Josh Kenworthy | Melbourne, Australia

A typical scene of a commuters' drive home. Image: Josh Kenworthy

It’s six AM when 18-year-old carpenter’s apprentice, Charlie Curtis, rolls out of bed to get ready for work. After downing a few pieces of toast he goes outside and starts-up his white, 1992 four-door Holden Rodeo. Leaving at 6:15am, the trip from Northcote to Tarneit in the outer Western suburbs should take about 40 minutes along the Calder Freeway and Western Ring Road, getting him to work just before it starts at seven AM. He’s on time.

Coming home is a different story. Setting off at four-thirty PM, Curtis slings his saw-trestles into the back and loads his burly six-foot-three frame into the cab. As he enters Western Ring Road he sees exactly what he expects – Trucks and cars disappearing into the horizon. Curtis’ fuel is paid for by his boss, very few others in the bumper to bumper traffic would be so fortunate. With his iPod to keep him company he spends the next hour and 15 minutes crawling through the dusk and fumes. Stop start, stop start, all the way home.

“I leave work around four-thirty and get home around quarter to six. And that’s pretty much standstill all the way,” says Curtis.

Traffic congestion currently costs Melbourne $3 billion a year and this is set to increase as the population and economy grow. Recent projections by The Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (BTRE) suggest traffic congestion will cost Australia $20 billion a year by 2020 and $6.1 billion in Melbourne alone.

A shift in thinking by the federal government has been signaled by the appointment of Australia’s first ever population minister, Tony Burke, and the announcement by the federal Minister for Infrastructure, Anthony Albanese, of a national urban policy to be released later this year. These decisions have been made in preparation for Australia’s population reaching 36 million in the next 40 years.

At a state level, the Victorian government recently introduced Smart Roads: a road hierarchy system where certain modes of transport are given priority on certain routes depending on the time of day. While public transport experts generally praise it as a step in the right direction, some say it won’t actually solve the problem.

“Don’t get me wrong, this is not going to stop conflict in this city. But we either have a government that doesn’t do anything and just lets chaos occur or we have one that tries and balances the needs as best you can, including making hard choices,” says, Chair of Public Transport at Monash University, Professor Graham Currie. “The truth is it’s not going to solve congestion and in fact I might tell you that there is no such thing as managing congestion [to] make it go away.”

What to do – How About Another Tax?

A solution advocated by some Australian transport experts is a congestion charge or road pricing scheme. The idea recently gained some traction in Australia when it appeared in the Henry Review of taxation, although the federal government’s move to ignore it, at least for the time being, may be indicative of its unpopularity amongst the public; even more rides on it in an election year.

“I think we’re overtaxed as it is to be honest,” said an accountant at Flinders Street Station who commutes to the CBD from Waverly by train.

“I think it’s the most terrible idea I’ve heard to be brutal about it,” said another commuter from Alamein who works as a project manager for a construction company, who also prefers to remain anonymous.

These people don’t even drive to work.

But the Alamein commuter adds that he hadn’t really heard of the charge until now and does not know much about it. “…yeah everybody understands the argument, but no, I bought a car and should be able to come into the city… Where are they putting the taxes? What roads? What toll ways? We’ve already got tollways. So is there a tax again on your tollways?”

This is precisely the problem. While public resistance to a new tax is always rife – think the GST in the late 1990s – those in favour of it say that acceptance would depend on explaining its details and benefits. According to Professor John Stanley of Sydney University, it would take a minimum of five years of public consultation and education before it could ever begin to be implemented. “[We’ve] got to start the conversation now… I think it’s the only way we can reduce congestion costs. I don’t think there’s any other way,” he says.

The experts in support of a charge generally favour the Dutch approach, where a sophisticated GPS-based charging scheme would allow cars to be fitted with a device similar to the ‘E-tag’ currently used in Melbourne. The GPS would track exactly where, when and what type of driving occurred in order to more accurately charge drivers for their economic, social and environmental impacts made by a particular trip. It would also distinguish between a truck, a petrol-guzzling V6 family car or a more environmentally friendly hybrid.

Director of the University of Sydney’s Institute Transport and Logistics Studies, Professor David Hensher, says that the key in introducing a congestion charge to the public “is where to put it and how to frame it… I normally call it a congestion charge, it’s an emotive word, the tax.” He also says that the “revenue disbursement policy,” in other words where the money raised is going to be spent, is “a sign of acceptability.”

Pushing people out of their cars and onto public transport is a key element of the thinking behind a road pricing system. This could have knock-on effects in terms of public health given the extra walking associated with public transport use, as well as lead to greater social interaction and less greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the charge would create a revenue source that could be dedicated to further improvements in train networks, buses, trams and roads.

The Push to Public Transport – Can the System Cope?

The lights are green but the cars aren’t moving. The sound of honking horns and car-fumes fill the air. This is Punt Road at peak-hour where cars emerging from the shadows of the MCG and turning right from Brunton Avenue try to merge with the Punt Road traffic, still blocking the intersection. A collage of cars and trucks at various angles edge and beep at one another until the intersection finally clears.

Above the Punt Road din at Richmond railway station, another form of congestion is visible. The peak hour trains for the Lilydale, Belgrave and Glen Waverley lines roll into platform nine. Each is about ten minutes late and overflowing with passengers packed in tight like sardines, so much so on one Upper Ferntree Gully service that a man trying to board gives up with a helpless shrug and waits for the next train.

A central criticism of a congestion charge is that Melbourne’s existing train networks are already strained and would buckle like railway tracks in the summer under increased patronage.

“Congestion charging is yet another fundamentalist economic dogma,” says Dr Paul Mees, a transport expert from RMIT and long time advocate of improving Melbourne’s public transport system. “What congestion charging does do is it rations road space to the wealthy.”

Dr Mees does not believe that revenue from a congestion charge is required in order to fix Melbourne’s ailing train network. He says that it is “currently running at half its designed capacity in the busiest part of peak hour and that the inefficiency is due to “a whole series of stupendously incompetent things that grew up over the years when patronage was so low that they didn’t have to use their capacity efficiently.”

“These things are now being used as excuses for not fixing, not changing the status quo,” says Dr Mees. “These things” mainly relate to timetabling and other logistics such as the functioning of the City Loop. Compounding Melbourne’s train problems, trams are being slowed as congestion levels rise and the outer suburbs are still inadequately serviced by buses – the main, if not only, public mode in outer suburbs.

Even if revenue from a congestion charge was allocated to improving public transport, there would be a delay before people started reaping the benefits. It seems unfair to slug those who are often less wealthy and have no choice but to drive. “I think that’s a fair criticism,” concedes Professor Currie, “but part of my rationale here is to take the money generated to plug those gaps and provide more service. So that’s my thinking on that. I don’t think any of those criticisms should stop us trying to do something about this problem.”

In the orange glow of the famous Flinders Street Station facade against a night sky, time-lapse photography shows the hustle and bustle of trams, cars and people. “With more people using our trains than ever before, we’re changing the way we get around,” says the man’s upbeat voice-over in the most recent television ad for the Victorian Transport Plan (VTP).

In December 2008 the Victorian Government released the VTP which pledged $38 billion over five years to improving the Victorian transport system. Less than two years into the plan there are still questions about how the money is being spent. But it’s not all doom and gloom.

“The government is doing more on this than anybody has ever done in the history of Australia and they’ve achieved funding levels, particularly federal funding levels, which no one has ever achieved in the history of funding in Australia,” says Professor Currie. The “point is, it’s just not enough.” Since 2004, he says, “the government has increased buses in the outer suburbs by about 37 per cent. They put about 1.2 billion dollars into buses. There has been investment in trams, in particular low floor trams and so forth and a bit in priority [for them].”

But throwing money at projects can be misleading, and while a lot more funding will be needed, experts such as Dr Mees and Professor Currie believe Victoria has to become smarter about how existing funds are spent. The 38 new trains promised by the VPT sounds good, one would think. Using the Victorian government’s own forecasts for increased train patronage, Professor Currie predicts that the trains which the government uses as proof of its commitment to public transport will only reduce peak-overcrowding in the first couple of years from 40 to 39 per cent. After that, overcrowding will increase by 2014 to about 44 per cent.

Some experts believe the major projects outlined in the 2008 Eddington Report such as the Regional Rail Link and the metro between Caulfield and Footscray will be significant improvements to the public transport system. But with no funds nor planning committed to the Melbourne-Caulfield half of the metro, there is no guarantee that a change in government would not see it scrapped.

According to Professor Currie, government funding for road related projects still exceeds funding for public transport by $1.5 billion, which shows that roads still occupy the high ground when it come to Victoria’s urban policy. With the introduction of Smart Roads, talk of congestion charging and more money than ever before being invested in public transport, perhaps priorities are beginning to shift.

Josh Kenworthy is a student currently at Monash University in Melbourne.