Going underground

An additional handbrake on increasing patronage of the heavy rail network is that even getting to a suburban train station in order to catch the train isn’t easy. If you live more than a kilometre from a train station (which means the overwhelmingly majority of all residents) you would need to drive your car to a station. But stations have precious little in the way of parking for these commuters, and nearby residents justifiably object to having their streets turned into kerbside carparks for daily rail commuters. This is one of many practical realities holding back increases in mode share of rail as a percentage of all commuter trips. That proportion has remained stubbornly fixed at under 10 per cent of all trips for Brisbane (rail and bus and ferry combined) while for the CBD the mode share sits at some 45 per cent of all commuter trips (bus, rail and ferry combined).

[Finding impartial rail commuter statistics isn’t easy. There are a host of rail proponents and rail agencies and various transport studies designed to promote public transport who in turn churn out all sorts of figures to support their case. Independent, non partisan material is less easy to source].

So while the notion of a new underground rail line with a new CBD station sounds like a terrific idea, you’d hope that those who are responsible for spending our money will be doing some hard numbers on the feasibility. This cross river rail project is mooted to cost something like $8.2 billion in today’s terms. By the time they get around to building it, it will no doubt cost more.

Even if the cross river rail and new station managed to achieve the optimistic result of 100,000 new rail commuters, that still works out to $82,000 per extra commuter. And if those commuters are to continue to be further subsidised to the tune of $10 per trip, each way, every day, this could be the sort of infrastructure initiative which ends up costing the community a great deal.

You’d hope the numbers are being rationally, dispassionately and independently done, and the questions being asked. For example:

• How many extra rail commuters will the new line and CBD station realistically generate?
• What extra workforce would be required in the CBD to support a rise in new rail commuters? (100,000 extra rail commuters to the CBD could require, at 15 sq.m per person, 1.5 million square metres of office space, or another 25 Waterfront Place towers. Is this realistic?)
• What public transport alternatives are available, and how do those costs compare? (The bus system relies on a lower passenger subsidy than rail, plus largely uses existing road infrastructure and routes can be expanded largely without the sort of investment required of rail. What would even a $1 billion investment in the bus system do, by comparison?)

Food for thought.