Conservation Council of the SE Region and Canberra, October 1997
CONTENTS
The Current Stalemate
How We Reached This Point
Assessing the Results
Learning from the World's Best
A New Direction for Canberra
For a number of years now debate about Canberra's transport policies has been growing. Thus far, much of this debate has concerned North Canberra, where the slow but steady growth of Gungahlin has generated increasing traffic pressures on all routes to Civic and to the South of Canberra. In particular, the debate has centred around plans by the De-part-ment of Urban Services (D.U.S.) to link Gungahlin to Civic and Southern Canberra by the John Dedman Parkway, which as originally planned would pass between the suburbs of Kaleen and North Lyneham and cut through Bruce and O'Connor Ridges to Barry Drive.
This project has provoked considerable debate and dissension. The residents of Gungahlin want decent access to Civic and Southern Canberra -- and they want it now, rather than in ten or more years' time. The residents of Kaleen and the Inner North do not want to see the destruction of the valley between the Bruce and O'Connor ridges, which has significant ecological value, and fear the problems of increased noise, pollution and traffic which such a road would bring to their suburbs. Many other ACT residents are worried at the precedent set for the destruction of open space, especially the inner hills (e.g. for the proposed Monash Parkway). Residents of Aranda are concerned about the effect a major road would have on traffic volumes on Caswell Drive, which has been excluded from the current study, while many Belconnen residents are worried about the effects of alternative routing proposals which would take the John Dedman Parkway through residential areas.
In the community consultation process, much time, energy and ink has been expended drawing up alternative routes for the Parkway. But each option meets with legitimate opposition from different parts of the community: indeed, the only accomplishment of the consultation process has been to demonstrate that all the John Dedman Parkway routes are unsuitable. Meanwhile, Gungahlin residents are becoming increasingly impatient. In the community consultation process feelings of frustration and stand-off are emerging on all sides.
The Conservation Council of the South-East Region and Canberra has been concerned about both the process employed and the range of options being canvassed in the current study of the John Dedman Parkway. The consultation process has been frustrating for many participants, who have found themselves being "talked at" by so- called experts arguing that there is no alternative to a Parkway. The process has also been hidebound by restrictive terms of reference which exclude "downstream" issues like the effects of a John Dedman Parkway on Barry Drive, Caswell Drive and the Black Mountain area.
A situation of stalemate indicates a need to go back to basics. We need to ask just what we build any transport system for. What kind of life do we wish to achieve, enhance or preserve when we make decisions about roads, buses, cycleways, pedestrian malls and the like? What sort of place do we want our city to be? When we have worked out these overall priorities - our vision of Canberra as we would like it to be - we can then sit down and ask what specific means and measures will enable us to reach it. And only when we have worked out these overall priorities can we see how best to resolve the current transport deadlock. Only then will we be able to identify what mistakes have been made in the past, correct these mistakes and shape a future which all residents of Canberra can acknowledge as optimally representing both their interests and those of their neighbours.
In order to do this in a way that reflects a range of community views, the Conservation Council convened a day-long seminar on 30th August, which was attended by concerned citizens from across Canberra. The participants, acting in a spirit of cooperation and good faith, were able to reach consensus on the general principles which should form the basis for long-term transport planning in the ACT. This document is an attempt to set out an alternative vision based on those principles.
There are many things about Canberra of which its citizens are deservedly proud. Planning should be about preserving and building upon these positives. Most people would agree that the following are values which Canberrans would like to realise. Some of them are things we already have, at least in part, and should be trying to preserve and enhance:
These values provide a yardstick against which to measure planning visions and principles from the past and the present and for the future. The "garden city" principles underlying the structure of Canberra measure up well, but when the transport plans and visions of the last 30 years are examined as to whether they encourage the preservation or realisation of such values, these visions are found wanting. In fact, these transport planning visions of the 1960s work against those values - to destroy those of them realised already, and to block realisation of those to be achieved.
So what, you might say. The issue currently causing strife is just one comparatively small stretch of road, the John Dedman Parkway. What has this got to do with the general values and goals of planning policy and the alleged failures of the past? It has everything to do with this. For it is precisely the failed transport planning vision of the past which underlies the John Dedman Parkway. It is presented as just one little bit of road, but in fact it has a long history. It is a part of a much 'grander' vision and strategy - one from the sixties and seventies which can be demonstrated to have failed in every city in which this kind of strategy has been developed.
The failed planning of transport planners from the sixties and seventies underlies all the options - five in all, according to the Maunsell Pty Ltd Community Contact newsletter of May, 1997 - being currently considered in the preliminary assessment of the John Dedman project being conducted for D.U.S. Despite numerous differences of detail, they are at bottom the same: they all embody a vision of Canberra deriving from the 60's, when road planners openly aimed for a car-based city in which most transport needs of most people, including commuting to and from work in the city centre, would be met by the motor car. It is because the whole idea of John Dedman is just a part of this transport and urban vision that the only sensible, realistic way to discuss it is to go back to the seemingly utopian ideals articulated above, confirm just how poorly existing and past transport strategies have failed as measured against these values, and then ask what would better realise them.
The road and traffic controversy in North Canberra is just one manifestation of an emerging crisis and conflict concerning growth and development in Canberra. How Canberra's politicians, bureaucrats and residents respond to this crisis will determine the kind of city Canberra will be in the next century. The slowdown in Canberra's population growth, together with the "growing affordability gap" facing the ACT government provide an excellent opportunity for reconsidering the extravagant visions of the past.
"[P]roposed road corridors identified in the National Capital Plan and Territory Plan should, where possible, be either confirmed or abandoned now, to provide greater certainty about future development directions." ACT Government, 1996 (1)
The John Dedman Parkway was born on a computer in 1967 in an outer suburb of Washington DC. The world was very different three decades ago. In those days, it was thought up-to-date to hire American consultants to do transport plans, with the result that every Australian city ended up with a freeway plan modelled on Los Angeles. Planners were quite open about this: our own National Capital Development Commission, for example, frankly admitted it was planning Canberra as a city for the car, boasting that Canberra's freeways would be expected to carry "up to 100,000 vehicles daily. This is about the same level of traffic flow as on the Sydney Harbour Bridge."1
"The [1967] plan was influenced by the application of land-use/transport planning techniques which were popular amongst engineers and town planners in the 1960s. It reflected the clear acceptance of the private car as the principal mode of transport for all trips, particularly the journey-to-work." - National Capital Development Commission, 1984. (2)
The American road engineering consultants used in Canberra were Alan M. Voorhees & Associates of Virginia. These same road engineers worked at the same time for the South Australian government on a study called the Metropolitan Adelaide Transportation Study (MATS), completed in 1968. The American engineers recommended similar plans for both cities: a grid of freeways, supplemented by a public transit spine intended for a small minority of commuters. The plans did not completely ignore public transport, and so were called "balanced". Importantly, the plan was prepared with no public consultation whatsoever. In those days, road planners didn't think of such things: they were the experts, weren't they?
The centrepiece of the 1967 Canberra road plan was the Tuggeranong Freeway, a six-lane motorway planned to run from Tuggeranong to Gungahlin. It is crucial to note the routes for this freeway: it was designed to run precisely where the Tuggeranong Parkway and Gungahlin Drive run now. And it was designed to run precisely where the road planners would now like to put the John Dedman Parkway. In other words, Gungahlin Drive plus John Dedman Parkway plus Tuggeranong Parkway is the original Tuggeranong Freeway by another name. The name changes were in fact a public relations exercise in response to public concern about freeways in the 1970s. The original plan was to construct the freeway in bits: "The first stage can take the form of a country road... Once opened to traffic, the upgrading of sections and intersections can be accomplished... The first application of the concept will be the Tuggeranong Freeway." (3) The single-lane roads would be progressively upgraded to full freeway conditions, with dual carriageways and multi-level interchanges. Also included in the plan was the Molonglo Freeway, which was to run along the full length of the north side of Lake Burley Griffin, and Monash Parkway, which would extend through the bushland at the foot of Mount Ainslie.
The Voorhees transport plan was incorporated into a larger plan for Canberra called "Tomorrow's Canberra". This strategic plan was published by the National Capital Development Commission in 1970. Interestingly, the overall plan into which the Voorhees freeway plan was incorporated drew on the ideas of the British town planner, Ebebezer Howard. Canberra was to be the closest approximation ever built to Ebenezer Howard's vision of a metropolis of self-contained "Garden Cities" which each contained a full range of employment, retailing and cultural facilities, and separated by parkland.1 The concept was designed to offer green space close at hand, and ensure that people would not have to travel long distances, although they would be free to do so if they wished. The Canberra plan proposed a city structure shaped like a "Y", and has come to be known as the "Y-plan".
Unfortunately, when the American consultants convinced Canberra's planners to incorporate their freeway plan into the Garden City vision they had derived from Howard's ideas, they introduced a fundamental and fateful change in Howard's original model, which had placed heavy emphasis on walking, cycling and public transport as means of travel. Canberra's planners dumped this emphasis in favour of the Voorhees car-based vision of a network of freeways. The freeway network proposed in the Voorhees plan was, and remains, in fundamental conflict with the Garden City vision, for three reasons.
The freeway system also undermined the principles of Walter Burley Griffin's original plan for Canberra, which called for a European-style, pedestrian-scale city centre served by rail and tram. Hugh Stretton explains in "Ideas for Australian Cities" how Burley Griffin's vision was sacrificed on the altar of the car:
Griffin's roads survived but not his city. Its loss was a pity because it promised a marvellous marriage of building and landscape, activity and rest, efficiency and grace... Perhaps some of it might still be rescued, if anyone dared: the flat traffic lanes which are all that remain of [Griffin's] avenues could be walled with buildings and alive with people... But that would first require an impossible victory of Griffin's intentions.. against the motor car [and] the deep conviction.. that the working and symbolic life of this sunburned suburban nation ought to inhabit solemn memorial structures, dispersed like tombstones through five hundred acres of park: lapped by an ocean of parked cars perhaps, but not by life. (1)
Now it is true that since the 70s the plan for a Civic ringed by freeways and multi- storey car parks has not materialised. Nonetheless, much of the original Voorhees plan remains. In particular, its centrepiece, the Tuggeranong Freeway - or, if you prefer, the combined Gungahlin Drive (under construction), plus John Dedman Parkway (planned), plus Tuggeranong Parkway (built). This is why it is so important to recall the whole Canberra road plan when considering the John Dedman Parkway.
The Parkway is not just an isolated section of road; it is the centrepiece of an extraordinarily expensive and very extensive freeway plan for the whole of Canberra, the logical consequences of which include spending up to $1 billion to completely rebuild Civic.
The Canberra and Adelaide freeway plans met quite different fates. Public anger over the Adelaide MATS plan sparked a "freeway revolt" which brought down the South Australian government in 1970.2 Helping Don Dunstan get elected Premier was the only lasting accomplishment of Voorhees in Adelaide, because the new government scrapped MATS and halted freeway construction. The Dunstan government also combined government trains, trams and buses with the routes of private bus companies into a network offering improved service levels and free transfers between different modes of transport. The effect of even this comparatively small change in direction away from freeways and private cars and in favour of public transport was that Adelaide is today the only Australian capital city with no urban freeways, has few traffic problems, and had the smallest increase in per capita motor vehicle travel in the two decades to 1995 (see table 1 below). These results show that Dunstan's policy was the right one. In fact, even though most of the public transport gains were reversed by 'economic rationalist' politicians and administrators in the 1980s and 90s, Dunstan's policy has been vindicated.
Table 1. Travel by passenger motor vehicles in capital cities, per capita, 19951
Km travelled 1996 1976 Percentage increase
Sydney 7330 5590 31
Melbourne 7940 6156 29
Brisbane 8247 5557 48
Adelaide 7578 6457 17
Perth 8545 6807 26
Canberra 7745 6070 28
But in Canberra things worked out differently. The road plan which Voorhees developed for Canberra produced less immediate public concern. In contrast with the Adelaide study, which proposed carving freeways through established suburbs and the ring of parks encircling the city centre, the Canberra plan confined freeways to what were then undeveloped areas. The main exception was the Molonglo Freeway (renamed Parkes Way) along the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. This piece of environmental vandalism was, understandably, greeted by public protest in the 1970s, and has never been fully completed. But the real reason for the differences between Canberra and Adelaide was that Canberrans had far less say in planning issues. Until self-government was introduced in 1989, Canberrans have lacked the ability to vote for the agencies that controlled issues like transport policy. And so they had much less ability to influence planning policies than their Adelaide counterparts.
In 1984, the National Capital Development Commission published "Metropolitan Canberra", a review and updating of the Y-plan, which operates as the basic guide to strategic transport planning in Canberra today.2 The 17 years since the Voorhees study had seen an oil crisis, the rise of the conservation movement and "freeway revolts" like Adelaide's in cities across the world. How did the NCDC respond to these changes? By ignoring them and restating the principles of the 1967 road plan.
"Metropolitan Canberra" points out that the 1967 road plan "was influenced by... planning techniques which were popular amongst engineers and town planners in the 1960s [and] reflected the clear acceptance of the private car as the principal mode of transport for all trips, particularly the journey-to-work." (3) But the NCDC concludes that its "preferred metropolitan strategy is that which retains the basic principles and structure of the [1967] plan." (4) Some adjustments to the original plan were made: most notably, the express busway system was quietly dropped in favour of buses operating on regular roads.
"Metropolitan Canberra" retains the freeway focus of the 1967 plan, albeit on a reduced scale, proposing expenditure of $270 million (5), equivalent to $600 million today, on new and expanded roads, and multi-storey car parks. The proposed road network, illustrated on the following page, includes the following elements:
It is important to understand that these road plans have never been revoked: they form the strategic policy guiding road-building in Canberra to this day.
Canberra has developed pretty much in accordance with the Y-plan outlined in "Tomorrow's Canberra". Town centres have been established in Belconnen, Woden and Tuggeranong, and plans are being drawn for one in Gungahlin (originally called Mulligan's Flat). All the towns except Gungahlin have been linked by major freeways. In recent years, on all these freeways and in Civic, traffic and congestion have been steadily growing. It is often assumed that traffic congestion in the city centre is due to Civic having grown faster than the plan projected, but this is not true. Currently, some 26,000 employees work in Civic1 in a city with an overall population of 300,000. Civic is on-target for the planned workforce of 43,000 in a city of 500,000.2 There is absolutely no reason why a city centre workforce of this size, or even the projected size, need cause any serious transport problems at all, unless most of them, and virtually all other city visitors, arrive in cars. This is of course precisely what the Voorhees plan intended them to do, and it is precisely what most of them do today. Yet successive governments have baulked, with good reason, at the financial and environmental cost of the expressway ring and car parks recommended in the 1967 plan. So the expressway ring around Civic and the car parks have not been built - with the result that the traffic problems of Civic have increased out of all proportion to the actual numbers of people coming to Civic.
But while governments have baulked at the idea of a Civic ringed by expressways and car parks, they have been much more prepared to build some of the other roads contained in the Voorhees plan. In fact, Canberra has got most of its planned freeways. Governments were less keen to take action on the proposed inter-town express public transport system recommended in the Voorhees report, which was quietly dropped in the 1984 Y-plan revision. The public transport study for Canberra carried out by Voorhees in conjunction with the Y-plan3 listed 101 different "systems and concepts", ranging from the prosaic (double-decker buses, rubber tyred metros) to the impractical (hydrofoils, VTOL aircraft), and narrowed the field to five options: metros (rubber or steel wheeled), monorails, something called a "transit expressway"1, and busways. A decision was made in favour of busways, if only because the other options considered as alternatives were so palpably unworkable. A curious feature of the Voorhees study is that in weighing up public transport options light rail was not mentioned even among the initial list of 101 options.
Why have governments and planners been much more ready to follow through with the road plans contained in the Voorhees transport plan? Why have they been so tardy about implementing the public transport recommendations? The reason is simple: right from the start the public transport system was never an integral part of the 1967 transport plan. Rather, it was a token adjunct to the freeway network. Apart from Walter Burley Griffin himself, Canberra's planners have never seriously considered any future other than one completely dominated by the car. The freeway network was always envisaged as providing the arteries of communication between towns. And so it remains today.
"[T]he Y-plan has, for the most part, been closely adhered to and has worked much as the planners intended it to at the time it was formulated in the 1960s." - National Capital Development Commission, 1984. (1)
Our goal here is not to criticise those who carried out the 1967 study, or those who accepted its recommendations. Few people thought differently three decades ago. Most then thought that the car was the transport solution of the future. That's what the National Capital Development Commission was told by its American road consultants.
But since then all across the world people have come to appreciate that car dominance is incompatible with a decent, human urban life. Freeways introduce noise and pollution, destroy flora and fauna habitats, chop communities up into isolated islands, cause property values to fall, destroy local business, contribute to massive road tolls and public health bills and swallow up ever more green space and public land - quite apart from such more global issues as the contribution by pollution from motor transport to the Greenhouse effect. So while we can understand how people thought 30 years ago, we have no excuse for continuing to think like them. Three decades on, it is time to evaluate the achievements of the Canberra Y-plan.
Let us make no mistake: in many respects, Canberra is a success story for planning. The Garden City concept has been advanced through tree planting, extensive native bushland and open space, and new suburbs being (until recently) provided with adequate schools and shops. But in one critical respect, planning in Canberra has been a dismal failure: transport. The Y-plan was intended to "reduce the need for longer distance inter-town travel", conserve energy and "achieve equitable levels of accessibility to required facilities". (2) But measured against these goals, the plan has failed on all counts.
The 1995 Survey of Motor Vehicle Usage carried out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that the average resident of Canberra travels further by car each year than the average resident of Sydney and Adelaide (see table 1). Given that these cities are many times the size of Canberra, this is nothing short of extraordinary. A more recent survey by ABS found that residents of the ACT were less likely to have short journeys to work than were residents of any of the states (3), while the 1994 ACT State of the Environment Report observed that petrol usage per capita is higher in the ACT than the Australian average, noting that "journeys to work are longer than originally anticipated by planning authorities". (4)
Everywhere one goes in Canberra, there are problems with traffic: the Dickson Precinct Community Group recently surveyed residents, shoppers and business people and asked them to name "the worst thing about Dickson". The most common response was traffic; the main issue nominated as a focus for future action was "traffic/transport". (5) Use of public transport for the journey to work is much lower in Canberra than in other Australian cities. Only 18% of city centre workers use public transport, a lower figure than Los Angeles! More than half the land in Civic is sterilised by roads and car parks, just like the centre of LA.
"Unlike most European cities Canberra is very comfortable for drivers but quite the opposite for pedestrians and people who do not drive." Dr. I. Spilda, Charge d'Affaires, Embassy of the Slovak Republic Submission to Canberra 2020 study, 1993
Most residents of the ACT make virtually all their trips by car, even work trips to Civic. This is easy to understand when one considers the attractiveness of the alternatives.
Pedestrians are currently at the bottom of the status heap in Canberra, as Dr. Spilda notes. Many streets do not even have footpaths and when footpaths are provided, they are frequently in the most dangerous place: right up against the edge of the road (this is also the best place to be drenched by passing vehicles in wet weather). Street lighting is usually poor, being designed to illuminate the road rather than the footpath, and pedestrians are always the last to be considered when intersections are designed or traffic light phases set.
Cyclists are a little better catered for: indeed, Canberra has the best cycleway system in Australia. But cycleways remain a token concession in a car-oriented transport policy. Whenever a cycle path approaches a road, it either peters out completely, or degenerates to a crossing where cyclists have to give way. Most cycleways are badly lit or not lit at all, and frequently poorly maintained as well. Cycleways are also designed for recreational cyclists rather than commuters, and tend to be scenic, but circuitous. As a result, cyclists frequently prefer to use main roads.
Canberra's strongest "selling point" is that it is a good place to bring up children. But studies by Paul Tranter of the Australian Defence Force Academy have shown that Canberra's road-dominated transport policies reduce the quality of life for children. Tranter's research found that busy, unsafe streets and poor public transport reduced children's mobility compared with children surveyed in English and (West) German cities (table 2).
Table 2. Children's freedoms in Canberra, England and Germany
Canberra England Germany
Average number of places visited alone by
9-11 year olds on weekend 1.3 2.1 2.5
Percentage allowed to catch buses alon 25 28 58
Percentage taken to school by car 43 27 13
Tranter describes the vicious circle of declining mobility for children - and indeed all pedestrians in Canberra:
It is not just that traffic danger reduces children's freedoms because of the danger of accidents... when pedestrians, especially children cease to use the streets... streets become lonely deserted places. In this situation, parents' concerns about assault and molestation are heightened. (1)
The poor quality of public transport in Canberra has recently been confirmed by an independent report commissioned by the ACT government from transport consultant Roger Graham. Mr. Graham confirmed that public transport in Canberra is slow, infrequent, unreliable, expensive and difficult to understand:
And, as Mr. Graham notes, things have been getting worse for the last decade, as ACTION has been stuck in a vicious circle of falling patronage, rising fares and declining service. Service levels on ACTION's basic network have halved since 1990: from 5 minutes to 10 on off-peak route 333 services, from 15 minutes to 30 on local routes in peak hour, and from 30 to 60 minutes off-peak. Some evening and weekend services now only run every two hours! Fares have also risen much faster than inflation. Consequently, ACTION's patronage has declined by 20% in the last decade (relative to population).
The basic ACTION 'hub and spoke' system, in which local buses feed express services at interchanges in town centres, has broken down completely. The lack of timetable co-ordination (connecting route 333 services are no longer even shown on local route timetables) and infrequent services mean long waits at interchanges. And the interchanges themselves are unattractive and unsafe places for waiting, being badly located and designed, poorly maintained and unsupervised. At Belconnen, for example, bus passengers must walk long distances through cold, dark and graffitied concrete passageways to reach the shopping centre.
The worst service of all is found in Gungahlin. At present, Palmerston is served by a non-express bus route from Civic that meanders through the back streets of Mitchell and runs every half-hour, even in peak periods. Residents of Amaroo, Ngunnawal and Nicholls have to travel to Belconnen on a slow local service that runs hourly (half- hourly in peak period) and change there to the 333 intertown express service to Civic, paying two fares for the privilege, adding insult to injury. The lower-than-average use of public transport by Gungahlin residents is perfectly understandable.
The original Garden City idea of Ebebezer Howard is fine. The problem lies with the attempt to combine the original vision underlying the Y-plan with a transport system and vision which directly contradicted the whole point of the Y-plan. The Y-plan has failed because it was based around a freeway plan. And this freeway plan has failed for the very same reasons that freeway plans in American cities failed. Urban freeways are not just neutral conduits for travel, they are not just there to cater for a pre-existing demand. They actually attract traffic, they create travel: they encourage more, and longer, trips and undermine the viability of public transport, walking and cycling. People become less likely to work locally, and local shops decline. Rather than encouraging the locally-based travel that underlies the Garden City model, a freeway system encourages long, cross-city trips.
"[E]xperience and studies in other countries have shown that latent demand can be released by the construction of new transport infrastructure and that this is particularly likely in the case of new urban roads in congested areas." - The Institution of Engineers, Australia, 1996.1
A good example of this effect can be seen from the projections of travel prepared by Maunsell Pty Ltd for the John Dedman study. These predict that, when Gungahlin is full, almost 10 per cent of Gungahlin workers will travel the full length of Canberra to jobs in Woden or Tuggeranong each day2, with a similar number making the reverse journey. This will mean 20,000 very long car trips per day. And so Maunsells tell us that it is an ineluctable law of nature that we will need to build new roads to accommodate the traffic. In fact, the computer model Maunsells uses to make all these dire predictions only produces these results because it assumes from the outset that there will be the kind of travel demand between Gungahlin and Tuggeranong which only a freeway could ever hope to satisfy. No wonder, then, that according to Maunsells and their models, things are only going to get worse: they predict the demand that one would create by building a large freeway and then, like Jeremiah, prophesy doom unless the freeway be built. But obviously these prophecies are self- fulfilling: the right approach is to ask how we can minimise the need for travel and then how the remaining travel demand can be channelled into less destructive, more sustainable forms. The question of accommodating thousands of car trips from Gungahlin to Tuggeranong would then, like the trips themselves, not arise.
The crucial thing to realise is that people's travel demands are not brute natural facts, like the raging torrent of a river. People would be more likely to work locally if the government did not spend tens of millions of dollars encouraging long journeys with the building of urban freeways, and if the government worked harder to create local employment opportunities in growing areas like Gungahlin. And when they travel, they would be more likely to use public transport, or walk or cycle if the government, instead of building more roads, put its effort into improving conditions for these sustainable kinds of transport. The inadequacies of public transport are very much due to the fact that it has never been given a fair go: it has been underfunded and always given second place to roads. The high cost of freeways leaves insufficient funds to provide quality public transport, while the competition offered by the freeway network keeps patronage low. Finally, the heavy traffic, wide roads and spread-out city centre created by car-based transport policies discourage walking and cycling, as well as creating an unattractive civic centre.
Perhaps the erosion of public transport, walking and cycling would not be so bad if the roads solution offered significant advantages of its own. But in fact all around the world it is evident that the dominance of the private car is systematically eroding the values we set out at the start of this document. Ironically, many of these values are implicit in the original Canberra plans: "Tomorrow's Canberra" is full of cheery scenes of trees and greenery. But the fact of the matter is that in pursuit of the roads which this vision recommends, we are losing these values. We have been going down a path which is consistently undermining what is good about Canberra. As indicated before, the plans for such roads as John Dedman and Monash Parkways are relics of this failed strategy.
The Dedman and Monash routes will destroy native bushland and devastate areas of conservation significance, as explained in the O'Connor Ridge Parkcare Group's submission, which we endorse. (1) The traffic they generate will add to pollution and compromise our children's future by worsening global problems like the Greenhouse Effect, the fastest-growing source for which is emissions from road transport. (2) Quiet local streets and local community facilities will also be casualties of a car-dominated future.
But all this destruction will not produce a quieter inner north Canberra. These two freeways are intended to serve only part of the travel demand from Gungahlin when it reaches its final population. The Maunsells report estimates that traffic from Gungahlin headed south will occupy ten lanes' worth of roadspace (in each direction!). Seven lanes of this roadspace are to be provided by new roads proposed in the still-current 1984 road plans: John Dedman, Monash and Majura Parkways. The rest of the traffic, equivalent to three lanes in each direction is to use existing roads, particularly Wakefield/Limestone Avenue, where peak traffic volumes are to increase by 50% from 1200 to 1800 vehicles per hour, and Northbourne Avenue, which is to see a 30% increase from 2650 to 3450. (3)
The Maunsell plans call for the building of the John Dedman Parkway and Monash Drive, plus substantial increases in traffic on Limestone and Northbourne Avenues, not reductions.
What is to happen to the traffic that uses the John Dedman Parkway? Most is expected to exit into Barry Drive. Barry Drive already carries more traffic in peak period (3900 cars per hour) than Northbourne Avenue (2650 per hour), and is just as congested. Every morning, hundreds of cars leave Barry Drive and 'rat-run' through residential streets in Turner and O'Connor: the additional traffic from John Dedman would exacerbate this problem.
The rest of the John Dedman traffic is expected to head for the Tuggeranong Parkway and Parkes Way, but access roads and the Glenloch Interchange are already busy. The long-term "solution" to this problem, as set out in the 1967 and 1984 road plans, is a freeway connection, following either Caswell Drive or running adjacent to the National Botanic Gardens1, and the reconstruction of Glenloch Interchange as a multi-level 'spaghetti junction'. But then Parkes Way, which is already congested, will have to be widened. The cycle of road-building never ends.
The May 1997 newsletter for the Maunsells John Dedman Parkway consultation process outlined a new "Option 4", an "alternative" route for the John Dedman Parkway involving duplicating William Slim Drive and realigning it to the east of Lake Ginninderra to meet up with Aikman Drive and Bindubi Street. Bindubi Street would be widened to four lanes. This option, which was not supported by any community group at the June consultation workshop, has understandably concerned residents of Aranda, Cook and Giralang. What Maunsells failed to explain to local communities is that Option 4, like John Dedman Parkway, is part of the still-current road plan set out in the 1984 "Metropolitan Canberra" report. Construction of the first stage (linking Aikman Drive and Eastern Valley Way) is scheduled to commence in the near future. The report proposes building John Dedman Parkway, plus widening and realigning William Slim Drive and joining it to Bindubi Street, widening Bindubi Street, William Hovell Drive, Tuggeranong Parkway and Parkes Way, and rebuilding Glenloch Interchange. (2)
"Option 4" is part of the current road building plan for Canberra. It is to be built in addition to, not as an alternative to, the John Dedman Parkway.
And what is the final result? Massive increases in traffic headed for Civic along Ainslie Avenue (the exit point for Monash Drive), Northbourne Avenue, Barry Drive and Parkes Way. Increased numbers of cars taking short-cuts through residential streets to avoid congestion. Is this the point at which the transport planners and engineers revive their planned billion-dollar Civic expressway ring?
Rather than setting off down the slippery slope to Los Angelisation, surely we should think again while we still have the choice. Rather than fighting to put traffic in our neighbours' back yards, surely we should be banding together to demand better transport policies for everyone. It is most definitely time for a rethink in Canberra. It is time we caught up with the rest of the world: in England a recent Royal Commission recommended a complete halt to motorway projects and a massive upgrading of public transport and facilities for pedestrians and cyclists. In Canada and Europe, yes, and even in some American cities, the tide has turned against the motorway madness. We here in Canberra need to do the same.
In theory, at least, the ACT government shares these concerns. Its "Canberra: A Capital Future" strategy document, released in December 1996, laments the car- dominated ugliness of Civic and argues that the ACT's "growing affordability gap" and slower-than-expected growth require reconsideration of the extravagant road plans of the past:
"In the light of the 'affordability gap' now facing the ACT Government in its provision of infrastructure, and more generally in light of the need for a more sustainable direction, Canberra's past reliance on road systems aimed simply at satisfying ever-increasing demand for private travel is no longer appropriate." (1)
Noble sentiments indeed, but where is the evidence that the rhetoric is being matched by reality? The current Maunsells traffic study, and its predecessors, calculates the number of road lanes "needed" explicitly by reference to "car travel demands in peak period". (2) Maunsells are doing exactly what the ACT government says "is no longer appropriate"! The "Capital Future" document itself demonstrates that the new direction is empty rhetoric, and that the old mentality lives on:
"The proposed John Dedman Parkway is likely to be the first major road to be built... It is likely that the second major road to be built will be Monash Drive." (3)
Is there an alternative? Can the Garden City concept be combined with an emphasis on public transport, walking and cycling, as in Ebenezer Howard's original concept? The Voorhees study of 1967 did not ask the question. It evaluated four alternative structures for Canberra, but "a single highway network was developed to test all the alternate land use plans." (4) In other words, all the so-called alternatives were variations on the single theme of a city dominated by the car. The 1984 Y-plan revision similarly refused to consider alternatives to complete domination by the car, stating: "During the next twenty years, it is expected that the public transport system will cater for about the same proportion of the total transport demand as it presently does" (5) (walking and cycling were ignored completely).
The various firms of road engineers hired as transport consultants in the three decades since have continued the tradition established by Voorhees. They use American computer models developed in the 1950s and 1960s to address the transport problems of Australian cities for the coming century. Not surprisingly, these models tell us that new roads are the only alternative; they are programmed to reject all other options. The computer model used in the 1989 Gungahlin External Travel Study, for example, categorised walking and cycling as "minor modes", underscoring the fact that the most environmentally friendly modes of transport were not taken seriously. (6) Transport planning in Canberra remains trapped in the car-oriented paradigms of three decades ago.
The Garden City idea can be combined with a transport policy that relies less on the car. It is possible to combine transport and land-use policies in a way that encourages both shorter trips and the use of environmentally friendly modes of transport, especially for commuting to work. This is shown by the experience of progressive overseas cities which have rejected the 1960s-American approach to transport in favour of environmentally friendly alternatives.
"International best practice" is in danger of becoming a cliche, but the principle that we should seek to learn from the experience of others remains a valuable one. "Best practice" in transport planning is a long way from Washington DC and 1967. Many of the cities that have received the highest accolades for sustainable transport planning are in Europe, but Britain and Canada are also pointing the way to a better future.
The City of Zurich has the highest rate of public transport usage in the world (see table 3), with the proportion of journeys to work by public transport increasing from 67.5% in 1980 to 76.1% in 1990. Zurich is a prosperous city with a growing population and rapidly increasing employment, but has maintained one of the most attractive urban environments anywhere. There has been no increase in traffic levels within the city's boundaries since the early 1980s. How has this been achieved?
During the 1960s, when Canberra's future was being plotted on an American computer, transport policy-makers in Zurich were preparing plans for "balanced transport". The tram system was to be replaced by an extensive underground Metro, partly to speed up services, but also to get trams off the streets to make room for cars. There was also to be a limited system of expressways. These plans were rejected by citizens at referendums in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, citizen-initiated plans for a low-cost, user-friendly transport system were adopted. "Balanced transport" was rejected in favour of a demand management policy with a deliberate preference for walking, cycling and public transport. The new plan's key elements are:
The result is a public transport system that is much more convenient than the proposed underground system, so convenient that most people never think of driving to the city centre, for work, for shopping or for evening entertainment. A good deal of suburban travel is also by public transport. And walking and cycling are so safe and convenient that lots of trips are made by these most environmentally friendly forms of transport. A recent study observed:
"Notable is the fact that public transport use in the city has been maintained for 40 years, with strong increases in the 1980s. Advertising, promotion and ticketing have clearly played a part in this increase, but would have had little effect if not backed by an excellent service. This quality has been achieved not by the building of a few fast lines (e.g. an underground) but by providing a service network which is dense in both space and time... There is a close network of tram and bus routes throughout the city [and] high frequency services are operated throughout the day.." (1)
The Swiss are not the only nation to have second thoughts about roads. In 1989, Margaret Thatcher launched Britain on the path to an American-style future with a massive motorway programme called "Roads to Prosperity". In only a few years, transport policy has been reversed, with a virtual moratorium on new urban road building in place even before the recent change of government. As in Zurich, public opposition to road-dominated transport policies was a key factor, but a critical influence was a growing consensus among transport planners themselves that a new direction was required.
The most influential expert study in the UK was the 1994 "Transport and the Environment" report by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. The Royal Commission catalogued the growing list of problems created by car-dominated transport policies, from accidents and injuries to the greenhouse effect to loss of parkland for new roads. It blamed these problems on the "predict and provide" approach to road-building: planners predict increases in traffic, then provide new roads which ensure that the predicted increase actually occurs. The Royal Commission concluded that traffic problems were being made worse by the road- building that was supposed to be remedying them, because new roads encourage additional travel, and undermine the viability of alternative methods of travel such as walking, cycling and public transport. The report recommended a complete reversal of transport priorities in England:
"Planned expenditure on motorways and other trunk roads should be reduced to about half its present level... expenditure should be confined mainly to maintenance... The resources released should be used to expand environmentally less damaging forms of transport." (1)
The Conservative British government reluctantly accepted this advice and cancelled most of the motorway plans, including virtually all those in urban areas:
"Strategies are needed for reducing car dependency and car use by promoting quality alternatives, and for better management of existing roads. New road building in [cities] will rarely be an acceptable option." (2)
The newly-elected Blair Labour government is taking an even stronger pro- environment stance, promising a dramatic upgrade of public transport and a cessation of urban arterial road-building:
"I will have failed if in five years there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It is a tall order but I want you to hold me to it." - John Prescott, UK Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister World Environment Day, 1997 (3)
It is often argued that transport policies in European and British cities are not relevant in Australia, because our cities are more spread out and car ownership is so high. For this reason, it is worthwhile examining the situation in Canada, whose cities are more similar to ours than any others in the world. Ottawa, Canada's capital, is about twice the size of Canberra, but has a comparable population density. Like Canberra, car ownership is high (525 cars per 1000 residents compared with 473 in Canberra1) and there is no urban rail system. Unlike Canberra, Ottawa is not a planned city, and as a result housing estates, offices and shopping malls are scattered randomly throughout the suburbs, making the task of providing public transport very difficult. The difficulties are exacerbated by the inclement winter weather. But the average citizen of Ottawa uses public transport three times as frequently as the average Canberra resident, and an overwhelming majority of trips to the city centre are by public transport (table 3). How has Ottawa achieved this?
Table 3. Public transport in Canberra, Ottawa and Zurich in 1990/912
Canberra Ottawa Zurich
Public transport trips per person per year 41 133 530
Percentage of work trips by public transport
* across whole city 8 35 76
* to central business district 18 75 90
Population density (per hectare) 11.4 13.8 47
Population (thousand) 276 572 370
Ottawa, like Canberra, imported American consultants in the 1960s to plan its transport. As in Canberra, the consultants recommended a network of freeways, supplemented by bus-based public transport incorporating sections of "busway", or roads built for buses only. In contrast with Canberra, the American plans were thrown out in the 1970s (by an elected council) in response to environmental concerns and high costs. Most of the freeways were scrapped, and funds redirected to building a larger version of the express busway. Public transport services were dramatically upgraded and fares reduced. The result has been a substantial increase in the use of public transport, especially for trips in peak hour and to the city centre.
Ottawa uses the same public transport "hardware" as Canberra, regular and articulated buses. The difference in performance results from the way planners have deployed this hardware to meet the challenge of dispersed travel. Ottawa's network is structured, like Canberra's, around a skeleton of fast, frequent express buses serving the city centre, connecting at interchanges with feeder services, which also double as local and cross-suburban links. But in contrast with Canberra, the feeder routes provide a high level of service, made possible by the combination of these three streams of passengers. Typical local buses run every 15 minutes or better all day until midnight (30 minutes late at night and on Sundays, when shops are closed). Combined with a "timetable-free" frequent trunk service, reasonably direct routes and free transfers, this provides the flexibility to serve destinations across the city inside and outside peak periods. Ottawa's system is not perfect, but it is more effective than Canberra's. The route structure permits efficient use of resources (Ottawa uses twice as many buses as Canberra to carry six times as many passengers), allowing lower fares (a monthly ticket costs $57, compared with $109 here) and a proportionally smaller public subsidy.
Would an approach like Ottawa's work in Canberra, or do Canadians just like public transport more than Australians? Across the Ottawa River in the Province of Quebec lies the city of Hull, Ottawa's equivalent of Queanbeyan. Public transport in Hull was provided by private firms which went bankrupt in the 1970s, leaving a legacy of poor service and high fares. Public transport patronage in Hull is as low as in Canberra. If Canadians can be induced by poor service to use public transport at Australian rates, maybe the reverse can be achieved here with good service.
Universities are large generators of traffic. On a typical day, around 20,000 staff, students and visitors travel to and from the Australian National University in Canberra, less than 10 per cent of whom use public transport. The 35,000 car trips to and from ANU are similar to the daily traffic volume on Northbourne Avenue. In the morning, cars waiting to enter ANU queue back along McCaughey Street as far as O'Connor. The University of Ottawa is of similar size to ANU and, like its Canberra counterpart, adjacent to the central business district. Some 70% of daily visitors use public transport. Why the difference?
Only one Canberra bus route serves ANU, the circuitous route 434. Services are provided every half-hour during the day, but less frequently (up to 40 minutes apart) during peak hour. After 6 pm, services operate hourly. Although the 333 intertown express passes by the main University gate in Barry Drive, it does not stop.
The University of Ottawa is located along the city's transit expressway, and is served by two stops. This is not an accident: the route was planned to take in the University. Six full-time bus routes serve the transitway stops plus another half-dozen peak-only&127; routes. Two additional full-time routes travel through the campus along normal roads. In peak periods, 100 buses pass through the campus per direction per hour; during the day the figure is 50 buses per hour; in the evening, 20 per hour.
The different rates of utilisation of public transport are a rational response by people to the differing quality of services offered (and Ottawa's cheaper fares).
The need for change is even beginning to be accepted in Australia. Late last year, the usually-conservative Institution of Engineers adopted a policy on Travel Demand Management which states:
"latent demand can be released by the construction of new transport infrastructure and that this is particularly likely in the case of new urban roads in congested areas... travel demand management measures should always be considered and evaluated, either as an alternative, or as part of an integrated package, prior to the introduction of major infrastructure or improvement works." (1)
This policy has never been applied in Canberra, nor is it being applied in the John Dedman Parkway study.
A fair examination of the future offered to Canberra by a continuation of present policies establishes the need for a change of direction. The experience of overseas cities which have successfully moved away from "predict and provide" shows that change is practical, as well as necessary. Canberra is now at the crossroads.
Before we move to alternative policies, it is important to address some myths that are commonly put forward by the road lobby.
The first myth is that Canberra's population density is too low for anything other than a car-dominated future: a representative of the NRMA made the preposterous claim at the John Dedman workshop on 21 June 1997 that Canberra's density would need to increase to Tokyo's1 to avoid the need for the Dedman Parkway! While it is true that Canberra's density is low compared with European cities, it is comparable with, or higher than, a range of Australian and North American cities, including Ottawa, Vancouver, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart, Adelaide, Sacramento, Portland and Boston.2 Importantly, Canberra's density has been slowly increasing for the last twenty years, in contrast with most of the named cities, which have seen declines.
Canberra actually has more flats now (as a percentage of total dwellings) than Melbourne or Adelaide. Most of these flats have been built in the last ten years, a period which has coincided with a sharp decline in per capita patronage of public transport, and in the quality of services. Gungahlin, which is being developed at higher densities than existing areas of Canberra, is being provided with worse public transport. Density is an excuse, not an explanation, for Canberra's car-dominated transport policies.
The second myth is that people need to be persuaded to give up their cars completely. This is most unlikely to happen, but it is not necessary either. All that is required is that, as in Ottawa, a significant minority of overall travel - including a majority of peak-hour travel to the city centre - be shifted to public transport, walking and cycling. Lots of local travel, such as grocery shopping, will still be by car; people will still go for drives in the country. Urban freeways are not needed to cater for this type of travel.
A more recently-invented myth is that people drive to work because they need to drop children off on the way. A 1996 survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that only 7.3% of people who drove to work or study in the ACT dropped children at school on the way to their destination.3 The most common reasons given for not using public transport related to the quality of the service: "takes too long" (47%), "infrequency of service" (23%), unreliability (16%), "fares cost too much" (15%) and "no service available at all" (10%) (respondents could nominate more than one answer).4
In 1996 Vancouver adopted a plan for a "livable metropolis", which all local councils and Provincial government agencies have agreed to. The plan was based on extensive community involvement (not merely "consultation"), in which planners cooperated with the community in identifying alternative policies, rather than trying to steer people into a predetermined agenda. The resulting strategy follows exactly the kind of approach mentioned in this document. Like Ottawa, Vancouver is a city with comparable density to Canberra.
The Livable Region Strategy starts with a series of agreed community goals. The first three agreed goals are:
The strategy then examines existing trends. It finds that despite a high (more than twice Canberra's) and increasing rate of public transport usage, car travel is also growing. The question posed in response to these trends is not how to accommodate the extra cars, but "How can the trends be changed?"
Vancouver's strategy proposes to halt the growth in per capita car travel using four "policy levers". The first is "controlling land use", creating "complete communities" by establishing Canberra-style district centres located along a public transport spine, to encourage self-containment and use of public transport. The second lever is "transport demand management", which includes measures such as restricting car parking in town centres. The third lever is to "adjust transport service levels". This involves dramatically improving public transport, and allowing congestion to deteriorate for cars. The contrast with Canberra is particularly stark on the issue of congestion:
"Congestion is usually considered an evil; however, allowing congestion to deteriorate for single-occupant vehicles is a practical method of promoting transit.." [buses are to be given reserved lanes on busy roads]. (1)
The fourth lever is "supply new transport capacity". In Vancouver, this translates into extending the light rails system. Although Vancouver only has one urban freeway (built in the 1950s), further freeways were rejected because "they are not required [and] would work against the proposed land-use objectives and the pro-transit orientation" of the Livable Region Strategy." (2)
Canberra is internationally renowned as a model of "Garden City" planning. It is time our city also became an international model of ecologically sustainable transport planning. A suggested strategy for achieving this follows. This strategy is designed to address immediate problems, like access for Gungahlin residents and traffic in local streets, but within a framework that addresses long-term issues as well.
The first step in this process, as in Vancouver, is to establish planning goals through a genuine, open process of community involvement. We have suggested a series of goals at the start of this document, revolving around the themes of equity, environment and economic progress. We have shown that current policies cannot accomplish these goals. The only way to maintain equity of access while keeping Canberra livable is to promote a significant shift in travel from the car to "green" modes of transport.
Logically the first issue to be addressed is the final population target for Gungahlin. In the 1989 Gungahlin External Travel Survey this was set at 85,000, comparable in size to Tuggeranong (88,000), Woden-Weston Creek (65,000) and Belconnen (95,000), while the government's current study of retail centres in Gungahlin talks of an "ultimate population of 105,000."1 The Maunsells study is based on a still higher target of 114,000. The higher the population, naturally, the higher the predicted traffic volumes. Given that Canberra's population is likely to grow much less rapidly than predicted in the past, as the ACT government points out in "Canberra: A Capital Future", the population target for Gungahlin should be revised downwards to the original figure of 85,000, but the employment target should remain at the higher figure of 23,000. These two measures alone would reduce the predicted external traffic volumes in peak hour by a third.
Traffic levels would be further reduced if Canberra achieved anything like the share of travel undertaken by public transport in Ottawa. Near-parity with Ottawa in public transport2 is therefore proposed as a target, together with a higher share of walking and cycling (since the weather here is so much kinder to these travel modes). Achieving these targets would avoid the need for major new road construction, while keeping traffic levels of Northbourne Avenue lower than those proposed by Maunsells. The calculations involved in setting this target are explained in Appendix 1.
The ten additional lanes of traffic (in each direction!) Maunsells claims are needed between Gungahlin and Central-South Canberra can be reduced to three. Half of the required capacity can be provided by upgrading Majura Road, which would provide the principal connection to Russell, Fyshwick, Canberra Airport, the Parliamentary area, and (by connecting Majura Road to the now-freeway standard Monaro Highway) to Woden and Tuggeranong. The remaining road capacity is provided by reducing the existing traffic levels on Northbourne Avenue by increasing the share of North Canberra and Belconnen residents who use "green" transport modes (it is important to realise that, at present, most peak-period traffic on Northbourne Avenue comes from Belconnen and North Canberra, not Gungahlin).
The next step is to translate these goals and targets into a "package" of strategies. The overarching principle could be the same one adopted in Vancouver: to give first priority to walking, then cycling, then public transport, then goods movement and then private cars. This would require a reversal of the current order of transport priorities, together with supportive land-use planning. Taking the new order of transport priorities seriously would require changes at every level of decision-making, from capital funding (roads currently receive five times as much capital funding as public transport, walking and cycling combined) to micro-level road design to street lighting. The approach to local streets needs to move from "traffic management" to traffic calming.
The most important thing land-use planning can do to assist "green" transport modes is to cluster trip destinations - workplaces, shopping centres, cinemas and so on - into a relatively small number of centres located along the "spine" of the public transport system. It is much easier to serve concentrated travel by public transport, than trips dispersed across a wide range of destinations. The form of these centres should be designed to encourage internal movement on foot. The Y-plan at least has the advantage that it encourages these clusters, although the initial motivation was to prevent the centre of a car-dominated city becoming clogged, rather than to encourage the use of other modes of transport. Canberra has a much greater share of employment and other activity in centres (Civic, Woden, Tuggeranong, Belconnen) than is the case in Melbourne and Sydney (and Ottawa), where there are many freestanding shopping malls, business parks and other forms of unplanned development. These policies have not been applied vigorously in Gungahlin, which has been allowed to develop without adequate schools, shopping and local employment.
A travel demand management approach in Canberra would also, as the Y-plan did, limit employment growth in Central Canberra, especially in areas like Russell and Barton, which are hard to get to by public transport. The growth of Fyshwick should also be limited and industry encouraged to take sites in Mitchell instead. It will be necessary to limit the physical extent of Civic to make it more pedestrian-friendly, and to protect nearby residential areas (the same is also true in Woden and Belconnen). This would be much easier to do if less land was wasted on car parks and roads. Car parking provisions in the current Territory Plan requiring developers to provide parking in new projects should be abolished for developments in Civic and the three existing town centres, and lessees permitted or encouraged to convert car parking to other uses.
Higher-density housing should be located within close proximity to community facilities such as shops, and to public transport, not scattered randomly across suburbs. Publicly accountable planners, not developers, must keep control of the process to ensure this occurs.
"Our customer wishes to set off from a place of his [sic] own choosing, travel quickly, comfortably and cheaply and in safety to his destination, and arrive there at a time set by himself; nothing else will do." - H. Brandli, Zurich City Transport Company (1)
The land-use pattern can be reinforced through a hub-and-spoke public transport system, in which passengers travel to the town centre first, and then transfer to an inter-town service. To be attractive to passengers, the transfer must be free (i.e. no second fare!), rapid (no more than a minute or so waiting time) and convenient, and interchanges must be clean, well-located and safe. By combining local and intertown travellers in this way, it becomes possible to offer high-quality local/feeder services, as well as a high quality intertown express service. Public transport would operate at a high standard throughout the day, catering for a range of travel to a range of destinations, rather than just city commuters. With policies of this kind in place, high- speed freeways are not just unnecessary, but counterproductive, since they discourage both self-containment and the use of public transport.
Canberra leads Australia in managing demand for non-recyclable waste; we also have demand management for water. It's also possible for Canberra to lead in managing the demand for travel. The first policy is to stop adding major new high-speed roads, which encourage additional travel. The second policy is to manage car parking with the objective of restraining, rather than encouraging, traffic growth. The idea is for a staged reduction in the amount of parking provided for commuters in Civic, coordinated with improvements in public transport. In the later stages, it will also be possible to reduce parking in the Belconnen and Woden Town centres.
The basic policy direction should be to maintain an adequate and equitable level of mobility and improve residential amenity, without constructing major new roads. Long-distance heavy vehicles should, as far as possible, be routed around, rather than through, Canberra, by utilising the Majura-Monaro route. 'Rat-running' by commuter traffic should be addressed by traffic calming, not by building new roads.
The first set of standards required is one which will deliver first-class public transport. An excessive focus on public transport hardware has at times distracted attention from the more important software issues. Ottawa's and Zurich's public transport systems serve city commuters, plus a range of other travel needs, since all routes across the city operate at high standards, and are integrated to make transferring simple. This did not happen by accident: it is the result of careful planning.
For Canberra, these standards should encompass frequencies, hours of operation, reliability, route layout, interchange, fares and so on, and the integration of all the elements into a comprehensive network. Minimum standards should be the same on local/feeder routes as on trunk routes, to facilitate access to the trunk service. A high quality service needs to operate throughout the day, not just from 8 to 9 in the morning and 4.30 to 5.30, to cater for increasingly flexible working hours, shopping, business trips and other kinds of travel.
The absolute minimum standard for regular routes should be services every ten minutes from 7 am until 9 pm on weekdays, with more frequent services as demand warrants (e.g., intertown express services every 5 minutes or better throughout the day). The minimum at other times should be half-hourly services, and routes should operate until at least midnight every day of the year, with later services on Friday and Saturday nights. These standards will mean that many less-busy local routes will be able to operate using economical 25-seat mini-buses; conversely, articulated buses should not be used until the frequency of service has reached 5 minutes.
A regular public transport service must be provided within convenient walking distance (around 400 metres) of all urbanised areas of the ACT. Routes should be structured in a direct, easy-to-understand pattern, and street layouts in new subdivisions should promote sensible bus routes. Stops should be located for the convenience of passengers, i.e. close to intersections to maximise catchments, enable passengers to cross busy roads at traffic lights and make transfers easy when routes cross. Adequate facilities, including timetables and maps, must be provided at all stops (this has been done at all tram and government bus stops in Melbourne for at least two decades).
Interchanging should be made easier through timetable coordination, high frequency services and improved facilities, and by introducing a fare system in which transfers are free (Adelaide has had such a system since 1972, Perth since 1980 and Melbourne since 1983). The prices of weekly and monthly tickets would, in consequence, need to fall by between a third and a half (at present, a person who makes 5 return bus trips without transferring per week would be better off paying a separate fare for each trip than buying a weekly or monthly). Periodical tickets are an important way of attracting, and keeping, regular riders. The proposal in the Graham report for a zone- based fare system is not supported: a flat, multi-modal fare system with free transfers, like those in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Munich and the Paris Metro, is recommended for Canberra.
The street system needs to be redesigned for pedestrians and cyclists, which must become priority modes instead of "minor modes". Canberra currently has the basis for an excellent system of cycleways, but the system at present has major gaps. Instead of giving cars priority over cyclists, the situation should be the reverse. Cycle paths should provide direct, continuous, safe routes and offer priority over motor traffic at points where they cross roads. Secure bicycle storage should be provided at&127; major public transport stops. An even more dramatic turnaround is required in facilities for pedestrians. Safe, well-lit footpaths must become the norm, not the exception.
To make life easier for residents as well as pedestrians and cyclists, real "traffic calming", as practised extensively in Europe, must be introduced on residential streets. Traffic calming can be distinguished from traffic management by the fact that it aims to reduce traffic volumes, not merely manage them. An indication of how far current thinking is from international best practice is the Maunsell Report's description, and dismissal, of genuine traffic calming as "extreme traffic management measures... which would adversely affect the accessibility of residents.."1
"[T]here are a number of ways in which we can increase the levels of children's independent mobility. The most obvious and important step is to make our streets safer. This can be achieved through traffic calming and lower speed limits. An attempt can also be made to change drivers' attitudes... A change in the legal status of streets may help... Public transport can be made more useful for children, especially on weekends..." "Children's Mobility in Canberra", by Paul Tranter1
As pointed out in the excellent article from the "Canberra Times" reproduced below, this involves measures such as reducing speed limits on residential roads to 50 km/h and reversing stop signs to break up current 'speedways' like Miller Street in O'Connor. A 50 km/h speed limit for residential areas is currently being trialled in Queanbeyan, but is not even on the agenda for discussion in Canberra! Bans on heavy trucks using streets such as Wakefield/Limestone Avenue would be put in place to ensure that truck traffic diverts to the upgraded Majura Drive. While heavy trucks are small in number, they create a disproportionately severe effect on the environment of residential streets.
This step is usually where conventional transport "planning" starts: specific ideas (e.g. "build a freeway") are suggested without serious consideration of context. In contrast to this, we have started with general principles and worked back from the overall picture to concrete planning steps. Proceeding in this way makes it possible to come up with suggestions for specific projects that make sense within an overall strategy for sustainable transport.
There have been too many narrowly-based studies of public transport in Canberra. The first was the Voorhees study of 1970, but the most recent such study, carried out in 1994 by management consultants Booz-Allen & Hamilton, was similar. The report sought to determine whether the 333 intertown express bus network should be replaced by light rail. Unfortunately, right from the start Booz-Allen approached this question in the wrong way. Their study is flawed in at least three respects:
As a result, the final cost estimate made by Booz-Allen was around five timesthe actual cost of a light rail system for Canberra (see Appendix 2). These wilfully exaggerated cost estimates played a major part in the subsequent discrediting of the idea of a light rail system for Canberra. Critics could now scream that it would cost us half a billion dollars.
The experience of overseas cities with successful public transport indicates that the precise nature of the technology used, bus or rail, is not the most important issue. A range of technologies can form the public transport spine, i.e. the central links between the most important transport nodes: success is determined primarily by other factors. For example, the two Alberta cities of Calgary and Edmonton both operate light rail systems based on identical technology. But Calgary's is a success, while Edmonton's is not. Both systems are outperformed by Ottawa's busway system and by Vancouver's elevated driverless trains, but no conclusions can be drawn from these facts as to the inherent advantages of one technology over another. The real lesson is not that busways or elevated trains are better than light rail, but that good, sensible, and above all systematic, planning is more important than technology. Each city must choose what suits it best; while it is essential to look at the successes and failures of other cities, it is fatal simply to copy what someone else has done. We need to adapt the best of interstate and international experiences to our own case.
The two options with most merit for Canberra's public transport spine are Ottawa- style busways (as recommended in the original Y-plan) and Melbourne-style light rail.1 Light rail is more expensive to build, and somewhat less flexible, than a busway. But it is cheaper to operate at high passenger volumes and seems, all other things being equal, to be more attractive to passengers. It also produces no local air pollution, uses a narrower alignment (6 versus 10 metres) and requires less space for stops and terminals in the city centre. The British Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution states that cities of above 200,000 population (Canberra has 300,000) can produce enough demand to justify a light rail system "if there are distinct travel corridors"2. Canberra's land-use plan was designed to produce such corridors.
The choice between the two modes should depend on the mutual interplay of these factors, and be made by the Canberra community with the assistance of genuine experts on public transport (e.g. from Canada or Europe). In our opinion, light rail appears likely to be the more effective option, since we believe that with a genuine reorientation of transport planning away from road building the public transport travel between town centres will be large enough to justify, indeed to necessitate, light rail with its greater people-moving capacities. But it is not our concern here to propose light rail as the answer. Whether express busway or light rail are subsidiary questions to be addressed after the ACT government and community have made a commitment to the idea of public transport as the preferred means of moving large numbers of people between town centres in an urbane, civilised city.
The structure of the public transport spine is provided by the already existing Y-plan. To maximise value for money, the system needs to link as many important travel generators as possible. The three arms of the Y-shaped public transport system would run as follows:
More detailed route design would require a process of public involvement and genuine expert input, to achieve the outcome that maximises community benefits while minimising financial and environmental costs (the Belconnen route would require particular attention to preserve the Bruce and O'Connor Ridges).
The first basic principle of arterial road-building under the new planning regime should be to upgrade existing roads, rather than to build new ones. The second basic principle is that road upgrading should not be the first thing we think of when traffic problems arise. In Canberra at the moment, despite all the Government's pleas of poverty, there is a ceaseless program of road upgrading underway which consumes literally millions of dollars of the ACT's scarce resources. The assumption that road upgrading is the first and highest priority must be changed. The first priority must be not to upgrade and extend existing road capacity to meet increased demand, but to reduce the demand to meet existing road capacity. This is a conservative, or rather conserving attitude to roadbuilding: when there is a problem, we first try to reduce demand by encouraging other modes of transport and, if increased demand still remains, we undertake the least costly and least destructive upgrades that are practical.
The upgrading of William Slim Drive between Gungahlin and Ginninderra Drive, by installing roundabouts and widening to four lanes (the road formation was constructed in 1978 to permit this)1, to improve access to Belconnen, is consistent with this principle. Note that this is not the so-called "Option 4", promulgated by Maunsells and derived from the still-current 1984 road plans, which justifiably frightened residents of Cook and Aranda. This expensive and divisive plan, involving relocating William Slim Drive east of Lake Ginninderra and providing linkages through Bruce or Aranda (and possibly widening to six lanes) is definitely not consistent with the conserving principle we suggest for road upgrades. This principle would also permit an upgrade of Majura Road, both to link Gungahlin with South Canberra, and also to provide a bypass of North Canberra for heavy trucks, and duplication of the remaining single-carriageway section of the Barton Highway.
The capital costs of building a decent public transport system and improving conditions for other "green" modes of transport would be funded by diverting the money which would be freed up by a shift in priorities away from road funding. This is how the citizens of Zurich and Ottawa did it. Indeed, it appears that just this is also about to happen in Britain. The ACT currently spends $10 million per year on new roads and large-scale upgrades: this sum is available for diversion, as is part of the $14 million road maintenance budget, since lower traffic levels reduce maintenance costs.2 The result is a budget of $12-15 million per year, which is more than adequate to fund this plan, which is much less expensive than road-based options.
A comparison of the costs of the two options for Gungahlin is set out in Table 4. This comparison underestimates the superiority of sustainable transport, because it omits the hidden costs of car travel, such as pollution and accidents, and the up to $1 billion required to rebuild Civic to accommodate increased traffic. Barton Highway costs have been excluded, as these are the responsibility of the Federal government.
Table 4. Costs ($ million), excluding internal Gungahlin roads
Road option Sustainable transport option
Re-route & widen Wm Slim Dve (est) 10 Upgrade William Slim Drive 5
John Dedman Parkway (Maunsell fig) 30 -
Monash Parkway (Langmore1) 21 -
New Majura Parkway (Langmore) 35 Upgrade Majura Road 10
Widen Barry Drive (est) 10 -
Widen Parkes Way (est) 10 -
Upgrade JDP to freeway status (est) 25
Link from JDP to Parkes Way (est) 20
Rebuild Glenloch interchange (est) 20
Crace Arterial (Langmore) 13
Public transport infrastructure2 10 Public transport infrastructure 40
(see Appendix 2 for details)
Total 204 55
The Graham report points to numerous instances of ACTION's operating costs being higher than necessary. Mr. Graham notes that, in an environment where cost savings are used to cut ACTION's budget and staff numbers, rather than being reinvested in new services, ACTION staff tend to resist efficiency improvements that would be much easier to implement in an organisation that was increasing its services.3 Many inefficiencies at ACTION are not due to union pressure at all. For example, because ACTION runs many more services in peak period than at off-peak times, many drivers sit idly in depots on full pay awaiting the end of their shifts, when they could be - and in many cases would prefer to be - driving buses.
The Graham report estimated that, even with current work practices, all off-peak services which currently run hourly could be upgraded to half-hourly with no additional staff costs! (4)
Even with efficiencies, the operating costs of the public transport network envisaged in this report will be higher than those of ACTION at present. But revenue will also be much higher due to a dramatically increased number of passengers, and the overall result is expected to be an operating subsidy similar to the present one. This may sound too good to be true, but it should be recalled that public transport systems show "economies of scale": the cost per passenger falls as the number of passengers rises, provided the system is operated efficiently. This can be confirmed through a comparison with Ottawa. Despite lower fares and better services, the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Transit Commission recovers 56% of its operating costs from passenger fares5, compared with ACTION's 26%6, principally because of higher occupancies (averaging 16 passengers per bus to 5 in Canberra1). Ottawa is not the only overseas public transport system to demonstrate that efficient service expansion can be cost- effective. The General Manager of San Diego's light rail system observed in 1989:
"Our high level of patronage and our low level of operating costs have produced a farebox ratio of 85 per cent... Another lesson we have learned is that we have not reduced that figure by increasing our levels of service. When we have extended our schedules later into the evening, and when we have increased frequencies in mid-day, we have found that the increases in farebox revenue have been more than enough to pay for the costs of the new service." (2)
In the medium- to long- term, increased revenue will pay for improved services, but people's travel habits do take time to change. The first phases of service expansions will therefore be funded primarily through internal efficiencies at ACTION, with the balance gradually shifting in favour of funding through higher fare revenue, as patronage grows.
The immediate priority must be to improve access to Gungahlin. Current transport policies offer no relief at all to Gungahlin residents, since the ACT government has repeatedly stated that the Dedman Parkway will not be built for at least a decade. Public transport links, however, can and should be upgraded immediately. The first recommendation of the 1991 inquiry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the ACT chaired by John Langmore was for the establishment of a route 333-style intertown express service to Gungahlin of equivalent quality to those serving Belconnen, Woden and Tuggeranong (i.e. 5-10 minute headways and limited stops) as soon as residents move in.3 This recommendation, which has been ignored, should be implemented without further delay (the service can be provided by regular-sized buses at this point, with articulated vehicles substituted as Gungahlin grows). All weekday off-peak and early evening (until 8 pm) services throughout Canberra that run hourly (or worse) should be immediately upgraded to half-hourly, since this involves no additional staff costs. The reduced summer bus timetable should be abolished, as the ACT government has now promised to do.
The ACT government says: "proposed road corridors identified in the National Capital Plan and Territory Plan should, where possible, be either confirmed or abandoned now, to provide greater certainty about future development directions."4 We agree. All John Dedman Parkway routes (including the reservation along the eastern edge of the National Botanic Gardens) should be deleted from the Territory and National Capital Plans, as should the Monash Parkway route. The plans should also be amended by redesigning Gungahlin to accommodate:
Public transport would be upgraded by abolishing the separate night and weekend networks and introducing maximum headways of 30 minutes at night and on weekends on all regular routes across Canberra. Weekday peak and off-peak frequencies would be increased to 15 minutes and the route network recast to offer more direct, easier-to-understand routes. An ACTION service would be inaugurated to the Airport. Maps and timetables would be provided at all major stops. Most importantly, the fare system would be reformed to introduce free transfers and to cut the cost of weekly and monthly tickets.
Work would commence on the upgrade of cycle routes and footpaths, and local traffic calming measures. Work would commence on installing roundabouts on William Slim Drive.
Priority at traffic signals, and a reserved lane, would be introduced in Northbourne Avenue for express buses. Bus services between 7 am and 9 pm on weekdays would be upgraded to a 10-minute minimum frequency and evening bus services extended to midnight, with later services on Fridays and Saturdays. Maps and timetables would be provided at all stops.
The first reductions of commuter car parking in Civic would occur, freeing up land for medium-density housing developments; parking would also be reduced at ANU, enabling the campus to be made more compact and pedestrian-friendly. Work would continue on pedestrian and cycle facilities, and traffic calming. Barton Highway would be duplicated. Speed limit reductions (to 50 km/h) and truck bans would be introduced on residential streets.
Within 5 years
Canberra is at the crossroads. What is clear is that Canberra must make a choice now, before more major roads are built at a great economic, environmental and social cost. Budget limitations, environmental problems and the realities of travel patterns indicate that a choice must be made between further development down a road- oriented path, or a shift to public transport, walking and cycling. If we want to build a city for the car, the John Dedman Parkway is a good place to start; if we want a city for people and the environment, the Dedman Parkway is a road to nowhere.
Note: For numbered notes see original paper
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