Tag: Transport Planning Page 1 of 6

Suggested reading: Part One: Motor City.

The next scheduled stop on my trip was Syracuse in upstate New York. I wasn’t meeting my friend there for a few days so I had some time to make my way across leisurely.

Planning my trip East from Detroit I had the lyrics of Detroit or Buffalo looping around in my head:

Better pack up and go
Detroit or Buffalo
Anybody wanna know where, I don’t know
I don’t know
God knows everybody gotta go sometime
And I’m takin’ this train to the end of the line
Missin’ every mile that friend of mine

I wanted to take that train, if not to the end of the line than at least as far as Buffalo. I just didn’t feel like I’d be doing Barbara Keith justice boarding a Greyhound. That, I live in a (passenger) train-free area, and I don’t particularly enjoying short haul flying. So I wanted to use this trip as a chance to catch as many intercity trains as possible.

Unfortunately, heading East from Michigan is a huge blackhole in Amtrak’s often patchy coverage. It’s not as bad as Wyoming or South Dakota, but it’s pretty bad.

The Amtrak System Map. At this scale Southern Michigan looks like a train traveller’s delight! Source: wikimedia

Red are trains, green are buses. At this scale it’s clearer that all the trains in Michigan head West to Chicago. To head East on the Lakeshore you need to get to South Bend, Indiana or Toledo, Ohio. Source: Amtrak

I guess Ohio never forked out for some State-subsidised local Amtrak service like the Cascades in Washington and Oregon or the Wolverine in Michigan. This means that only long distance trains pass through Ohio and they are set up for travel across the State more than within in.

The busiest of these is the Lakeshore Limited. She is a flagship long distance passenger train, connecting what might just be America’s two most traditionally transit friendly cities, Chicago and New York (also Boston, the train splits at Albany with half heading South to NYC and the other half continuing East). Sadly, like most long distance Amtrak trains the Lakeshore only runs once a day. It also leaves Chicago at 9:30pm which I believe is designed to provide a direct connection with the Empire Builder and California Zephyr coming from the West. They arrive in Chicago midafternoon, so I guess Amtrak wants some leeway so it’s not refunding tickets and providing complimentary hotel beds left, right and centre.

This all means that the Lakeshore hits Toledo, Ohio at the travel-friendly time of 3:15am. It’s hard to justify taking a five and a half hour train trip when you know you’ll sleep or be totally zonked out the whole way and arrive at your destination not yet able to check-in but too tired to enjoy the sights and sounds.

That’s annoying, but still manageable. What makes this train basically uncatchable is that the Amtrak Thruway coach that connects from Detroit to Toledo inexplicably leaves Detroit at 9:30pm, arriving in Toledo at 10:35, a casual four and a half hours before the Lakeshore Limited is due. I have no idea why this is the case, and since the Amtrak station in Toledo is in a quiet, mostly industrial neighbourhood at the edge of downtown, that would be a long wait. Oh, and the Lakeshore runs late around half the time, earning it the clever nickname the “Lateshore Limited’.

So, I gritted my teeth, hit pause on Detroit or Buffalo and pressed play on Simon and Garfunkel’s America.

If I wasn’t so tight (and stubborn), for around 250 USDs there are multiple daily direct flights between the two cities. But I am (on both counts) and so I paid $70 for the pleasure of taking a series of crowded coaches to make the trip.

At 4:30pm, half an hour late, I boarded the bus from Detroit’s unloved Greyhound station bound for Cleveland. There I had an hour to attempt to find something to eat in the area that didn’t come from a vending machine, before jumping on a full Baron’s bus bound for Buffalo that pulled in at 11:30pm.

It was a long evening.

In Buffalo

Having spent plenty of time in Detroit but barely visited anywhere else in the Rustbelt I was labouring under the false impression that the faded glory of turn of the century America was best experienced in Detroit. How wrong I was. Buffalo’s downtown architecture was at least as epic, and they had the inspired idea to stick a light rail through the Downtown spine a good 40 years before the Q-Line was conceived.

Wide streets, tall buildings, homelessness: ‘merica!

Downtown Buffalo rejuvenation

I was only in Buffalo for a hot minute and was mainly there as a stopping off point for Niagara Falls. In the wanderings I did manage on my brief visit I was struck by two things:

1. Vibrant queer scene!

Buffalo has a bustling theatre scene and what appeared to be a very prominent queer scene as well. I think the fact that I rolled into town on the last night of Pride was probably a factor here but the bricks and mortar presence of gay spaces make it apparent this wasn’t just a one-off thing.

I mean come on people Buffalo’s nickname is the Queen City.

This one might be Pride specific. This is Main Street in the Theatre District. To the right of the frame is the portal where the Buffalo Metro stops activating Downtown’s retail core and heads underground for a quicker connection to the suburbs.

2. Attempts to ‘bring back Downtown’

So prior to this trip my thinking about urban blight and declining downtowns in the Rustbelt and beyond went something like this:

Early 20^th century: Streetcar suburbs, manufacturing boom, prosperous bustling downtown.
Mid century: Rise of the automobile, racial desegregation, growth of suburbia, freeway sprawl, loss of manufacturing jobs, decline of Downtown, abandoned buildings cleared for parking lots.
Late 20^th century: People realised suburbia is boring and diversity is good. Gentrification. Rise of Downtown as a cultural hub and desirable residential area with less of an emphasis as a commercial hub and very limited manufacturing (mainly just breweries).

In Buffalo I found out I was kinda right but I was missing a bit in the middle. What happened there (and I’m going to extrapolate and assume this was a general trend) was that when the decline began in the 1960s the city government put their heads together to figure out what they could do about it. This bit had always eluded me. I’d thought that once the Downtown starting to decline everyone just sort of shrugged and starting spending their time and money at suburban office parks and the new enclosed malls that sprung up on the edge of cities in the 1970s.

Being in Downtown Buffalo I realised that this was crazy. The architecture alone is staggering. City Hall looks like this:

The epic Buffalo City Hall completed in 1931 (eeep bad timing), the snazzy 2011 Federal Courthouse and an obelisk commemorating the assassination of President McKinley which took place in Buffalo in 1901. The City Hall is just as epic inside, but sadly the (free!) observation deck was closed on the day I went.

The amount of wealth and prestige Downtown must have been incredible. And of course, all those fancy bankers, industrials and city officials want a nice, bustling area next door to their office and steady demand for their various premises.

So Buffalo came up with an ambitious plan to fix Downtown. The idea was that since suburbia had sucked a lot of demand away, the existing area was too large and not what people wanted. Best to turn Downtown into the equivalent of a giant outdoor shopping mall. To do this all the activity would be funneled onto a single main street which would be partially enclosed and flanked by parking garages accessible directly from the freeway network. A new light rail would run up that main spine.

The bit I had never really considered is that all this ‘urban renewal’ was phenomenally expensive. It required a lot of expertise and money in an increasingly broke urban environment. The city had one shot to reinvent itself in the post-automobile world and the landscape we got is the legacy of that era in cities across the world, but most notably in the Rustbelt.

“The Regional Centre: A Comprehensive Plan for Downtown Buffalo” (1971) brought in all those ideas we know and hate: expansive ring freeways, abundant peripheral multistorey parking garages, a covered pedestrian mall, lots of full-block towers. A lot of this got built but what the planners didn’t count on is that if you cut off Downtown from the rest of the city like this there isn’t much incentive to build there or go there and so people don’t. THIS is why so many US cities have vacant lot car parks taking up entire city blocks. For years and years the demand for anything else to be built just hasn’t been there.

Downtown Buffalo today

Today Buffalo is a mix of incredible art-deco and late 19^th century architecture, a rather loud and imposing light rail that doesn’t run frequently enough and a very, very visible homeless population.

Whoever decided high floor streetcars with pop-out staircases on some carriages and at-grade boarding at a single door accessed through this edifice are a good idea needs to have a long hard think about what they’ve done.

Even the single street that the aforementioned 1970s renewal plan funneled all the retail into, Main Street, is too long for the amount of commercial demand. So while there are vibrant stretches of the street, particularly up in the Theatre district, there’s an awful lot of dead space around too and that’s just on the main street (Main Street). In more recent years cars have been reintroduced to some sections of the street in an attempt to bring back some life, even if it’s just people moving to and from their parked vehicles.

Like Detroit, I got the impression that Buffalonians love their city (more than the regular amount) and have continued their city’s legacy of punching about its weight culturally.

There’s no doubt Buffalo has a lot of problems, but all in all it’s the sort of city I’m kinda sad we don’t have in Australia. A place with a rich and vibrant arts and culture scene that isn’t an ‘alpha’ city with x millions of residents and sky-high rents. A place you can afford to live in a walkable neighbourhood that has interesting things going on.

Is that too much to ask?

Next up: Part 3: Niagara Falls, USA

One last thing before you go:

I’ve more or less abandoned my facebook and twitter accounts so come find me on mastodon if you fancy that early 2010s twitter vibe. Alternatively, sign up to get emailed when I post.

Travelling by Transit across the Rustbelt – Part 1: Motor City

By Jed C

On July 16, 2023

In Travel

From one autocentric city to another

The closest commercial airport to my home is YYC – Calgary International Airport. Like everything else in Alberta (often called the Texas of Canada, which can be a complement or an insult, depending on context, usually the latter) it is a sprawling piece of infrastructure. Airport hotels are literal miles away from the terminal across a sea of freeways, empty fields and the ubiquitous parking lots.

Given the Albertan love of (read: unfortunate need for) the automobile it makes sense that in May this year Westjet (known in Calgary simply as ‘the airline’) launched a direct flight to Detroit, the world’s infamous Motor City.

Of course, being me, I had no intention of making use of either airport’s abundant long-term parking, car rental offices or even taxi ranks. Instead, I arrived at YYC on the 300, a rapid (limited stops) bus route that runs from Downtown, up Centre Street and then to the Airport every 30 minutes. It’s a decent service and only costs the standard Calgary bus fare of $3.75, although as is common in North America the driver doesn’t offer change and I was ill-prepared, so I stuffed a $5 note into the fare box and climbed aboard.

A photo of a bus stop. — The 300 leaves from Centre Street in Calgary’s very ’90s Chinatown. The whole area (and transit to the airport) will be getting a massive refresh when the C-train Green Line opens in 2027.

Calgary Airport has a transit surcharge!?

A weird aside about the 300 fare: there are two bus routes to Calgary airport, each running at 30 minute daytime frequency; the 100 to the local C-train station and the 300 to Downtown. If you board either bus bound for the airport you pay the standard flat fare for riding Calgary Transit – $3.75 including a 90 minute transfer.

BUT, if you are leaving from Calgary airport on the 300 to Downtown, the ticket vending machines at the airport seem to imply you are supposed to buy a special $12 airport ‘boarding pass’ ticket. Sadly I didn’t photograph the vending machine and there doesn’t appear to be any particularly current information about this online so I’m not 100% on what the deal is. But, I did find a PDF on the YYC website from 2011 that, aside from a few fare hikes, seems to reflect the current situation.

12 years out of date but aside from a $4 increase in fare I don’t think anything has changed. Sourced here.

I ended up boarding a 100 to the McKnight C-train because it came first (and to avoid potentially getting stung an extra 8 bucks by the driver) so I can’t confirm exactly how this works. Given that the 300 is pretty infrequent and the airport stop is outside, under an overpass with minimal signage, no next service display or basic amenities it is pretty rough to sting customers with a surcharge anyway.

But I guess that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Touchdown Motor City

Landing at DTW (Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport) I wasn’t expecting too much. On previous visits to Detroit I’ve arrived at the Amshack and at the Rosa Parks Transit Centre (thank you Megabus) and both these places, while meeting the basic requirements you’d expect of arrival facilities, leave no doubt in your mind that the city (country?) has seen better days.

A photo of the Detroit Amtrack station — The Detroit Amshack. I’ll keep mentioning this because it is an absolute disgrace. Credit: Detroit Free Press

Arriving at DTW is a different kettle of fish. Detroit might have so famously declined through the latter half of the 20^th century, but the greater Detroit metro region has always been just fine, thankyou very much. The airport is the 20^th largest in the country, moving some 28 million people last year.

Befitting the Motor City it will come as no surprise that, like Calgary, there is no rail based transit from the airport. There’s a cute little train running between the terminals, because weirdly cute little trains within airports (or theme parks or between casinos) don’t seem to offend Americans like the real kind.

Good news though, since 2018 the airport isn’t completely cut off from any kind of public transport. The 261 Michigan Ave FAST bus is a rapid route that runs from the airport all the way Downtown. I was keen to give it a try.

Finding the bus stop proved more difficult than I had anticipated

Now leaving this major airport there are signs that direct you towards ‘Ground Transportation’ with a little pictogram of a taxi and a bus. Knowing that there is no rail transit to the airport I figured this would direct me where I needed to go.

Instead, it took me into a multi-storey parking garage that also included a layover area for coaches and shuttles heading to hotels and more, further afield parking lots. Any sort of local transit type bus stop was conspicuously absent, so I headed back into the terminal and found a sign that directed me to the City Bus stop. That was good but then the next overheard sign didn’t mention it at all, so I asked a helpful information guy who directed me to the furthest section of the car drop off area. Here, the stop was marked by a simple bus stop sign like you’d expect to find on a forgotten suburban corner; no timetable, no frequency information, no nothing.

A photo of what appears to be a car pick up/drop off area outside an airport terminal but is actually a bus stop. — This is the bus stop at Detroit airport. Note the temporary signs on concrete blocks (hey, it’s only been open for 5 years, give them a break) and the multiple cars using the bus stop as a drop off area. When my bus did come and I had to pick my way between them!

And, as you’d expect from such an unmarkable strip of roadway, the people going about their business dropping off their loved ones/uber fares at the airport paid no heed to where the bus stop ended and their designated drop off area began.

This meant that when my bus did show after just 5 minutes of waiting (a lucky break, they run at 30 minute headways) the driver just kinda pulled up in the middle lane and glanced over to where I was sitting. I jumped up and squeezed past the parked cars and idling shuttle buses to climb aboard. As soon as I had paid my $2 the doors swung shut and off we drove; the driver and me. As we sped onto the flyover that led out of the airport I couldn’t quite believe that of all those people pouring out of the place in 30 entire minutes I was the only person that was taking the practically free bus Downtown.

I assume everyone else had got taxis or hired cars, but surely some of them would have appreciated knowing this perfectly decent service existed. Perhaps some functional signage or, you know, a timetable would help here.

Riding the 261 Michigan Avenue FAST

The 261 stopped about every mile or two down Michigan Avenue at major crossroads and shopping districts, although the first half of that journey is pretty much the Detroit of popular imagination. This area isn’t actually in the city proper, but it consisted of mostly vacant lots, cheap motels and run-down gas stations.

A photo of the inside of a bus — Until we got to Michigan Ave the 261 was my own private ride. Props to SMART on the info display. Clear, accurate info and estimated travel times along the route. It’s amazing how few cities outside of East Asia and Europe can pull this off. At $2 I declare this bus to be a certified DEAL.

Once the bus got to Dearborn things out the window started to improve. There’s a tarted up new bus interchange at the Dearborn Amtrak station which is definitely better than the much larger Detroit’s train station. The bus passed through a bustling Arabic neighbourhood and some more gentrified and prosperous looking suburbs before driving by the grand old Michigan Station (more on that later) and reaching the Rosa Parks Transit Centre downtown without event.

Well, excepting the guy who stood up from the back seat of the bus and announced to us all that he was having a hard time and could someone please spare a cigarette.

The infamous Detroit Downtown

I’ve visited Detroit three times; in 2013, 2015 and 2023.

This time I was blown away by the changes happening downtown. A hipster-ish coffee shop I had visited in 2013 had seemed at the time to be in a bizarre location, surrounded by abandoned buildings and bleak multi-storey parking garages, is now next to a pedestrianised arcade and surrounded by other coffee shops, grocers and small bars.

The city’s main North/South thoroughfare, Woodward Street, now has its own streetcar (more on that shortly) and as it runs past the Fox and Filimore theatres with their neon lights and art deco stylings you’d be forgiven for momentarily thinking you were in New York, San Francisco or Chicago.

A photo of downtown Detroit at night. — Detroit: a city on the grow! (Please ignore People Mover in foreground)

The architecture in Detroit is as good as, or better than, anything those three cities have to offer and as the gaps between the buildings slowly fill in with surprisingly well considered and thoughtfully designed new buildings, a new iteration of one of America’s great downtowns is being born.

The Q-Line

The Woodward Streetcar, inexplicably known as the Q-Line, is typical of some of the many problems that plague transit in U.S American cities.

At some point in the early 2000s it became widely acknowledged that the whole all-in on the car thing wasn’t really working out. Young and upwardly mobile people actually wanted to live in a city with transit, safe cycling and some basic pedestrian amenity. In most of the world this would be considered reasonable, but it was a shock to the governments of American cities that has spent the preceding 50 years removing any last remaining vestiges of these things and replacing them with (you guessed it!) more car lanes.

So, around the same time in the 2010s a whole bunch of cities decided to build new light rail downtown. The general idea being to link the gentrifying hipster neighbourhoods on the city fringe to the downtown core. The idea is decent (trams = European vibes) but the execution came up against two very frustrating road blocks that make these systems generally pretty shitty.

A photo of the Q Line in Downtown Detroit — Apparently I didn’t take any photos of the Q-Line so here’s one from wikipedia. Credit: Bluediamond616

The Detroit Q-Line handily exhibits both characteristics!

Problem 1: No right of way

Thanks to the aforementioned planning decisions of the past 6 decades Detroit has an abundance of road lanes downtown. It is the Motor City after all.

Woodward, the thoroughfare on which the Q-Line runs, is 6 or more lanes wide for most of its length. It is mainly used for local traffic as it has not one, but two, 6-lane freeways paralleling its route within a mile of the road. ‘Merica.

An aerial photo of the Woodward corridor Q Line route — Yellow are 6 lane freeways, Red is the length of the Q-Line on Woodward. There is literally no reason for through traffic to use Woodward. Source: Google Earth.

The whole point of the Q-Line was to rejuvenate the Woodward corridor and they have honestly done a great job of that side of things. But how, given all these available lanes, the city couldn’t bring themselves to spare just TWO for the streetcar is beyond me.

In the 1940s streetcars ran down Woodward on convenient median tracks. 80 years later and this kind of smart design rarely occurs in American cities. Source: US Library of Congress

Yes, the Q-Line runs in mixed traffic which is a disaster for its reliability and a frustration for its many users. On Game Day (there are three enormous stadiums right next to Q-Line stops but the Game Day I witnessed was in fact the Detroit Grand Prix) the traffic jams would completely break the system, so staff are out there early dropping traffic cones to create temporary tram-only-lanes on Woodward and shouting at idling vehicles to keep the claimed lanes free of traffic.

This approach is so unbelievably American I couldn’t quite believe it was happening. Instead of just installing the tram in its own median right of way and narrowing Woodward to two lanes each direction (which would help with the whole urban renewal thing anyway) the tram runs in mixed traffic until the road is so busy with cars that it can’t, and then a whole bunch of workers get out there and manually build a temporary right-of-way. Staggeringly inefficient but there’s no denying it’s a cultural experience.

Problem 2: Rubbish frequency

The Q-line is supposed to be a ‘turn up and go’ style service. There are a few things holding it back from this. The first is the mixed traffic making it way too unreliable for its short length. The second is that the next service displays are not particularly accurate, I suspect in part because of the first.

The third thing is frequency. When I used the Q-Line it was running between 15 and 30 minute frequencies. I would turn up ready to go and if I couldn’t see the tram in the distance I’d just walk. Pretty much every vehicle I got on was standing room only.

Given that the Q-Line is the centrepiece of Detroit’s transit system (sorry People Mover) 10 minutes all day every day is not too much to ask.

The frequency issue is pretty easy to fix: more trams, more drivers. Sadly the mixed traffic issue is a lot harder because to put the Q-Line in its own lanes now would require more or less rebuilding the line from scratch. Sigh.

An aerial image of a small section of the Q line in Downtown — If you thought it would be easy to convert the Q-Line route into it’s own right of way you are sadly wrong. Look at how the tracks wind amongst the mixed traffic lanes. What even is that? Source: Google Earth.

Gentrification doesn’t have to be a dirty word

The areas I’ve talked about are pretty confined in the scheme of things: Downtown, Midtown, Corktown. Outside of a few inner city neighbourhoods a lot of Detroit is much as it’s been for a long time. Vacant lots, run down houses, a lack of quality supermarkets or decent places to eat. But the same can be said for huge swathes of the Rust Belt and lots of places besides.

I’m sure there are some people in Detroit as everywhere else who, for a lot of good reasons, are worried about their neighbhourhoods changing.

The reason why gentrification is different in Detroit is that there are so many neighbourhoods that are made up predominately of vacant lots and abandoned buildings. It seems from my few conversations that most people are glad to see life being breathed back into some of these areas.

A photo of a construction site and surrounding buildings near Downtown Detroit — Beautiful old buildings are being lovingly restored and new entertainment facilities and mixed use developments are springing up in the hipster-belt neighbourhoods on the fringe of Downtown.

What’s even cooler to see is that architecturally and from a planning standpoint these don’t appear to be bland, cookie-cutter, poorly executed developments. Detroiters love their city, and it is apparent that those working on the new built environment feel the same way.

Michigan Central Station

I said I’d come back to Michigan Central Station. If you don’t know too much about Detroit (and you’re reading my blog…) it’s probably the one building you recognise. In a country dotted with incredible architecture from the railway boom of the late 19^th century Michigan Central might just be the grandest dame of them all.

Opened in 1914 as the tallest railway station in the world the building defines the Corktown skyline. As the railways declined in the postwar period so too did the station, reaching its nadir in 1988 when Amtrack sold the building and relocated their service to the aforementioned Amshack in Midtown.

Repair and rebuilding have been ongoing for about 10 years and it’s belonged to the Ford company, another Detroit icon, since 2018. It’s still wrapped in cyclone fencing but eventually the station will be reopened as a retail and office destination surrounded by a newly upgraded park.

Hopefully at some point in my lifetime the station will once again be a hub on the line between Chicago and Toronto. Perhaps one day we will be able to arrive in, and leave, the Motor City in the style that begets a city with as much of it as Detroit. Forget the Amshack, forget the Greyhound Station, forget the distant surburban airport and forget the grey concrete freeways dotted with ads for marijuana dispensaries and civil lawyers. Detroit’s on the way back, baby.*

*Detroit never left.

Up next…

This is part one of what I think will be a four part series on my transit based travels across the Rustbelt this (North American) summer.

Carry on with Part 2: Detroit to Buffalo.

Also note:

Web 2.0 (that’s the one with the social media, right?) appears to be in the process of fracturing into a million tiny pieces. Since it’s much harder to share through social media than it was, I’ve decided to set up a simple mailing list! Sign up and get emailed when I blog. My average seems to be every 3 to 6 months so you won’t be spammed.

If you do want to connect on social media I’ve more or less abandoned my facebook and twitter accounts so come find me on mastodon.

Toll Relief Mania

By Jed C

On February 21, 2023

In Sydney Transport, Transport

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.