Fare dinkum, light rail is the answer
A light rail system is needed to fix congestion on the city's roads, writes CAST member Jonathan Strauss
OW Cairns has seen the proposal for a freeway in our southern suburbs, our city’s transport infrastructure and its consequences for how we live and for our environment is a hot topic.
Cairns Action for Sustainable Transport believes we should rethink what gets built before the billions spent increase our car dependency.
Have your say. Should Cairns' public transport plans be reworked? Would you prefer light rail to buses? Post a comment.
Our region’s future is why community members – mine workers, travel agents and health workers, stay at home parents and retirees, and students like myself (a postgraduate researcher in political science) – have come together in CAST over the past two years.
We’ve discussed and researched public transport, cycling and pedestrian traffic options.
CAST proposes that Cairns have a world-class comprehensive public transport system by 2025.
Reliable and frequent services which will encourage people to use public transport should reach throughout the city. Households wouldn’t need to rely on cars for many everyday activities.
To achieve this, CAST calls for light rail "spine" routes (two reaching into the southern suburbs, and one each for the beaches and the western suburbs) and hundreds of kilometres of local bus routes.
The buses would "feed" the light rail services. That would reduce car parking demands. So will people riding bikes to the light rail and putting them on board.
Using dual-mode vehicles, light rail could extend to regional rail passenger services. To make this fully sustainable, the system could be powered by renewable energy.
Transport and Main Roads’ plan for Cairns’ public transport, the Cairns Transit Network, has busway "spines".
What that plan doesn’t provide for is a comprehensive service or one frequent enough, except perhaps at peak hour, to attract people to use public transport.
The current target for public transport use in Cairns is as little as 10 per cent of trips by 2036, with services concentrated on the southern corridor.
That low public transport target means the vast majority of trips in Cairns would still be by car.
Our city will be doomed to suffer growing road traffic and constant road upgrades: now the Bruce Highway; later, government planning assumes, the Captain Cook Highway and Western Arterial.
Car use in Cairns can be reduced while providing excellent transport services.
Our proposal is public transport be capable of and effective in providing 40 per cent of trips.
People have become involved in CAST because of the current bus service problems and because of what public transport, cycling and walking offer: environmental benefits, social interaction, better health, less accidents, a more attractive city and possible manufacturing opportunities.
Our preliminary long-term cost comparisons showed prioritising public transport rather than relying mainly on cars would save the community money.
Cars are expensive to maintain and run. And a light rail vehicle filled with passengers is cheaper to run than two or three buses.
Even the cost to build a system based on light rail is similar to that of car-plus-bus alternative.
TMR estimates building and equipping "Bus Rapid Transit" typically costs $10 million per kilometre, compared to $30 million for "Light Rail Transit". The CAST proposal is for about 90km of light rail lines and extra buses, at a total bill of about $2.75 billion.
The costs of the Bruce Highway upgrade and the rest of the proposed busways together total about $2.5 billion. That’s not including other road upgrades or the city car parks required.
Around the world light rail has proved better at encouraging people to use public transport. Basing a transformation of the system on light rail is sound.
Change is needed in government policy to see rail infrastructure used and bus services expanded as light rail lines are built.
This won’t happen unless the people of Cairns speak up and we all can be part of this change.
Join CAST’s community action, such as the Walk against Warming on the Esplanade next Saturday.
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