Ms Symes faces significant challenges. With rising interest repayments, the spectre of a debt overhang, a population averse to paying more tax yet the need to deliver services a growing state needs, being state treasurer right now will be a thankless job.
This is even more the case if you come to the job after your government's been in a decade and even the disunited opposition is ahead in the polls.
Being Treasurer is a high risk/high stakes game. They have about an even chance of becoming leaders (Thompson, Keating, Howard, Brumby, Napthine) or being passed over as their party modernises (eg Jolly, Roper, Sheehan). Some, like Stockdale, get out to earn big bucks in the private sector.
But for now what is undeniable is that the role gives seniority, status and licence to dabble in every portfolio. The treasurer has a massive department that can monitor the spending departments. That gives them a massive reach across government that no one but the premier has.
No doubt hundreds of people will be offering their ideas to the incoming Treasurer. It's irresistible since, as someone wise said, the real priorities are not in a government's plans but in their budget.
With all that in mind, here's ten tips for the transport portfolio, one of the biggest-spending areas the treasurer will need to have at least a nodding familiarity with:
1. Opex is super important in transport
It's a message treasurers probably hate as recurring expenditure is harder to arrange than a one-off capex spend for a major project. But in transport it's opex that affects whether the train comes every 10 minutes or every 40 minutes. That has a huge bearing on asset utilisation, and for the punters, the usefulness of the network including access to jobs.
2. A small amount of opex can go a long way
Having got the bad financial news out of the way, the silver lining with opex is you don't need a lot to start the path to worthwhile improvement and reverse the per capita service decline for trains and trams. Fortunately most of what we pay train and tram operators are fixed costs. Even a 1% increase in Metro train service kilometres can cut waits at key times, as explained here. Buses are also cheap to boost; $300 - 500k pa may be enough to get a local route up to 7 day service, while a $10-20m per year package could target upgrades on popular routes in our highest needs areas.
3. Exalt the off-peaks
The pandemic accelerated existing travel trends, that is a shift from weekday peak to more off-peak, night and weekend trips. That's good news for the bottom line as extra peak capacity is very expensive to add. At the least you're buying more trains and at worst you need more tracks. In contrast adding off-peak trips needs little more than some extra driver and maintenance crew hours.
Melbourne has especially big opportunities on evenings and Sunday mornings where gaps between services are typically only 30 to 60 minutes versus every 15 minutes. Better frequencies support major events and the diverse workforces needed to make them happen. There do need to be more driver hours but the incremental increase doesn't have to be large to make a start; fixing our notoriously poor Sunday morning train frequencies requires just six extra trips per week on our worst served lines.
4. Make service better and watch usage grow
Whether it's roads or PT, if you make something better more people will use it. For PT that includes new rail lines, reformed bus routes or, for the simplest upgrades of the lot, higher frequency on already popular services. Service/patronage elasticity is generally higher during off-peak times, which bodes well for cost-effectiveness, as mentioned above. The Route 800 upgrade funded in the 2024 state budget is an excellent example of how weekend usage on a main road bus route can grow when timetables are upgraded.
5. Value public transport as a great enabler / cost of living reliever
This includes matters such as expanded housing choices, access to education and jobs, being able to get to services such as health and wider social participation. It is highly space efficient at moving people and brings economic benefits to town centres. Melbourne is seen as a major event capital and improved public transport, especially evenings and early weekend mornings where services are both (a) sparse and (b) far less frequent than Sydney's would strengthen our competitiveness.
Due to the cost of private motoring the most expensive trip is that which is either not possible or not reasonably practical by public transport. Boosting services and reforming networks can reduce the number of such trips and thus relieve peoples' cost of living pressures.
6. Make bus reform your friend
Poorly used bus routes may be 'hollow logs' in which savings may be found. An examination of bus route maps, timetables and productivity (ie boardings / km) stats may reveal cases where resources from low usage routes (especially in high income/low social needs areas) can be redeployed to routes with higher usage potential and/or which benefit areas with higher social needs. This can lead to 'greater good' benefits without a call on additional budget resources. Some roads have multiple overlapping bus routes that can be rationalised into fewer but more frequent routes for an overall simpler and more useful service.
Some network reform has been done but not nearly enough. In 2021 the department released a bus plan. However they were unable to make the case for funding in either the 2023 or 2024 state budgets. Other cities such as Perth and Auckland, also with constrained opex budgets, reform bus network at much faster rates. If you want the most upgrades for the least cost bus network reform will need to be on the table, with what was done in 2014 being a demonstration of what's possible.
7. Yes, we have a fare revenue problem
When budgets are tight not letting revenue you could have slip away is important. And DTP isn't necessarily the best at that nor even fully acknowledges the problem. For example their statistics on bus fare evasion are at odds with on-the-network observations. Certain decisions made fares easy to avoid and hard to pay, especially on buses. That may need a rethink despite the difficulties.
The fare system needs renewed legitimacy and be generally regarded as fair to maximise compliance. Currently some short CBD or very long country trips are too cheap while some shortish trips are arguably too dear, especially for families. Some of this stems from political gimmicks like the Free Tram Zone. A strong treasurer may have to argue internally for reform that restores the progressivity of our fare system.
In addition DTP management need to see themselves as the network leaders with a growth mindset for patronage. Likely tempered by the pandemic this has been lacking in the period since. This is mentioned here due to the revenue benefits of increased patronage.
8. Think about how things could be done better with process reform
You're at a train station construction and each occupation has its own toilets (while the public may have none). At night there's PSOs milling around and station staff behind the counter while the nearby bus interchange remains strewn with litter and its seats are sticky. Have we gone too far with the division of labour and outsourcing? Why are internal DTP processes currently so slow that a level crossing can be removed faster than bus routes can be reformed? And why, relative to CPI, are we paying our private train and tram operators much more despite the number of trips operated not rising by anywhere near as much?
These are just a few questions one could ask about current processes and arrangements. By rights these are DTP's responsibility and there may be some very good answers. The incoming secretary Jeroen Weimar may be able to introduce some fresh thinking. However if value for money is suboptimal it becomes a financial matter, especially if the department hasn't been as active as it could be in maximising service per dollar on its own volition.
9. Continue being aware of unrealised costs
Neither roads nor public transport recover enough direct user fees to pay for their construction and running. The lowest private and public cost modes per trip are active transport but state support overwhelmingly favours the motorised modes.
Transport is full of unpaid for costs that get shifted to others. Much is associated with car use and parking, including uncharged use of public land for private benefit when there are better uses for it. Ecars address only one externality of private motoring and may make others worse. On this it is noted that the state government is winding back registration discounts.
Some more transport matters that were and remain urgent. I described them here. These may give an overview of some of the more challenging topics.
That's my ten. No doubt there's more one could give. Anyway best of luck to Treasurer Symes - you'll have an interesting and challenging time ahead trying to juggle the many often competing requests.
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