It’s roughly $220 a year per person.
Jarrah
27 Aug 10 at 12:48 pm
Jokes aside, we should all heed the moral of that Simpsons’ program: a monorail will devastate the local economy and turn the place into an apocalyptic wasteland.
Then again we are talking about Canberra here so…
TimT
27 Aug 10 at 12:54 pm
There was a fantastic EconTalk podcast with Mike Munger about how the city of Santiago, Chile, replaced their unregulated private bus system with a top-down designed public system. The new system turned out badly. (Probably not a surprise to people here.) It’s more expensive and the waiting times are ridiculous.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/07/munger_on_the_p.html
Followup podcast here:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/08/munger_on_priva.html
Dangph
27 Aug 10 at 2:37 pm
I thought bicycles were meant to be the answer to Canberra’s transport woes?
HeathG
27 Aug 10 at 2:39 pm
“Just privatise it by gifting it. Either it will service the community, become profitable or be divested.”
What does gifting mean, in this context?
Mitch
27 Aug 10 at 3:55 pm
Jarrah
The subsidy might only cost the average Canberra resident $220 – but you are lumping in an awful lot of non-taxpayers (such as babies and school kids and pensioners). I’d say the cost of the subsidy per family is more like $1,000 per family.
You then have to ask how much the subsidy is per captive rider. ie, if the subsidy is $77 million per year, and there are 50,000 school kids and invalid pensioners who can’t drive, then they are being subsidised to the tune of $1540 per year.
boy on a bike
27 Aug 10 at 4:18 pm
What about a modest rebate for pensioners on taxi faress and (privately provided) bus routes, and for students on bus routes?
Mitch
27 Aug 10 at 4:22 pm
Corporatise it but give the shares to the citizens of the ACT.
.
27 Aug 10 at 4:54 pm
What amuses me is that if the Greens see a smokestack at a factory producing goods that people actually want to buy, they want to shut it down. But if they see a taxpayer subsidised bus with no passengers chugging around spewing fumes out the tailpipe, it is a gift to Gaia? Talk about a morally bankrupt ideology.
asf
27 Aug 10 at 5:46 pm
A dozen comments have been posted on the public transport issue since I made my comment late this morning. Yet mine is still ‘awaiting moderation’.
How come?
[Sorry about that - comments come out of moderation when I access the system and see them in the queue and then approve them. Sinc]
A dozen comments have been posted on the public transport issue since I made my comment late this morning. Yet mine is still ‘awaiting moderation’.
How come?
[Sorry about that - comments come out of moderation when I access the system and see them in the queue and then approve them. Sinc]
Sam Roggeveen
27 Aug 10 at 6:05 pm
“So why is privatising or shutting down public transport the obvious libertarian solution here? How about tolls that reflect the costs of building, maintaining and policing the roads? Then we’d see how popular public transport really is.”
When fares go up 1000% on the usual ACTION and City Rail prices?
.
27 Aug 10 at 6:34 pm
Anecdote 1:
I used to occasionally fly to Canberra on work trips. The taxis at the airport were optionally shared; that is, they’d set up a system where separate passengers each paid 60% of the bill or something to go to roughly similar places. Never seen that anywhere else. The line for the taxi was horrendous, however not as bad as Sydney airport. After the first few trips I switched to driving there from the Sydney CBD, which took a similar amount of time.
Greego
27 Aug 10 at 6:42 pm
Anecdote 2:
On one of these trips, I wanted to catch a bus from my hotel in Dickson to Belconnen which was an hourly service. Got there on time, the bus didn’t arrive, so ended up waiting 75 mins or so for one to arrive. This was in ~35 deg heat too. After yelling at the bus driver for leaving people in a major area in peak time, in the heat with no information about why the bus didn’t come, he said that the first bus was diverted to another area because that area’s bus had broken down and there was no way of getting information to us. I complained to ACTION and got no response. *shrug*
Greego
27 Aug 10 at 6:43 pm
Canberra has a bus service?
I assumed everyone who lived there was on the Government teat and entitled to a Com Car.
(Which begs the question, how do the lowly Com Car drivers get home after work)?
Pedro the Ignorant
27 Aug 10 at 10:01 pm
“Third, deregulate the taxi industry – driving the price of taxi licenses to zero.”
This is the most important step to actually getting an efficient bus service.
Buses actually spend a lot of time driving around with no passengers in them – just following the schedule.
It would make more sense if buses could be requested, and follow dynamic routes, rather than operting to fixed schdules. But that would make them taxis in the law’s eyes, and would each require a taxi license.
What would be a good market solution is driven out by excessive government intervention.
2dogs
28 Aug 10 at 1:06 am
I think Sam’s point is a valid one. If we are against subsidy for bases, we should be against subsidies for roads. If Bird taucht me one thing, is the idea of user-pay system for roads.
Boris
28 Aug 10 at 2:51 am
How would you do it, Boris?
JC
28 Aug 10 at 2:53 am
Higher prices for parking (to adequately reflect supply and demand) would not only make parking easier, but probably move more onto public transport.
“Doubt it all you like but Western Sydney has profitable private providers.”
I know this, but that doesn’t mean they would be profitable in Canberra. All for trying it however.
Jason – Canberra is the most libertarian city in the country in terms of social views. Economics needs a bit of work, but often better run than the bigger states. I don’t see how the planned nature of the cities layout makes it anti-libertarian. Makes for a more efficient and appealing place to live, why are these negative values for libertarians?
Andrew Carr
28 Aug 10 at 12:11 pm
libertarian “social” views? heh.
Peter Patton
28 Aug 10 at 12:19 pm
Canberra is the most libertarian city in the country in terms of social views.
Please, we’ve heard that before Andrew. Unless you have the economics that goes with it, having sex with whom you want doesn’t really cut it any more.
JC
28 Aug 10 at 12:23 pm
“Makes for a more efficient and appealing place to live”
Sydney and Caberra are just as planned for as long enough to make technology and infrastructure relevant.
Both suffer from onerous planning. Less well off families pretty much cannot afford a home.
…Walter Burley Griffin was probably a better planner than the NSW Government…who consistently ignored Bradfield.
.
28 Aug 10 at 12:29 pm
Other than cheap taxi licenses, measures to make riding small motorcycles safe to ride is the way to go. We know this is a cost-effective mode of transport, simply because of the ubiquity of motorcycle use in many poorer countries. Good transport need not be expensive. Moving towards congestion tax might open up several hours a day where there was enough motorcycle usage to make it safe.
Karl
28 Aug 10 at 12:38 pm
How about charging motorcycles correctly? Generally they are overtaxed in comparison to cars. Drop the taxes on bikes.
.
28 Aug 10 at 12:41 pm
Consider the position of the politician who takes measures that promote motorcycle use? He will be blamed for the brain damage and general carnage of the new motorcycle riders who wind up getting in accidents. So supposing you take the tax entirely off motorbikes. Take away the registration fee. No tolls on toll roads for smaller bikes.
“Free at last. Free at last” as one famous reverend once said. Every small motorbike that gets bought reduces fuel dependency and traffic congestion.
But clearly you must roll these changes out with a plan to bring down the death and injury rate associated with motorbikes. No politician wants to be blamed for that. And yet the potential is there, through motorbikes, to massively bring down congestion and fuel costs.
Karl
28 Aug 10 at 10:08 pm
I think we should paraphrase Rudd: “I make no apologies about any unlucky or irresponsible people dying once they attempt to get out of bed and break their necks”
.
28 Aug 10 at 10:11 pm
You don’t want to bury the idea in flippancy. Bikes are only really dangerous for two reasons; excessive speed and the existence of cars on the road. You could have two kids doubling to school on one bike, and be safe, if there was some way to avoid cars and some way to keep their top speed under 30k’s most of the time. It does bear thinking about and not just trying to trash the idea.
Taking a 70 kilo person several miles to work in a two tonne diesel vehicle, takes up a lot of resources, despite the diesel engine being so efficient. The vehicle fills up the road-space. Fills up parking space. More fuel is burned then the owner would really wish there to be. And so forth. That same vehicle is efficient for four people going to COSCO’s and filling up with cheap gear.
But consider the hassle of a bike at the moment. At the moment the situation is so unsafe, you’ve got to have the hassle of wearing a helmet and perhaps full protective leather. But the bike itself does not have the storage space for you to offload all this junk when you are where you were planning to get. So the problem takes serious thought. If you can guarantee a safe slower lane, where possible. Or do other things to make the bikes safe, perhaps in terms of road rules and design, and you just need to jump on and drive pretty slowly to where you are going, thats a ride that only costs a few cents, no time added to the drive-time, no hassle looking for parking, no getting up in thick leather gear and then having to take it off and stow it away.
If you had the combination of safe small bike riding and cheap taxi licenses you have these problems mostly beat already.
Karl
29 Aug 10 at 7:48 am
There is nothing in the philosophy of liberty that demands that the public roads be unsafe for bike riders. Here is a good demonstration of why the motorcycle and cheap taxi solution isn’t going to happen via supply and demand or by acting as if the status quo is akin to some sort of libertarian neutrality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKP8kVMd7x8
Karl
29 Aug 10 at 11:38 am
Here is what one would think would be the solution right here. But its never going to happen, unless there was for many years, ubiquitous congestion taxes, with the skinny, lighter vehicles getting a bit of a free ride. Also with all the taxes taken off, except for congestion taxes. Eventually the price of these would come down under the right conditions. But we are never going to get the economies of scale for these to be dirt cheap. And only because of bad policy all over.
Essentially what we have here is a motorcycle with an exoskeleton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qZXDQOpNlU
Karl
29 Aug 10 at 4:37 pm