Western Australia’s transport supremo believes Perth has no choice but to embrace greater use of public transport as the city expands.
Western Australia’s transport supremo believes Perth has no choice but to embrace greater use of public transport as the city expands.
Speaking at a Committee for Perth seminar last week, Transport Department director-general Reece Waldock said the city could not build its way out of traffic growth and congestion. The solution, he says, is to invest more in trains, buses and “road-based rapid transit services”, including light rail.
“There is no plan B, this is the plan,” Mr Waldock told the seminar, just weeks ahead of the state government’s launch of its 20-year public transport master plan.
Mr Waldock said that access to the central business district would increasingly be via mass transit.
Trying to accommodate extra workers driving into the city over the next 20 years would require the construction of 90,000 new car bays if public transport was not expanded.
Mr Waldock listed three transformational projects to the public transport network.
One was an inner-city light rail network, which he indicated could be developed as a public private partnership. He said light rail was an option where passenger volumes were high, priority for the rail cars over other traffic was guaranteed and a return on investment was provided.
Mr Waldock confirmed that the government’s focus was on the “central northern corridor”, which extended to Mirrabooka.
This implies that proposals for light rail linking East Perth and West Perth, and potentially the University of WA and Curtin University – the so-called ‘knowledge arc’ – are not a priority.
Mr Waldock said the timing of the entire network would be based on the business case.
A second transformational project was the extension of the northern suburbs railway beyond Butler station.
He said that an early extension to Yanchep would provide an opportunity to influence development patterns in the area.
Specifically, this would support transit-oriented development, where housing is clustered around public transport, shops and other services.
This approach would also be designed so that developers could optimise their returns and contribute to the capital cost of the rail extension.
Apart from the northern suburbs extension, Mr Waldock said the five existing suburban railways would continue to be a core of the public transport network.
The third transformational project was the development of public transport routes into the CBD that delivered congestion-free access.
Mr Waldock said road-based rapid transit services would deliver a level of service similar to trains.
They would have full priority over general traffic, stations up to one kilometre apart and larger vehicles.
He envisaged up to 100 kilometres of bus lanes across the city.
