Considerations on a public transport press release

I'd like to comment briefly on a press release in my home state this week about a new tram route in my my home city's south east. Now, in considering this, I'd like to begin with some history.

In the early 1960s, my (adoptive) family moved to Syndal, which was then on the outskirts of Melbourne (it is now close to the geographic centre of Melbourne's population). We were able to do so because the suburb had a railway (built in the 1920s). In that era, private car ownership was relatively expensive, and commuting by car was a nightmare. As a result, back in the 60s, public transport was a staple of life (as it had been in many previous decades, once we grew past the stage of being able to walk to work), and providing that sort of public infrastructure was considered desirable by public and politicians alike.

However, better and local manufacturing of cars was reducing the price of cars, and advertising on that newfangled thing called television started to have an influence, and, as a result people started wanting to use their cars more, and we started down the short-sighted path of building more freeways to cure existing road traffic problems that then grew in response to the new freeways. In the 1970s, car lobbies even advocated for having cars on roads that were built above ground level, with ground reserved for pedestrians. (If they had swapped the order, it would have made more sense: pedestrians are lighter than cars, so the higher levels would have been less expensive, and that way the pedestrians would have had the light and possibly clearer air ... which might have been why the car people wanted it the other way ... )

Nevertheless, in that era, we commenced a major piece of railway infrastructure - the City Loop. Now the City Loop in itself was an indication, in my opinion, that something had gone wrong with public planning, as it was retrofitting infrastructure to an already developed area ... however, that was probably due to the inability of predicting, in the early 1900s, the post-Second World War rise of the suburbs. (The sacrifice of the green belt, on the other hand, in response to the lies of developers that a house with a garden was like bushland was an unforgiveable error that necessitated the recent imposition of green wedges.) Importantly, public infrastructure was still being spent on - although that now also included major road works.

The independence of travel by car was popular, and trains and trams were increasingly crowded and unpleasant. Political parties are often good at working out what voters want, and thus we were seeing infrastructure spending shifting from trains and trams to roads, and it was no longer a given that a new suburb would have non-road public transport.

Government spending also increased in this era on socially beneficial matters such as welfare - spending which I consider essential, but which were seen by many as contributing to life becoming more difficult financially. That was the era of high inflation, and economic difficulties reflected international events such as the oil crisis (enacted by Arab nations against those supporting the nation of Israel that many of those Arab nations had just tried to snuff out - unsuccessfully) - but politicians never like admitting that events are beyond their control, even if they are (as is, in my opinion, so often the case when considering economic matters: mind you, responses have improved to the extent that there is some control, but it is still limited in comparison to major international trends and events).

Combine this with the underhanded and evil machinations to undermine fairness (enacted by a few rich people) from the 1970s, and we saw "economic rationalism", the early form of neoliberalism, strike - and infrastructure began being viewed as a matter for private industry. (This era also saw the use of loans for infrastructure, which provided, in my opinion, good intergenerational sharing of equity, shoved off the scene by short-sighted, downright stupid ideology.)

It has taken nearly three decades to come to an awareness of how stupid those views and that ideology were, but there is still a struggle over infrastructure as it is politically fashionable (well, almost crucial) to promise lower taxes - and taxes, as the saying goes, are the price we pay for having a civil society - that is, for having roads, railways, hospitals, schools, defence forces, welfare, and so forth.

We're still hampered by the staggering selfishness of society, partly due to the financial difficulty of living as we wish to or think we should be able to (the growing size and flashiness of houses we can no longer afford is an indication of that), and partly due to the influence of reactionary conservative governments and their oligarchical backers. This has shown itself as what is virtually a war between elected governments now - as exemplified by the former state government trying to compel the next to build a project which favoured private car use over public transport.

As it turned out, Victorians elected a government which has been trying to remedy the public transport deficit (amongst other matters). The press release I referred to is part of  that suite of tasks. In light of that, I consider there are three sets of questions which can validly be asked about the subject of the press release:

1. Is work proceeding at an appropriate  proper rate on remedying the public transport deficit/backlog?
   This includes issues such as:
    - is the timing of this project proper, or are there more urgent needs? (Ideally, this would have been combined with construction of Monash University in the 1950s, just as building Melbourne Airport in the 1960s should have automatically included a train.)
    - are there other valid ways to meet the needs of this project? (A resounding "no" is the answer to this question, in my opinion: we have decades of underspending on public transport to catch up on.)
    - are the public benefits sufficient to justify the private costs (specifically, any resumptions of people's homes - for which, in my opinion, we should pay far more than market value)?
   
2. Are the details of this project appropriate?
   This covers the questions the media has been asking, about the route, gross costs (the questions rarely match costs with benefits) and options.
   One of the things I have liked about our current state government is the level of consultation - notably, on the proposed North East Link. I am, however, unaware of the details of any consultation to date on this proposal (although there will be an election before any construction begins), I have not seen any map of the proposed route.
   
3. Have we learned the lesson of inadequate public transport spending to the extent that new suburbs will be spared the problems of inadequate public transport and the pain and disruption of remedial works by having adequate public transport included upfront?
   This particularly applies to some of the planned development to the west of Melbourne, most of which seems to include rail, but I'm not sure whether that is adequate and will be properly timed, as I haven't spoken to any town planners on that of late.
   My point is that, when I see the public transport deficit/backlog being addressed, I want to be sure that we're not creating that for some other, new area. Ideally, I would like to hear a politician commit to a realistic level of taxation to enable us to have a civil society, but I doubt any politician could answer that honestly and be elected - which is a terrible indictment of the selfishness. stupidity and/or short-sightedness of voters.

On that last point, we have an authority which provides independent, expert advice on infrastructure; that is good and admirable. Where this falls down is that it then goes to competing political ideologies and voter sensibilities (or the lack thereof ... SIGH ... ) to make a decision about the needs of future Victorians. We currently have a government which is committed to generally consulting - which is also good and admirable. Is there a further development we can make to either de-politicise taxation, or provide voters with sufficient information to understand the broader significance of their electoral choices?

We do have positions to provide specific, expert advice - for instance, the Solicitor-General, the (Commonwealth) Chief Scientist (the existence of which makes a mockery of the neoliberals twisted response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which called for the creation a similar Indigenous role, albeit in a different format), and the aforementioned Infrastructure Victoria.

We also have proposals, from time to time, for new advisory positions - for instance, I wrote about an idea I had for a Chief Criminologist here (original idea here; this was provided, to a large extent, by the position of Community Safety Trustee, created by the current state government - and a good indication, in my opinion, of their commitment to community and consultation), and I reviewed a suggestion for a Commissioner for Political Plurality here.

Do we also need an expert to advise on level of taxation with regard to its effect on having a civil society?

I'm aware that we have a wide range of experts who comment on economic matters, including taxation, and that many of them take a broader view on matters such as discrimination (which denies the economy access to the resources which are the skills and time of those people being discriminated against - Dr. Andrew Leigh, Member for Fenner, was the first person to demonstrate that to me), but, with respect, that is not actually the same thing. Elected politicians are hamstrung by the politics of having to get re-elected - and I would rather acknowledge that, and come up with a system that works, than trying to get MPs to be brave enough to put their jobs on the line (which quite a few do, in fact, and which many voters are too afraid to do in their lives ... ).

So ... do we need a Commissioner for Civil Society?


(I was going to comment on a few other press releases (on regional training and consultation on training), but I have run out of steam, and will leave this post at that.)