Kosky's departure from Victorian public transport ministry

Started by smitho, January 19, 2010, 11:53:18 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

smitho

Many Melburnians will be pleased to see the end of Lynne Kosky's time as minister for public transport.

But Kosky's departure will change nothing, unless her successor addresses the problems that have made the portfolio a political graveyard.

Kosky's principal failing was that she did nothing to change the dysfunctional organisations she inherited from her predecessor, Peter Batchelor; she even promoted the chief architect of the system, Jim Betts, to Departmental Secretary. Instead of reforming the Department of Transport, she became an apologist for it, as public transport collapsed around her.

It's hard to believe now, but Melbourne once boasted the most efficient rail service of any comparable city in the world.

Kristin Otto's new book Capital describes this time, the 1920s, when Melbourne's newly-electrified railways were run by Harold W. Clapp. Late running varied "from one twentieth of one per cent per day to one per cent" even though there was less infrastructure than we have now and primitive technology. Yet by 1929, more suburban trains left Flinders Street Station in peak hour than do today: on the busiest platforms, the next train would pull in as little as a minute after the previous departure.

Clapp understood that the most important ingredients in an effective public transport system are not infrastructure or technology, but planning, management, skills and morale. Otto reports that on Melbourne Cup Day in 1921, Clapp spent an hour in the railway supervisors' box at Flemington overseeing operations to ensure nothing went wrong.

Over the following eight decades, many overseas cities dramatically improved their rapid transit systems. Now, when people think of effective public transport, cities like Zurich or Vienna come to mind. Melbourne is one of very few places to have gone backwards.

Melbourne's problems pre-dated Kosky's appointment as minister by many years. They began after World War II, when rail patronage began to decline as car ownership increased. This gradually sapped morale, and labour shortages exacerbated the problems. Increasingly, the best and brightest headed for the road agencies that seemed to be the way of the future. By the 1970s, the main focus of rail managers was dealing with the deficits caused by falling patronage: managing decline, rather than serving new markets.

The Kennett government finally dealt with the deficit problem, through a combination of unwise service cuts and genuine efficiency improvements. By 1998, the Auditor-General reported that the deficit had been halved, and that reliability was slowly improving. Patronage had also begun to recover, and there was even talk of improving services.

Instead, the rail and tram systems were privatised in 1999. This delivered the coup de grace to what remained of the historic culture of efficient operation. Most of the remaining skilled staff left, while labyrinthine contractual and administrative arrangements created confusion instead of accountability. The Department of Transport, now staffed mainly by lawyers, contract managers and spin doctors, had neither the skills nor the inclination for serious planning.

Rather than fix the fundamental problems, Kosky threw more and more money and staff at them. But money and staff are not enough.

Myki is costing $1350 million, compared with Perth's fully-functioning $35 million SmartRider ticketing system. Perth's SmartRider project was run mainly by three people at Transperth, the public agency which plans and manages the city's public transport. Transperth has only 57 staff, while Melbourne's Transport Ticketing Authority alone employs twice that number.

If we can't even organise ticketing, then small wonder we can't run trains reliably, co-ordinate them with buses, or build new lines to growth corridors - despite the fact the Victorian government now spends more on public transport than roads.

Last August, the Senate Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport released a report on urban public transport in Australia. The Committee's members, drawn from across the political spectrum, unanimously agreed that better institutional arrangements are needed, especially in Melbourne: "Melbourne's franchising out of train and tram operations since 1999 has been particularly criticised for creating a lack of clear accountability for managing the whole network." The Committee recommended that future Commonwealth funding should be conditional on states like Victoria creating public transport agencies along the model of Transperth.

Naturally, creating a public transport agency is not sufficient by itself. An effective body would need skilled, motivated staff rather than just secondees from the current department. It would engage internationally-recognised experts to devise plans for running more services more reliably. And it would need the authority to run services itself if private operators are not up to the job.

These things sound utopian, but they are simply the normal situation in every city with successful public transport, from Perth to Zurich. If Lynne Kosky's successor is to avoid her fate, they will need to become normal in Melbourne, too.

Paul Mees is a senior lecturer in transport planning at RMIT. His new book Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age is published by Earthscan.



Trolleybusracer

I wouldnt be the first to say "dont let the door hit you on the way out"

IIRC the tipped person to become transport minister now is the current roading minister! who has a fetish should i say with roads

Although i wouldnt mind the eviroment minister to become transport minister (i hope John remembers me on the tram that night!)

Power and the Passion