Talking Point – Half-price public transport in Tasmania
Image: 27 January 2023 – A Metro bus in Hobart’s bus mall. Credit: Author
Published in the Mercury on 12 June 2024
This month the Tasmanian Government kept an election promise to halve the price of public transport fares for 12 months.
This will naturally increase the demand for public transport, with the government suggesting it will save households $9.5m over the period.
In March 2022 a trial of free public transport led to an increase of ridership by 15 per cent. Changing the way people travel by reducing fares is a great way to help boost public transport.
But reactions to the half-price fares have been mixed, with young people telling the Mercury that unsuitable public transport is part of the reason many are leaving the state (Mercury, May 2), and commenters on ABC Hobart’s social media say they will not shift their travel behaviour because of poor services.
Similarly last week, the Queensland government announced that it will set all of its Translink fares at a flat rate of 50c.
Dr Abraham Leung and Professor Matthew Burke of Griffith University wrote in The Conversation that Queensland’s cheaper fares are only one motivator for substituting trips on public transport. Frequency, reliability, and comfort were also cited as important factors in getting people out of private vehicles.
These factors particularly affect regional areas, which may have limited public transport coverage or frequency.
Many of the core issues facing Tasmania’s public transport system are not driven by demand, but rather supply. The network is generally operating under capacity with around 3 per cent of Tasmanians opting to use it, further exacerbated by post-pandemic changes to behaviour.
The problem that both states are experiencing is that getting people out of cars and onto buses or ferries by making it cheaper for a short period will not have the desired effect of permanently shifting travel behaviour to public transport.
Changing demand by using price-based mechanisms will aid people who use public transport the most – students, the elderly, and low socio-economic status groups. This is important to help mobilise these demographics, but it does not encourage groups that should be targeted like professionals, shift workers, and those sensitive to time who would otherwise drive.
Last August, Metro suspended around 180 services due to an ongoing shortage of drivers. This was shortly followed in September by the government announcing an $8.1m support package to help Metro retain drivers and deal with antisocial behaviour. Since then, services have also been cut in response to rock throwing and assaults.
These have all been temporary solutions, and with persistent recruitment and retention problems in transport the government needs to invest in attracting people to the industry. New strategies have been developed for transport policy in Hobart with the Keeping Hobart Moving plan by the government. This aligns to the 2050 Vision for Hobart yet does not detail what benefits will derive from these projects or how they will be delivered.
The projects under way that invest in public transport include common ticketing, ferries and rapid buses, bus stop upgrade grants, park and rides, and zero-emission bus trials. These have been coordinated, planned and funded separately with only presumptive timelines for completion.
These projects do not solve present issues, and ideally there needs to be a comprehensive investment program that will boost the transport workforce and fundamentally, services.
According to the McKell Institute paper released in January, Tasmania has the lowest per capita investment in public transport at just over $115.
It takes time to adjust travel behaviours. Buses every half an hour on key corridors, every two hours in regional areas, missed services, inaccessible stops, or a peak-only ferry service, make it difficult for users to make the switch from cars. A new bus or ferry network is only as good as its services.
Instead of large ribbon-cutting projects with high capital expenditure, the Tasmanian Government should step up and start funding transport workers to operate more frequent and reliable services, to get people back on board and where they want to go.
My unpublished response to a rebuttal by Bob Cotgrove published in the Mercury on 19 June 2024
Bob Cotgrove’s rebuttal (19 June) to my Talking Point (12 June) is paradoxical and lacks evidence. He suggests that low-density urban sprawl has caused congestion in the city centre, and then suggests reducing travel demand to the city by increasing the same sprawl. The post-war travel patterns research he refers to is outdated and aligns with the beginning of car parking requirements which has aided this sprawl. Many cities, such as Wellington in New Zealand, are changing their parking rules to create better land use outcomes. It is true that Hobart’s land use is poor which is why planners are working on increasing density in centres close to services with plans such as the Central Hobart Plan. Movement corridors are indeed precious which is why planners are working to better balance competing transport modes such as in the Hobart Transport Strategy, and to reallocate road space to community-supported priorities like cycling and walking. Contrary to Cotgrove’s suggestion, in the last 70 years Hobart’s public transport has not benefitted and has reduced from around 30 million trips to 7 million a year, following a substantial decrease in funding for services and modes. The belief that public transport cannot serve certain journeys because it is inflexible or inefficient is false. The average car carries 1.4 people in Hobart while a bus can carry over 50 people in the space of two cars. Cities around the world including those of a similar size to Hobart, offer on-demand public transport providing door-to-door services. Micromobility such as e-scooters, ridesharing, and walking and cycling are all becoming part of that multi-modal mix. Even first-and-last-mile freight has switched to cargo bikes and electric scooters in many cities. Low-density urban sprawl and resulting car use has been accepted for far too long. Maintaining the status quo has not worked and continuing this will embed car use, not provide future generations with options to move around our cities and will not create long-term benefits.
