Libs commit to community sector, carers

The biggest issue with the tram is that its a solution to a problem we don’t currently have.

Tram is a solution to oversaturated public transport links. At the moment the bus service is rapidly decreasing in ridership. ACT Labor have failed to prove they can get people using bus so why would it be different for light rail?

The basis for light rail is increased rates along the route, however as we can see they’re more than happy just to increase the rates anyway and people still vote for them.

Sydney harbour bridge was build and then had a toll. Light rail isn’t going to pay for itself, it won’t even come close, the more of it we build the worse off we are.
It won’t even cut down travel time. The only motivation is that it might result in a better ride so people can get their laptops out, however that scenario breaks as there won’t be much sitting room it’ll mostly be standing.

Snowy mountains scheme was a success. However seventy per cent of all the workers were migrants some 70,000 people.
Post WW2 Australia wanted increased immigration and wanted projects to build the economy. It matched what we needed at the time, a huge spend in money that would pay off over the long term.

I don’t see how light rail at the moment will pay off over long term. Water and power are requirements of life, however the internet is changing the need for everyone to attend work, as well as increased rates are far more likely to push people out of Canberra into neighbouring towns. Canberra is already pushed up to its boarders there isn’t much difference in travel time but there is a huge difference in price.

Its going to be one hell of an election. Hopefully we get some rust remover to get those rusted on Labor voters some perspective. Sadly its ownly a 2 party race. If it was 4 or more we’d only expect each party to get 1/4 the vote.

dungfungus said :

The Snowy Mountains Scheme and the WA-SA Rail link were needed. The Sydney Opera House wasn’t vital but it was largely financed by lotteries.

and both are iconic images known the world over. Will the ACT’s tram tracks be that ? No wait – maybe add in the Sky Whale image too. Perfect.

Mordd – IndyMedia said :

Tell me, if you were around when they were building the Snowy Hydro Scheme, or the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or the Sydney Opera House, or the WA-SA Rail Link, or many other projects which took years or decades to reach full operating capacity yet still needed to be built way back when they were, how would you looked at the economic benefits of those projects at the time, using the same logic you are applying to the tram now.

Well, the comparison of the Light Rail to the Opera House, the Snowy Mountains Scheme and to the SA-WA rail link brightened up an otherwise dull day. Its like comparing chalk and cheese both in terms of benefits and costs. ROFL.

Then I opened the bill from the ACT Government for my Annual Rates. It ain’t so funny anymore.

Mordd – IndyMedia said :

Garfield said :

pink little birdie said :

Garfield said :

It’s a sad day for ACT Labor when their party, which pupports to look after the little guy, is getting trumped on necessary community sector initiatives by the Liberals, not to mention health and education. I bet there are a few rusted on Labor voters wishing Gallagher & Barr hadn’t signed that deal with the Greens to get light rail up and running no matter what, rather than focusing on their party’s core values. I still think the Libs will struggle to take government, but it could get very tight in October, and it seems the Unions think so too with all the money they’re putting into the political scare campaign on TV and social media.

Actually for myself and a lot of my friends that discuss ACT politics on facebook it’s the canning of the tram that is specifically stopping us from voting for the Liberal’s.
The Liberal’s have some good policies but the belief that fixed line transport needs to be started in Canberra is enough to lean away from the Liberal’s.

Don’t want to turn this into a thread about the tram, but every time I’ve looked at the figures I can’t get them to stack up in favour of it.

When the wider economic benefits of light rail projects add an average of 17% to the public transport benefits (CT 9/04/16), the cost benefit put out by the government seems way off. For our tram, the public transport benefits are about 50c in the dollar but they’re claiming $1.20 in total benefits meaning the wider economic benefits are 70c. That means the wider economic benefits for our tram are going to add 140% vs a normal level of 17%.

If we add 17% to the transport benefits of 50c we get 58.5c, suggesting around 40c in every dollar spent on the project could be a loss to the ACT. With more than $1.6b scheduled to be paid to the consortium and additional costs to the government on top of that, we could be looking at a loss of $700m to the ACT.

Even if it costs $200m to cancel, and I have suspicions about the assumptions Labor have used to get that figure, the ACT is looking at being $500m better off, and this is just for the first stage of the 5 that would be needed to link the town centres and the airport.

Tell me, if you were around when they were building the Snowy Hydro Scheme, or the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or the Sydney Opera House, or the WA-SA Rail Link, or many other projects which took years or decades to reach full operating capacity yet still needed to be built way back when they were, how would you looked at the economic benefits of those projects at the time, using the same logic you are applying to the tram now.

Will you at least accept, as the Libs have admitted, that it will be needed for sure in 20 years time? So why should we not start building it now, so in 20 years time we have an ACT wide light rail network in place in advance of when we will actually need it desperately?

The Snowy Mountains Scheme and the WA-SA Rail link were needed. The Sydney Opera House wasn’t vital but it was largely financed by lotteries.
The tccs City to Gungahlin project isn’t needed now nor will it be in the future.
A fair solution to the argument would be to finance it with lotteries (like the Sydney Opera House).
Then only the people who want it and habitual gamblers would be financially committed.

Mordd – IndyMedia said :

Garfield said :

pink little birdie said :

Garfield said :

It’s a sad day for ACT Labor when their party, which pupports to look after the little guy, is getting trumped on necessary community sector initiatives by the Liberals, not to mention health and education. I bet there are a few rusted on Labor voters wishing Gallagher & Barr hadn’t signed that deal with the Greens to get light rail up and running no matter what, rather than focusing on their party’s core values. I still think the Libs will struggle to take government, but it could get very tight in October, and it seems the Unions think so too with all the money they’re putting into the political scare campaign on TV and social media.

Actually for myself and a lot of my friends that discuss ACT politics on facebook it’s the canning of the tram that is specifically stopping us from voting for the Liberal’s.
The Liberal’s have some good policies but the belief that fixed line transport needs to be started in Canberra is enough to lean away from the Liberal’s.

Don’t want to turn this into a thread about the tram, but every time I’ve looked at the figures I can’t get them to stack up in favour of it.

When the wider economic benefits of light rail projects add an average of 17% to the public transport benefits (CT 9/04/16), the cost benefit put out by the government seems way off. For our tram, the public transport benefits are about 50c in the dollar but they’re claiming $1.20 in total benefits meaning the wider economic benefits are 70c. That means the wider economic benefits for our tram are going to add 140% vs a normal level of 17%.

If we add 17% to the transport benefits of 50c we get 58.5c, suggesting around 40c in every dollar spent on the project could be a loss to the ACT. With more than $1.6b scheduled to be paid to the consortium and additional costs to the government on top of that, we could be looking at a loss of $700m to the ACT.

Even if it costs $200m to cancel, and I have suspicions about the assumptions Labor have used to get that figure, the ACT is looking at being $500m better off, and this is just for the first stage of the 5 that would be needed to link the town centres and the airport.

Tell me, if you were around when they were building the Snowy Hydro Scheme, or the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or the Sydney Opera House, or the WA-SA Rail Link, or many other projects which took years or decades to reach full operating capacity yet still needed to be built way back when they were, how would you looked at the economic benefits of those projects at the time, using the same logic you are applying to the tram now.

Will you at least accept, as the Libs have admitted, that it will be needed for sure in 20 years time? So why should we not start building it now, so in 20 years time we have an ACT wide light rail network in place in advance of when we will actually need it desperately?

You’re drawing a long bow to compare Canberra’s light rail to those projects when the ACT government’s own submission to Infrastructure Australia prior to the 2012 election showed that bus rapid transit delivered much better value than light rail.

The Liberals have not conceded that light rail will be necessary in 20 years. What Coe said was that IF it was needed in 20 or 30 or 40 years time the government would still own the plans and could make use of them.

Are you aware that cost benefit analysis factors in the lifetime costs and benefits of a project? Its not just looking at the construction period or that for the contractual payments to the consortium, but the life of the tram, and its saying that every single ACT taxpayer is going to be paying more for the tram than the benefits it will provide, meaning the project should not go ahead.

You don’t have to go far to find risks to the tram. I look at self driving vehicles as a technological advance that could potentially triple the number of vehicles able to effectively use our roads at the same time, and do so within a relatively short period of time. The need to maintain a 2-3 second gap between vehicles is due to human reaction times, but electronic reaction times could shorten the necessary gaps to a fraction of a second. Such an advance would see even fewer people using public transport than is the case now as private vehicle travel times would decrease. There’s also the increasing trend towards flexible working arrangements and the increasing proportion of retired people with more discretion as to travel times. I spend less time getting to work now than I have at any point in the last 15 years. These types of factors represent significant risks to the long term viability of the tram, and so to build it now in the hope its needed in the future is highly irresponsible.

If something were to fundamentally change at some point to boost the project so that it had a positive value, I wouldn’t be opposed to it, as long as there wasn’t a better value for money option, such as there is now with buses.

Garfield said :

pink little birdie said :

Garfield said :

It’s a sad day for ACT Labor when their party, which pupports to look after the little guy, is getting trumped on necessary community sector initiatives by the Liberals, not to mention health and education. I bet there are a few rusted on Labor voters wishing Gallagher & Barr hadn’t signed that deal with the Greens to get light rail up and running no matter what, rather than focusing on their party’s core values. I still think the Libs will struggle to take government, but it could get very tight in October, and it seems the Unions think so too with all the money they’re putting into the political scare campaign on TV and social media.

Actually for myself and a lot of my friends that discuss ACT politics on facebook it’s the canning of the tram that is specifically stopping us from voting for the Liberal’s.
The Liberal’s have some good policies but the belief that fixed line transport needs to be started in Canberra is enough to lean away from the Liberal’s.

Don’t want to turn this into a thread about the tram, but every time I’ve looked at the figures I can’t get them to stack up in favour of it.

When the wider economic benefits of light rail projects add an average of 17% to the public transport benefits (CT 9/04/16), the cost benefit put out by the government seems way off. For our tram, the public transport benefits are about 50c in the dollar but they’re claiming $1.20 in total benefits meaning the wider economic benefits are 70c. That means the wider economic benefits for our tram are going to add 140% vs a normal level of 17%.

If we add 17% to the transport benefits of 50c we get 58.5c, suggesting around 40c in every dollar spent on the project could be a loss to the ACT. With more than $1.6b scheduled to be paid to the consortium and additional costs to the government on top of that, we could be looking at a loss of $700m to the ACT.

Even if it costs $200m to cancel, and I have suspicions about the assumptions Labor have used to get that figure, the ACT is looking at being $500m better off, and this is just for the first stage of the 5 that would be needed to link the town centres and the airport.

Tell me, if you were around when they were building the Snowy Hydro Scheme, or the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or the Sydney Opera House, or the WA-SA Rail Link, or many other projects which took years or decades to reach full operating capacity yet still needed to be built way back when they were, how would you looked at the economic benefits of those projects at the time, using the same logic you are applying to the tram now.

Will you at least accept, as the Libs have admitted, that it will be needed for sure in 20 years time? So why should we not start building it now, so in 20 years time we have an ACT wide light rail network in place in advance of when we will actually need it desperately?

pink little birdie said :

Garfield said :

It’s a sad day for ACT Labor when their party, which pupports to look after the little guy, is getting trumped on necessary community sector initiatives by the Liberals, not to mention health and education. I bet there are a few rusted on Labor voters wishing Gallagher & Barr hadn’t signed that deal with the Greens to get light rail up and running no matter what, rather than focusing on their party’s core values. I still think the Libs will struggle to take government, but it could get very tight in October, and it seems the Unions think so too with all the money they’re putting into the political scare campaign on TV and social media.

Actually for myself and a lot of my friends that discuss ACT politics on facebook it’s the canning of the tram that is specifically stopping us from voting for the Liberal’s.
The Liberal’s have some good policies but the belief that fixed line transport needs to be started in Canberra is enough to lean away from the Liberal’s.

Don’t want to turn this into a thread about the tram, but every time I’ve looked at the figures I can’t get them to stack up in favour of it.

When the wider economic benefits of light rail projects add an average of 17% to the public transport benefits (CT 9/04/16), the cost benefit put out by the government seems way off. For our tram, the public transport benefits are about 50c in the dollar but they’re claiming $1.20 in total benefits meaning the wider economic benefits are 70c. That means the wider economic benefits for our tram are going to add 140% vs a normal level of 17%.

If we add 17% to the transport benefits of 50c we get 58.5c, suggesting around 40c in every dollar spent on the project could be a loss to the ACT. With more than $1.6b scheduled to be paid to the consortium and additional costs to the government on top of that, we could be looking at a loss of $700m to the ACT.

Even if it costs $200m to cancel, and I have suspicions about the assumptions Labor have used to get that figure, the ACT is looking at being $500m better off, and this is just for the first stage of the 5 that would be needed to link the town centres and the airport.

Masquara said :

I just want to know what the Liberals are promising re the rates blowout!

I found an article from June that said the Libs would freeze Rates at current levels apart from annual indexation. The article went on to say that indexation at that time, and through the forward estimates, was 3.5% p.a. being tied to the wage index. My rates have increased by more than 10% p.a. for the last few years so 3.5% would represent a significant reduction in the rate of increase.

pink little birdie said :

Actually for myself and a lot of my friends that discuss ACT politics on facebook it’s the canning of the tram that is specifically stopping us from voting for the Liberal’s.

Tend to agree with this. A hard sell to cause m$200 (if Barr can be believed – which is highly debatable) of Ratepayers money to be spent just because u tore up the contract. But the Libs are using the “paper” savings to improve hospitals, etc. Its all politics – not business decision based.

Better for the Libs perhaps to keep the Tram stage 1 and “Levy” all Ratepayers in their Annual Rates bills for the operating deficit – or levy those residences/units along the route. Call it the “Barr/Gallagher/Rattenburry” Tram loss levy”. That way, Ratepayers would be continually reminded about it and the bodgy Business Case/Business Costs Ratio.

Garfield said :

It’s a sad day for ACT Labor when their party, which pupports to look after the little guy, is getting trumped on necessary community sector initiatives by the Liberals, not to mention health and education. I bet there are a few rusted on Labor voters wishing Gallagher & Barr hadn’t signed that deal with the Greens to get light rail up and running no matter what, rather than focusing on their party’s core values. I still think the Libs will struggle to take government, but it could get very tight in October, and it seems the Unions think so too with all the money they’re putting into the political scare campaign on TV and social media.

Actually for myself and a lot of my friends that discuss ACT politics on facebook it’s the canning of the tram that is specifically stopping us from voting for the Liberal’s.
The Liberal’s have some good policies but the belief that fixed line transport needs to be started in Canberra is enough to lean away from the Liberal’s.