Month: February 2023

Toll Relief Mania

On February 21, 2023

In the lead up to next month’s state election Chris Minns and NSW Labor have been dropping transport policy ideas like they’re going out of fashion.

Much of it seems to be ill-thought-out populist dogma that is, at best, harmless: mobile phone chargers at busy train stations, or manufacturing more trains locally. The first is a cute irrelevance, while the second could be a boon for Newcastle but is really an employment and business policy, rather than a transport one.

Last week’s high-profile policy unveiling is anything but harmless.

If elected, NSW Labor has promised to introduce a $60 weekly cap per vehicle on toll roads in Sydney thus ending ‘Toll Mania’. Their argument is simple and easy to pitch in the short-attention-span world of social media: public transport fares are capped, so tolls should be too.

The logic is flawed and if this policy is introduced it will be bad news for the state. Let’s have a look at why.

Public transport is a social good, cars are not. We, collectively, want people to take public transport. Cars, usually carrying just one person, produce a negative externality to the city. They cause congestion, they pollute, they need to be parked somewhere all day and night and, once in awhile, they crash into a pedestrian or cyclist and kill them. We subsidise public transport because we can all get around faster, more healthily and safer when people use it. Just because we cap Opal fares does not mean we should cap tolls.
Induced demand. Cheaper tolls will encourage people to drive more. If you’re planning a trip for Saturday and you’ve reached your Opal cap, you know that you can take the train for free. Hooray! If Chris Minns’ policy becomes reality this logic will apply to toll roads. You could do laps on the M5/M7/M2/Eastern Distributor all weekend if you fancy. For free. Free for you, anyway.
There is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to tolls. The NSW government collects all public transport fares in the state and uses them to (partially) pay for all public transport service. This applies even if the bus or train is run by a private operator. Tolls do not work like this. One company, Transurban, owns almost all the toll roads in NSW. Contracts have been signed stipulating toll prices. If the NSW government changes the pricing structure, they will have to pay the shortfall to Transurban. If a driver hits the $60 weekly cap the rest of their ‘free trips’ will be paid for directly by the taxpayers of NSW.
NSW stands for New South Wales, not Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong. Minns’ is keen to point out that that the brunt of road tolls are worn by residents of Western Sydney. This is undoubtedly true. After all, our toll roads are in Sydney and the people that use them generally come from areas that lack high quality public transport or walkable mixed-use neighbourhoods. If this policy is enacted, residents from regional NSW, public transport users and anyone that does not regularly take toll roads will be directly subsidizing the road use of those that do. It’s a transfer from rural to urban, from public transport to motorists, from have-nots to haves.
This policy is regressive. It is targeted firmly at the middle. Labor have stated just 51,000 car owners will benefit from the policy. The rich don’t care about tolls, although they will benefit too. The poor are less likely to own a car and less likely to take toll roads often. This policy doesn’t reduce tolls in a way that benefits occasional users such as people from the country, public transport users and those that work locally. It will only benefit regular toll users that are clocking in more than $60 a week.

A photo of Chris Minns standing on a freeway overpass appearing to be in animated conversation. — Chris Minns is promising to end Toll Mania in Sydney by giving our state’s heaviest 50,000 users a free ride on the roads courtesy of the rest of the state. Photo credit: The St George Leader

A lot of people, I’m thinking about taxi and rideshare drivers, tradies and long-distance commuters, spend a lot more than $60 a week on tolls. These users will have their toll bill reduced dramatically and will take more trips on toll roads than they otherwise would. Why not? They’re free! All this extra money will go straight to Transurban shareholders, courtesy of the NSW taxpayer. This policy isn’t just populist, it is corporate welfare on a staggering scale.

The people of NSW deserve a government that can think critically about the rapidly changing world we live in and introduce infrastructure and policy to help us all survive and thrive. This policy demonstrates that NSW Labor are thinking only about residents of Sydney, do not take climate change or urban congestion seriously and are playing fast and loose with our collective wealth.

A toll cap will push more people onto motorways and off public transport. It will be expensive, diverting transport funding away from public transport projects and towards corporate profit. It is a regressive policy that demonstrates a profound ignorance of the complexity of our state’s transport system.

If you’re thinking of taking a punt on Labor to win the election next month you should put your money where your mouth is and buy a few Transurban shares, too.

Both Sides of the Political Divide

If you’ve spent any time in Sydney in the last 30 odd years it goes without saying that building new toll roads, alongside approving new fossil fuel projects ($), is about as close as we get to bipartisan policy in NSW. The M4, M2, M5, Eastern Distributor, Cross City Tunnel, Lane Cove Tunnel and the M7 all opened well before Westconnex got underway and it’s a he said/she said as to which major party is more responsible for the excess of toll roads in Sydney.

‘Toll relief’ projects go back almost as far and enjoy similar bipartisan support. The catch being that, with the exception of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tunnel tolls, any ‘toll relief’ scheme is a direct cash transfer to our privately owned tollway operators and the name ‘Transurban’ just keeps cropping up.

A screenshot of a web search for 'who owns sydney's toll roads'. There are a bunch of results and they prominently mention Transurban. — A quick search doesn’t leave much doubt as to who owns Sydney’s toll roads.

Bob Carr kicked off this habit all the way back in 1995 when he was elected on the promise of offering cashback for drivers on the M5 motorway; now part owned by the State Government and part owned by Transurban.

As toll roads spread like tentacles across Sydney a more holistic approach to toll relief was deemed necessary, one that didn’t quite so obviously porkbarrel a few swing seats in Southwestern Sydney.

In 2017 Gladys Berejiklian announced free car rego if you rack up a big enough annual toll bill. In 2019 the scheme was expanded to give discounted registration to moderate toll road users. Just last year the Perrottet government expanded the scheme even further and adopted the cashback model whereby drivers receive a portion of the tolls they pay back directly, in this case after exceeded a given threshold.

Not to be outdone by the Liberals, Minns’ is keen to make sure that the Labor party are offering the biggest boon to Transurban and incentivising car usage the most.

What’s most problematic about the latest iteration as put forward by NSW Labor is that it offers totally free toll road use beyond a threshold. Perrottet’s version only offers a partial discount on toll fees and spreads this benefit to a wider number of people, not just our state’s heaviest toll road users. The Labor version is more costly, less inclusive and less progressive.

Just one more toll road bro

What’s obvious through all of this is that the dream of ‘Build-Operate-Transfer’ was always too good to be true. We were promised massively discounted motorway construction where the brunt of the cost would be borne by the user and seamlessly managed by the private sector.

What we’ve ended up with is a classic late-stage-capitalism grift: the Government splits the construction bill with the private sector who sign lengthy operational contracts with over inflated toll rates and guaranteed quarterly increases, voters complain and so the taxpayer steps back in to foot the bill, only now instead of just paying for the construction of the thing we have to meet the terms of a contract designed to provide ongoing return to Transurban’s shareholders. One of whom, incidentally, is the now former Finance Minister. Although if you have a managed super fund, which is basically every person that has ever had a job, then you’re probably one too.

At this point the road out from the downward spiral is long and politically treacherous. It’s a safe bet that the two major parties will continue their one-upmanship when it comes to new toll roads and subsequent ‘toll relief’.

Come to think of it, whichever way you’re punting this election the safest bet is on Transurban.

Canadian Pacific train on the Kooteney line on the banks of the Columbia River.

One day a year the Golden Age of rail travel returns to rural Canada

By Jed C

On February 10, 2023

In Transport

Rural Canada can be a sad place to be a transit enthusiast.

I sit in my living room, scrolling through social media, watching my brethren enjoying the trappings of transit fandom across the globe.

But here, in rural British Columbia, there are no grand openings of new train lines to attend, no new rolling stock to spot in testing and no functioning transit system to get about on.

On the other hand, freight trains abound!

In the small town on the banks of the Columbia River in the Canadian Rockies where I find myself, big red diesel locomotives emblazoned with ‘Canadian Pacific’ trundle by several times a day and I’m fortunate enough to have them practically in my backyard.

Sometimes they’re pulling assorted goods wagons, mostly they’re laden with coal. One thing I never get to see going by are the smiling faces of trans-continental travellers.

North America is home to some of the world’s busiest and most productive freight railways but the passenger services are famously skeletal. They make NSW Trainlink and V-Line look almost European by comparison. Still better than South Australia, though.

Amtrak, and its Canadian counterpart Via, provide a barebones service across the continent. Sadly for me, that service does not extend very far in Western Canada.

In September 2022 Amtrak restarted their Covid-paused Cascades service from Portland and Seattle to Vancouver, BC, which barely scratches the bottom corner of the province.

Via (pronounced in the North American style with emphasis on the ‘V’ sound: a cleverly chosen name for the bilingual country’s national rail operator being a French word that has been adopted into English) run a couple of routes across BC but they are few, far between and frequency is measured in ‘trips per week’.

It wasn’t always this way.

Canadian Rail History 101

The history of rail service in Canada is expectedly complicated.

The abridged version is that the many varied and competing private and/or publicly funded railways that sprung up in the golden era of rail construction were consolidated through the 20^th century to become two huge companies that own almost all the track in the country (and quite a bit in the United States besides): Canadian Pacific (CP) and Canadian National (CN – of CN Tower fame).

Each company has its own extensive freight network and their own Trans-Continental routes. The more Northern route across the country that passes through cities like Edmonton and Saskatoon is operated by Canadian National and the more Southerly route, passing through Calgary and Regina, by Canadian Pacific.

A screenshot from the Canadian Rail Atlas — Red for CP, Blue for CN. Only tracks in Canada are shown. Via’s passenger services are highlighted. Notice how all those lines crisscrossing the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan gather together into a single valley as they approach Vancouver. That is the Thompson River Valley which features the eponymous river, the Trans-Canada Highway and two sets of railway tracks: CN on the northside of the river and CP on the south. This screenshot is pulled from the Canadian Rail Atlas which has a bunch of toggleable layers showing rail service across the country.

In the Golden Age of the railways both companies ran competing transcontinental services for passengers along their respective routes. They fought for business with tight timetabling, reliable services and grandiose marketing campaigns.

1920s Canadian Pacific tourism poster advertising the Fastest Train Across the Continent — This 1924 poster shows what the railways thought discerning customers wanted: fast speeds, stunning vistas and class based segregation!

As the postwar decades brought competition from jet aircraft, and high-speed highways became the order of the day, demand for (and profitability of) the railways plummeted. The railway companies started to close passenger routes forcing the Federal Government to intervene by creating Via to provide passenger service and keep the show on the…rails.

When two (transcontinental train services) become one

When Via first launched in 1977 there were two transcontinental trains: the Canadian that had been run by Canadian Pacific on the Southern route and CN’s Super Continental on the Northern route. Both trains ran every day in both directions.

As planes became faster and cheaper and highways better and more plentiful successive governments took a hatchet to Via’s funding leaving the railway to slowly reduce service and cancel routes.

Fast forward to 2023 and it’s a very different picture. There’s only one route now: it retains the Canadian name, but mostly runs along CN’s Northern route.

Since 1990, Calgary and Regina, the largest city in Alberta and the capital of Saskatchewan respectively, have had no intercity rail service at all.

The now abandoned Calgary Via station is in the podium below the city’s eponymous tower while Regina’s heritage listed Union Station is home to a Province-run Casino!

The Canadian is down to twice a week and delays are so bad that the timetable has been padded out by an extra 12 hours compared to mid-century travel times.

Via’s case isn’t helped by the growth of freight rail in that same time period. Freight is enjoying something of a rail renaissance in North America. Sadly, for train travelers, these freight trains get priority along the way which can leave passengers floundering in remote rail sidings for hours at a time.

It’s a predicament that makes it very, very hard for Amtrak and Via to increase services or guarantee reliability.

Things got so bad that in 2017 just 8% of trans-continental services arrived on time, and that’s despite the 12 hours of padding in the timetable!

The Golden Age in Golden

Golden, BC, was once a rail hub, founded to support the construction of the Trans-Canadian line through Kicking Horse Pass and Rogers Pass (both interesting tales). It’s still a busy freight hub, but passenger service has been declining since the 1950s when passenger services ended on the the Kootenay branch line to Cranbrook and beyond as the highway improved.

When The Canadian was rerouted in 1990, the town lost its last passenger rail service.

Greyhound stepped in to fill the gap, minus the undeniable style of long distance rail travel, largely replicating the train with a coach service between Vancouver and Calgary.

In 2020 Covid hit, and Greyhound pulled out of the Canadian market leaving many towns across the country with no intercity public transport at all. Lucky for Golden a bus line called Rider Express filled the gap providing a pricey coach service once or twice a day. Since then, anyone hoping to reach the mountain hamlet must have access to a motor vehicle, book a $200 airport shuttle or board a slow and expensive coach.

The more well-known nearby tourist towns of Lake Louise, Banff and Canmore have found themselves in a similar predicament. As the popularity of visiting the Rockies skyrockets, mid-century auto-focused planning decisions are causing major headaches. National Parks are replacing overcrowded parking lots with shuttle buses at popular spots like Lake Louise and the owners of Mt Norquay ski resort are considering building a new train line direct from Calgary airport to increase their customer base.

A photo of a train at dusk with spectacular mountains in the background and low fog settled over the river. — 3 CP locos pull a coal train north-bound on the Kootenay line on the banks of the Columbia River. Most likely bound for the Lower Mainland and beyond.

As of 2023 there is still one way to enjoy the magic of rail travel as you cross the Rocky Mountains along the (arguably more scenic) Canadian Pacific track, but you are going to have to pay for it. If you’ve got a spare $2000 per person you can take the Rocky Mountaineer tourist train that runs twice a week in the summer months. You’ll overnight at a hotel midway in Kamloops so it ends up taking 36 hours end to end, 3 times as long as the coach. You also won’t be able to get off in Golden, the train passes through but it doesn’t stop. This is purely a tourist train and is of no practical use for the people that live in the towns along the way. In fact, the train ends in Banff, which doesn’t have an airport or any other train service (yet!), so to get out of there you’ll have to either fork out for a return ticket, rent a car, or take a bus the last hour or so into Calgary.

Christmas Cheer

Each December, however, the sad plight of the Rocky Mountain railways is forgotten, if only for one beautiful neon-lit moment.

In a spectacular branding exercise meets goodwill generating foodbank fundraiser, each December, Canadian Pacific gives something back to the towns that their coal and freight trains ceaselessly rumble through. The Holiday Train brings some of that Wintry Christmas Magic we hear about from Australia, but that you can only truly obtain in the Northern latitudes.

The Canadian Pacific Canadian Holiday Train (they run an American version on their tracks south of the border) has run every year, Covid excepting, since 1999. Last year it left Montreal, in the East of the country, on November 27^th, stopping countless times on its way across Canada before finishing up in Metro Vancouver on December 18^th.

A crowd of people enjoy the entertainment of the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train in Banff on a winter night. — The Holiday Train hit the popular tourist destination of Banff at prime time, 7pm. I suspect a slightly smaller crowd greeted the train in Golden at 2pm the next day.

The train has a few bands and entertainers on-board and is adorned in Christmas lights. It pulls up in each town, possibly near, or at, the abandoned train station, the young (and young at heart…and old, and railway enthusiasts of all ages) take photos, the performers do a few numbers each and, in less than an hour, the train blows its horn and rolls another town down the line to do it all again.

For the towns in the Rocky Mountains and across the vast prairies of Central Canada that grew up alongside Canadian Pacific railways, it’s a beautiful but poignant reminder of what once was. In each town, for one brief hour in December, the Golden Age of rail travel returns.