To:   The Ministerial Inquiry into Public Passenger Transport,
c/- Transport Co-ordination Authority
GPO Box 1620, SYDNEY NSW 2000
Emai:l inquiry@transport.nsw.gov.au

Re: Our members desire to see taxpayer subsidies to public transport increased

Dear Sirs,

Our association has found in the past that very narrow interpretation of inquiry terms of reference can have the effect of inflicting great damage on the community, when such damage was in reality avoidable.

As a self funded organisation we are unfortunately not in a position to donate a body of economic and social research data to provide you with quantitative data about the benefits of public transport. However it is clear from discussions, including those with kindred organisations, that subsidised public transport is viewed as a key supporting pillar for building social capital and positive social development in NSW. We further suggest that the positive impacts on the health of the people of NSW of an effective and low user cost public transport system are massive and may well exceed such subsidies under current conditions of expenditure.

We thus would expect to see in the interim report a clear statement that the wide positive social impact of public transport, including health costs, is to be quantitatively modelled and so taken into realistic account in making recommendations to the Minister.

Thus we feel that the interim report should include at least an outline of the econometric social benefit models, plus environmental impact and health impact models, that are to be to be used in making the final assessments and arriving at recommendations.

For example we note that the National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen list such direct transport factors as: Air pollution, road traffic accidents, (for which the tolls are well known) and traffic noise (which can cause hearing difficulties, sleeping problems, work performance difficulties and even impact heart disease).

In addition we suggest that capital infrastructure choices that will become locked out if public transport economics is to be driven by the simplistic metric of direct cost recovery from fares will condemn the Sydney basin in time to the same social dysfunction as is sadly observable in major US cities.

In this context we feel that the NSW public should view with great care directed research, and research carried out to the restricted demands of various industry interests by expert groups with a focus on only engineering aspects of a problem, that claim to find that the public is happier to pay for public transport through a levy or increased fares than to have transport funded through existing budgets or tolls on roads. Such claimed public consultation can reduce to simple manipulation of the public. It was by such means that, to the delight of industry lobbyists, rail and light rail networks were destroyed in the USA and quality of life subsequently ravaged by the infrastructure required to support the individually owned automobile,.

A radical solution must be sought to Sydney's transport needs. Some politicians may well be aware of a growing epidemic of depression and mental illness. However it seems no major Australian political party has yet had the intestinal fortitude to recognise that the very policies they espouse are causative factors in this epidemic and indeed a formula for inflicting psychological damage on large sections of the community.

If the Sydney basin is to have any hope of reaching a condition of being economically and environmentally sustainable further into this century while at the same time providing its inhabitants with a reasonable quality of life NSW must not copy the transport system mistakes made in the USA over most of the 20th Century.

Currently a "user pays" NSW appears set on a path to such a model as part of an 80:20 globalised 'advanced' society where 80% of the population can expect the future to offer them only a reducing quality of life. Transport economics represents an opportunity to combat this trend via a redistribution of wealth to produce a more equitable society where taxation funds can be applied most productively. A society where less will need to be spent on social controls, such as more police and new prisons, otherwise needed to control an increasingly dispossessed and turbulent underclass who can be expected to have more interest in destroying or frustrating society than in working to build a happier future.

We note that this inquiry is to produce its interim report to the Minister in August 2003, with the Inquiry's final report to be submitted in December 2003. We note that a 4 to 6 week phase to interim report stage appears unrealistic. Our concern is thus that this time scale will force the full inquiry to be very intellectually narrow and indeed stunted to the point of leading to ill researched and socially dangerous recommendations.

We note comment in ABC TV's Stateline recently where the claim was made that: "Transport economists and public transport experts now observe that State Treasury must bitterly resent the fact that users aren't paying anywhere near enough to cover costs. … Greater Sydney's train network carries about a million people there's about a million on the buses" and that this cost the taxpayer around $1Billion in subsidies. But that this financial situation was the norm around the world as only in very high population density Hong Kong did a public transport system anywhere in the world achieve cost recovery.

When interviewed Jim Donovan, of Action for Public Transport, claimed that that Treasury in seeking to end subsidies would only demonstrate that they were "unable to realise that a public transport in a city such as Sydney has economic, social, and environmental benefits." Mr Donovan went on to compare the general good produced by public transport with that produced by public schools and hospitals for which he noted massive taxpayer subsidies are the norm.

Serving as consumer representative on committees of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians has allowed some of the MCA committee to became very aware of the massive impact of the death, injury and disability, both as direct damage and as collateral damage, produced by transport industries and of the subsequent massive medical costs to the taxpayer. Such costs must reasonably be included by being modelled in any responsible transport plan. We are very concerned by the massive but hidden subsidies at work in engendering wider use of less safe vehicles such as sports utility vehicles. Regulations that pose as being industry assistance measures but that have as a side effect increasing the roll toll are also taxpayer subsidies that actually work narrowly and irresponsibly to kill and injure.

In order to meet the terms of reference with regard to efficient operating and capital costs; funding options for any future expansion of the public transport passenger system; options for enhancing the optimum use of public passenger transport ; and in seeking to define incentive mechanisms which better link fares and service standards, including safety; all dimensions of community health impact must be modelled.

It has become clear to members, from governmental agency attempts to modify bus services both within Sydney and Newcastle that agency engagement with actual community needs is ineffective and that at present the infrastructure to allow for better targeting delivery of transport services to meet the needs of different groups, both metropolitan and rural, including health service related transport needs, is very underdeveloped. This must serve to throw into even higher relief the magnitude of the task of producing a socially responsible interim report within 6 weeks or so.