Is The Age providing fair comment on transport issues?

Posted: November 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Cars & traffic | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Prospective corridors for road tunnel (Eddington Report)

I take an agnostic view of freeway proposals – I don’t assume apriori that they’re all bad or all good. I prefer to look at the evidence first before deciding if a proposal has merit or is a poor idea. But it seems there are some who will overlook evidence to the contrary if it undermines their ideological view.

Like Kenneth Davidson in his column in The Age on Monday, Why the east-west road tunnel is a stinker, I have some misgivings about the tunnel proposed to connect Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway with the Western Ring Road. The Victorian Government has just submitted a proposal to Infrastructure Australia, seeking funding to develop the tunnel idea further.

My key concern is the anaemic benefit-cost ratio. But Mr Davidson, who’s a senior columnist at The Age, goes further. He reckons the proposed tunnel recommended in 2008 in the Eddington Report is a “stinker” and a “confidence trick”.

That’s because an earlier study undertaken for the Bracks government in 2004, the Northern Central City Corridor strategy (NCCC), found most of the traffic coming off the Eastern Freeway heads into central Melbourne. It found only 15% is bound for the northern or western suburbs. “In other words”, Mr Davidson says:

the public justification for the east-west link – that it would take traffic away from the central business district – was a confidence trick……The first question (Eddington) should have asked was where did the 2004 study go wrong.

I don’t think anyone disputes the NCCC study was negative about the case for the tunnel. Nor is Mr Davidson the first to raise this objection. The “gotcha” Mr Davidson seizes on with such alacrity is that Sir Rod Eddington apparently ignored the NCCC study’s key finding.

But it seems it’s Mr Davidson who’s doing the ignoring. The Eddington Report actually does consider the NCCC study. Moreover it deals with it in a way that is prominent and impossible to miss by anyone with their eyes open (read it – Chapter 5, page 129).

The Report argues it’s a myth that nearly all Eastern Freeway traffic is destined for the inner city. It says the NCCC produced diagrams that present “a distorted view of traffic distribution (and further NCCC modelling for a future link would have identified and addressed this issue)”.

In a section titled, ‘Myth 2: nearly all the Eastern Freeway traffic is destined for the inner city’, It argues the NCCC study didn’t look beyond the capacity of existing roads or the ultimate destination of traffic once it left the NCCC study area.

First, given the roads in question, the traffic distribution (identified in the NCCC study) is not surprising: at the end of the freeway, there are ten freeway standard traffic lanes (five each way). By the time traffic reaches Macarthur Avenue in Royal Park, the corresponding ‘connection’ is a two-lane road (one lane each way). The traffic distribution is as much a function of the roads available, which progressively reduce in capacity towards the west, as it is a reflection of the demand for a particular direction of travel.

Secondly, when the (Eddington) Study Team analysed how traffic from the Eastern Freeway is distributed (with the analysis closely matching the NCCC distribution), it revealed that around 40 per cent of the daily traffic from the freeway travels beyond the central city area – to the south and the west. That is the case with the current network: in the future, EastLink will add a new dimension.

The Eddington Report also argues (page 137) the NCCC study focussed on Eastern Freeway traffic and didn’t fully consider traffic using adjacent streets instead. Moreover, it didn’t recommend against the tunnel because insufficient vehicles would use it, but rather because the high cost of construction yielded an inadequate benefit-cost ratio. Read the rest of this entry »

Is the Transport Department coming out on outcomes?

Posted: September 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Management, Public transport | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

xkcd on the value of time (the corresponding figure in Australia is circa 4 minutes)

I don’t ordinarily read annual reports but this story in Melbourne’s Herald-Sun acknowledged its source was the Victorian Department of Transport’s 2010-11 annual report. The newspaper noted a 3.4% increase in reported crime on Victoria’s public transport system in 2009-10. Much to my surprise, the paper acknowledged up front that patronage had also increased over the period, by 1.6%. That’s a pertinent qualification but it surprised me that a News-owned tabloid bothered to make it. Well done to the Hun and reporter Peter Rolfe – a big tick!

Looking at the performance outcomes section of the annual report, I see the Department’s been clever – its performance indicator for reported crime against the person is effectively the change in offences minus the change in patronage growth. Bit hard to ignore that and it certainly helps to put the crime figure in perspective.

This got me wondering what progress the Department is making in dealing with crime on public transport. What, I wondered, is the trend? How does the latest figure compare with the previous year? This was when I discovered some serious deficiencies in the way the Department reports on outcomes.

A key shortcoming is the annual report fails to give the previous year’s outcome figure. So, for example, the report tells us that the total volume of freight carried by rail in Victoria increased by 8.31 billion tonne-kilometres in the most recent year for which data is available, but provides no indication of whether that is an improvement on the trend or a deterioration. What is the reader to make of this number?

Similarly, bicycle path use increased 2.8% and rail capacity utilisation in the morning peak grew by 9.7%, but in neither case is there a figure on the previous year’s outcome. This is in stark contrast with the financials, which use the convention of showing 2011’s numbers against the previous years. The examples I’ve cited aren’t isolated cases – none of the performance outcome results show the previous year.

The importance of context is shown by the Herald-Sun’s report. Peter Rolfe did some legwork and found reported crime dropped 10% in the previous year, while patronage grew 6%. That’s much better than the latest year’s 3.4% vs 1.6%, suggesting a marked deterioration in performance. Although he failed to acknowledge the difference between the two years might in part be due to increased policing (a cross!), he nevertheless illustrates the value of having something against which to compare performance measures.

Unfortunately, the shortcomings of the Department’s annual report get worse. While each indicator has a target “increase” or “reduction”, most of the “results” actually provide a snapshot or balance statistic – they don’t show the change. For example, one outcome indicator purports to show the increase in the proportion of trips starting or ending in Central Activities Areas (CAA). But what we’re told is that 3% of trips started or ended in CAAs in 2009-10. That’s valuable information in its own right, but it’s not telling us if the Department is succeeding on this indicator. It’s not telling us if there was an increase. It’s not telling us what the indicator says it tells us!

Another example is the target to reduce fuel consumption of petrol vehicles – the result is given as 11.4 litres per vehicle kilometre, but again there’s no indication whether things are getting better or getting worse. Likewise, the result for the car occupancy rate indicator is 1.2 persons (it’s meant to reduce); the greenhouse emissions of the vehicle fleet is 384 g/km (it’s meant to reduce); the average weight carried per freight vehicles is 4.19 tonnes (it’s meant to increase); and so on – but do these represent an improvement or a deterioration on the trend?

This is not a minor issue. Of the 34 indicators that claim to show an “increase” in good things or a “reduction” in bad things, 20 do not even attempt to show how they’ve changed. They’re all snapshots. Experts will in many cases know the context but annual reports are prepared for parliamentarians and for the people. Read the rest of this entry »

Does concern for the environment drive public transport patronage growth?

Posted: June 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Public transport | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Factors affecting public transport patronage growth, 2002-07, Melbourne (DoT)

According to a recent paper, research by the Victorian Department of Transport (DoT) suggests concern for the environment and a healthy lifestyle is a key driver of the recent surge in public transport patronage in Melbourne.

DoT initially concluded that the primary drivers of growth over the period 2002-07 were population growth, higher petrol prices and growth in CBD jobs (see exhibit). Neither traffic congestion nor public transport service quality appeared to play a significant role.

However a large proportion of the patronage increase on trains – equivalent to about 40,000 extra daily passengers – was not explained by the variables and/or the elasticities that DoT assumed in its modelling. This unexplained increase is labelled “Other factors” on the exhibit.

Some research undertaken by Dot and Metlink suggested it might possibly relate to attitudinal factors. Of the top eight reasons given by respondents for reducing their vehicle use, environmental concerns and health & fitness ranked equal second behind petrol prices, but ahead of parking costs.

DoT subsequently undertook a telephone survey of 1500 Melburnians aged over 16 years, asking them about their attitudes to travel options and their existing travel patterns. Using cluster analysis, the researchers identified six main “attitudinal segments”:

Public transport lifestylers (19%) – “Using public transport as much as possible is just the right thing to do. Apart from being a part of my basic day to day life, it has the advantage of being better for the environment when compared to other transport modes”

Public transport works for me (17%) – “I value the time I spend on public transport. I get things out of using public transport that I wouldn’t with other modes”

Public transport rejecters (18%) – “I wouldn’t use public transport even if it was free”

Car works for me (16%) – “Car is the most convenient and useful way for me to get around. It’s not that I have a big problem with public transport; it’s just that it doesn’t suit me as much”

Agnostics (15%) – “I’m just not all that interested in the matter of how I get around. Some people are car people and some like public transport, but I’m not overly fussed either way. If you changed the public transport system, I probably wouldn’t even notice”

Convertibles (15%) – “I use my car mainly but am actually pretty open to using public transport more….but it will need to improve before I do”

Thus according to this research, nearly a fifth of Melburnians are now Public transport lifestylers who “align themselves with public transport due to a strong belief in environmental and sustainability issues, as well as a desire to live a healthy lifestyle”. What’s surprising is that all six segments have almost no (significant) relationship with age, gender, income, education or distance from the CBD e.g. the large Lifestylers segment is not just made up of inner city Greens voters.

While respondents in this segment don’t necessarily all use public transport, the paper concludes that “the results strongly point to attitudinal change having played a significant role in recent patronage growth”.

I’d like to, but I don’t buy the implication that this attitude is a major independent driver of patronage growth. My interpretation is that there’s a cluster of people who have green attitudes and not surprisingly also have a positive attitude to public transport. But I don’t think they’d use public transport in significantly greater numbers if it took longer or was more expensive than the alternatives. They’d use public transport for the same reasons most people do – because for some trips it’s cheaper and/or faster than the alternatives. Read the rest of this entry »