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‘The cheap option’?: why the Gold Coast may be on track to build the most expensive light rail in the world (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 6 months ago by hanrahan@slrpnk.net to c/australia@aussie.zone

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Alon Levy, co-lead of the transportation and land use program at New York University’s Marron Institute, has spent years studying why some countries are able to build transport infrastructure cheaply and others aren’t.

Though the preliminary business case of the expansion of Gold Coast light rail includes few details, Levy estimates that the project may ultimately cost as much as 10 times more than comparable European infrastructure.

Those include, Levy says, a lack of contracting transparency, over-engineering, politicisation, poor allocation of cost risk – and above all, contracting out to the private sector.

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[–] Tregetour@lemdro.id -2 points 6 months ago (16 children)

Putting aside Big 4 concerns and fiscal irresponsibility, what annoys me is the continued prejudice involved in the mode of transport chosen.

Bus beats the pants off light rail in just about every respect you can think of. It's quickly scalable up and down, it can be rerouted on a whim, it doesn't require additional road or electrical infrastructure to operate, spare parts are plentiful and the parts economy is competitive, maintenance overheads are lower, the fleet is amenable to reuse in non-PT contexts, etc.

But none of this counts for much when you realize you'll sometimes sit near poor people on the bus! The bus does not boost real estate values.

[–] biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone 1 points 6 months ago

I don't know man, I'd prefer light rail than a banananana bus, you know Brisbane style 3 segment bus...

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