For a sombre and completely up to date reminder of what’s really driving transport policy today , beyond the platitudes of transport plans, have a read of the independent panel report assessing the Environmental Effects Statement on the Frankston bypass
First let’s remind ourselves that the go ahead for this road was given by the Premier prior to the Environmental Effects Statement being completed. It highlights that once a road is on the agenda, preordained, not only will nothing stand in the way of it being built, but that the power of the road building industry, feeding and catering as it does to our society’s car dependency, is sufficient to overturn democratic and theoretically objective checks and balances in the system.
The panel report was released in April this year.
The EES and the panel were asked to consider the greenhouse gas implications of building a new freeway. Clearly this is an important consideration at a time when the knowledge of dangerous climate change is well known, when there is acceptance even from the state government of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60%, by 2050, when the world’s scientists are telling us we need to cut emissions by half by 2020 to have a chance of a safe climate, and head to zero emissions as soon as possible.
Greenhouse gas emissions from transport are 16.5% of Victoria’s emissions. Emissions from cars across Australia went up 25% between 1990 and 2005 and are forecast to rise a further 27% between 2010 and 2020. Emissions from commercial vehicles rose 44% between 1990 and 2005, and are forecast to increase by 27 per cent between 2010 and 2020. These expected rises are even with ‘measures’ such as greater fuel efficiency being taken to try to stem the rise.
The panel acknowledged that the new road will encourage more people to travel by road and to travel further. However, their response to this part of their terms of reference was limited:
We have broader concerns because we don’t think that a project by project approach to greenhouse gas emissions is appropriate with respect to transport infrastructure. Sustainability issues of land use and transport need to be addressed at the broad metropolitan scale. Melbourne @ 5 million and the Victorian Transport Plan recognise sustainability issues. We do not think it is appropriate to single out specific capital works programs for off-setting in the absence of a broader process.
This begs the question of course as to what actual mechanisms are outlined in the Victoria Transport Plan and Melbourne @ 5 million that will actually result in a reduction in emissions. The reality is they just aren’t there. They are paid lip service to, but serious reductions of greenhouse gas emissions from transport is not built into either of these plans.
It is noteworthy that the panel report for the Eastlink (then Scoresby Integrated Transport Corridor) EES said very similar things a decade earlier:
However, these issues are of a much broader regional scale and depend on overall government initiatives if a reduction in Greenhouse gases is to be achieved. The Panel would strongly support such initiatives undertaken by both Commonwealth and Victorian governments and considers that these should be given considerable attention as soon as possible if the objectives of the reduction of Greenhouse gases are to be achieved.
Unfortunately we haven’t seen much progress in giving these initiatives ‘considerable attention’ in the last ten years.
Assessment of what is required has been done. Cutting carbon emissions from transport to the levels needed will require all of extraordinary advances in fuel efficiency, facilitating and providing infrastructure to get people out of their cars and onto public transport, walking and cycling, to get freight onto rail, and a reduction in travel overall.
The critical point overlooked by the panel is of course that if such measures were undertaken effectively and to the levels required to actually reduce emissions, then the rationale for a new freeway is severely reduced.
However, the EES and the panel didn’t seriously consider such issues as travel demand management and serious mode shift. In fact, surprise, surprise the three options considered by the EES all included the freeway. Once again an option of not providing the freeway and dramatically improving public transport access was not seriously addressed.
The arguments around the potential of improved public transport and hence decreasing the need for the road were essentially dismissed by the panel. They stated that the freeway is needed because transport modelling shows that demand will grow even if better public transport is provided, there are no plans to provide new rail services, and there’s no room on the existing roads for express bus services.
What this means in a nutshell is that despite policy frameworks of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, of creating mode shift, when it comes to the pointy end of transport planning this all counts for nought – it’s all determined by the transport models which essentially say the future is going to be the same as the past. These models don’t model the substantial mode shifts that could be possible and desirable by providing extensive high quality public transport, limiting or increasing the costs of road based private and commercial travel, or the mode shifts that are likely due to massive increases in the cost of oil. These scenarios don’t exist in model land.
Paul Mees in his book A Most Public Solution quotes ST Atkins in 1976, and notes that nothing has changed since:
‘ we have a series of excessively complicated and expensive models using unsubstantiated and biased techniques to provide information of dubious accuracy for answering the wrong questions.’
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