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Vision for the Future – Public transport

An integrated transport system is the only way to efficiently move hundreds of thousands of people to and from work in large cities, and to transport goods quickly and safely. This means central planning for the whole urban environment, of which transport is just one element.

The great majority of Australia's population lives in six large cities and their surrounding suburban zones. Many are forced to choose between using expensive, infrequent, crowded, unreliable and uncoordinated public transport; and spending hours of every working week in slow moving and frustrating traffic jams.

Others have no choice at all. There are plenty of sprawling outer suburbs with only a minimal private bus service, and hardly any service at all at night or on weekends. Here a car is a necessity leaving the poor, the young and the elderly virtually trapped.

Private cars are choking our cities, killing and maiming many thousands on city roads and country highways, polluting the air, and emptying our pockets.

With the ever-growing costs of petrol, car registration and insurance, parking fees and vehicle maintenance, more and more families are finding it necessary to cut back on essentials and rack up more debt, in order just to keep their car on the road.

This wretched situation exists simply because of the profit-driven domination of the monopoly road transport industry, headed by powerful foreign oil companies such as Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP and car giants such as Toyota , Ford and General Motors, together with the insurance, banking and finance corporations.

In the service of their vested interests, federal and state governments have starved public transport of investment funds for many decades, ensuring that the major rail networks are barely able to cope with peak-time traffic. They are saddled with outdated trackwork and signalling systems, insufficient trained staff and rolling stock, and subject to changing corporate or private management priorities. Outside of peak hours, public transport is infrequent, and many women and older people are afraid to use to it at all.

Investment for the people

A peoples' government would treat public transport as a social asset rather than a source of revenue. From this starting point, fares could be immediately cut and more services introduced to encourage wider use of the existing systems.

The balance of public investment in the cities could be systemmatically shifted from roadworks and car parking facilities to train, tram and bus services, eliminating the need to bring private cars into the cities at all. Authorised delivery and construction vehicles, police and emergency service vehicles would all have better and quicker access. More pedestrian malls and cycle paths could be established with more open spaces for gardens and recreation; a much more relaxed, quieter and healthier place to live and work would emerge.

Capital freed up by the nationalisation of the competing car companies and oil monopolies would be invested to produce new trains, trams and buses, as well as the cars, trucks and commercial vehicles still needed in the outer suburbs and country regions.

This would re-vitalise our manufacturing industry, boost engineering technical skills and knowledge and reduce our reliance on imported products and fossil fuels. The technological focus would be on energy efficiency and reducing greenhouses gases.

As capacity increased, fares could be further reduced to encourage more patronage, eventually making public transport free altogether.

Extending the reach of public transport would not necessarily mean bulldozing thousands of homes or building lots of expensive tunnels and overpasses. Many metropolitan freeways and highways could be readily converted into train or tram routes, while still retaining corridors for authorised vehicles.

Train, tram and bus services would be integrated through a centralised timetable system that provided for connecting services and minimal waiting times.

The other necessary element would be investment in a nationalised rail freight network to guarantee safe, fast and efficient transport of goods to and from the ports and freight hubs in cities and regional towns. This would greatly reduce the costs of maintaining interstate highways, aside from the improved safety and environmental benefits of getting thousands of semi-trailers off the road. Again, a shift in investment would replace many road transport jobs with new jobs in a modern rail industry, along with modern ports and freight hubs.

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