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Transport strategies are dogged by fundamentalism: both car and public transport lobbies advocate narrow solutions and will not countenance others. Both the freeway and public transport lobbies are wrong: joining the Eastern Freeway to the Western bypass and Tullamarine freeways will be futile because traffic will continue to block the Eastern at Hoddle St thereby robbing the community of the economic return that should accrue from the extension and the Mitcham-Frankston Freeway. Similarly, no matter how much public transport is implemented along the Eastern Freeway it will still fill with traffic – this follows from the anti-freeway campaigners own arguments: "if you build roads people will use them" hence encouraging some Eastern freeway commuters onto public transport merely frees the road for other motorists. The solution is to enforce the no stopping rule on freeways so they are not blocked at busy times at offramps such as Hoddle St.

The Mitcham-Frankston Freeway promises a similar disaster at peak hour like the Eastern Freeway at Hoddle St and our other Freeways because it has 19 exits in 39 km (one every 2 kilometres) – if motorists are allowed to queue at these exits the expensive freeway will act as a short trip and commuter facility and the projected time savings will vanish at busy times. Enforcing the no-stopping rule will solve the problem without removal of these exits.

The linking of the Eastern and Monash Freeways by the Mitcham-Frankston Freeway and the linking of the Eastern Freeway and Western Bypass will create a freeway loop in Melbourne which will make the "no-stopping" proposal especially beneficial and effective. To enforce the no-stopping rule on freeways is to propose the logic of the roundabout – and with the completing of the Eastern and Mitcham Freeways Melbourne will have a "freeway roundabout" and the taxpayers will get a significant economic return on their investment in freeways.

The freeway loop will be effective and efficient because people will learn to use it constructively often going the "wrong way" around as they do on the London Underground.

Enforcing the no-stopping rule will force vehicles onto other modes leaving freeways for trips where the saving in time by travelling on the freeway is worthwhile even if one has to bypass a preferred exit and back-track to the destination on secondary roads. For example, if you could travel from Geelong to Dandenong at 100 kph through Melbourne but could not exit directly to Dandenong but had to travel beyond it and back-track - the saving in time and fuel would still make the freeway preferable to using the secondary roads. However commuters travelling shorter distances would find the extra travel not worthwhile and move to other roads or public transport. Off-ramps may need to be lengthened at some places (for example long exist roads will be needed for trucks at the docks) and as an interim measure emergency lanes can be used as part of off ramps in peak hours – the penalties for stopping on a freeway should be increased as necessary and electronic surveillance introduced as appropriate.

Enforcing the no-stopping rule on our freeways would also force commuters onto public transport thus achieving the goals of the public transport lobby.

Freeways should not end in urban areas but outside and at a roundabouts with substantial lengths of unimpeded road leading from them so that traffic does not bank back onto the freeway. Special treatment may be necessary at container terminals where there is a high volume of commercial traffic but again the investment will be worthwhile.

It is time to recognise that:

1. a city needs every mode of transport to facilitate its diverse activities – but it needs Horses to be on the right Courses. Through traffic should be on freeways and major arterials, local traffic on local roads and commuters should be on public transport. The other arterials have to serve as best they can.
2. existing facilities (such as freeways) should not be wasted but should be used to produce a good economic return on the taxpayers' investment before being retired or renewed
3. Melbourne's transport is a mess and becoming more inefficient - if "Melbourne 2030" puts another million people into the urban area urgent radical action will be needed to avoid a shambles
4. "carrots" do not succeed in changing people's transport habits - "sticks" are necessary: when the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART, San Francisco) was being researched motorists overwhelmingly expressed willingness to pay more taxes to build it but said they would not use it - in other words they were prepared to pay to have other people use public transport so they could use the freeways efficiently.
5. through traffic is destroying the amenity of residential areas: its time to give residential streets back to kids and to cyclists and make the elderly safe on their own streets. Residential areas should be closed to through traffic. Measures (closures and stop signs against the main stream of the traffic) should be implemented to make through trips intolerably inconvenient. The principle is that only trips that begin or terminate on local roads should use them. This will return the local roads to kids on bikes and make them safe for the elderly and produce a generally more tranquil residential environment.

(This will force commuter and short trip traffic onto the secondary and primary roads and congestion on these will soon force commuters onto public transport.)

A bonus is that such residential areas provide a multitude of bike paths in every direction: cyclists could travel efficiently through residential areas stopping only on the arterial roads at the boundaries.

6. In a relatively flat and sport mad city such as Melbourne - cycling is a physically and socially viable mode of transport: it is time for more to be spent on innovative plans to promote and develop it - the justification being reductions in health care costs, roads and public transport expenditure

1. Bike paths along existing freeways can use clip-on bridges and light bridges to provide the uninterrupted paths that make longer-distance cycling easy and efficient
2. If 5 above is implemented - closure of side roads into the residential area would enable service roads (such as along Nepean Highway) to be turned into bike paths
3. Closure of minor side roads and banning parking along arterial roads at all times would increase the efficiency of these for vehicles and also allow for bike paths along them that could be fenced off from the roadway making them safe and efficient

(Sydney has long "bitten the bullet" on this: arterial roads are "bracketed off" with turns off them into the residential area restricted - this was to make the arterials efficient but it shows that it can be done - and when done produces multiple benefits.)

1. Finally these proposals will reduce pollution in two ways: (1) forcing commuting motorists onto public transport and (2) removing idling cars on freeways. Cars use more than twice as much petrol stopping and starting (as when queuing on the Eastern Freeway at Hoddle St) and cause correspondingly much greater pollution than when travelling on a freeway at 100 kph.

• The current opposition to connecting the Eastern Freeway and Western Bypass is like the decision to not build a freeway over Burke Rd on the south-eastern Freeway which served as a daily reminder to motorists of the foolishness of the ALP in Government and the deaths of many people at what I understand became the most dangerous intersection in Victoria.

• the Bracks ALP Government’s "Melbourne 2030" plan which aims to put a million more people into Melbourne will greatly exacerbate our traffic and transport problems. It should be abandoned and we should plan instead to increase our rural population by abolishing the states and giving their powers to large county councils (such as Mallee/Riverina centred on Mildura and Upper Murray centred on Albury/Wodonga). These would vigorously develop their local economies building on their local strengths and character and attracting the population and personnel they need naturally and permanently

For a detailed discussion of the "Melbourne 2030" plan click on the category AUSTRALIAN POLITICS at right and see paper titled "Australia 2030"

Australia 2030

Australia has highly populous cities with severe problems created by their growing populations and with plans for even greater populations. The Victorian Government’s current "Melbourne 2030" plan envisions an extra million people in Melbourne – a 28% increase. This is the population of Birmingham Britain's second largest city after London – adding the populations of Britain's second largest city to Melbourne is crazy! The bitter controversies surrounding Melbourne’s current transport and developmental problems (including water supply) suggest that Melbourne cannot absorb another million people without very expensive and very divisive schemes to cope.

At the same time rural Australia has severe, growing and apparently insoluble problems due to lack of population. Without dramatic increases in our rural population there will need to be increasingly artificial and increasingly highly subsidised schemes to get adequate medical services and other skilled labour into rural Australia.

The Premier of N.S.W., Bob Carr, has persistently expressed his anxiety about the growth of Sydney and the number of migrants flooding into some areas. But the Federal and State Governments’ responses have always been the creation of artificial incentives such as those for migrants to settle in rural areas.

The solution is obvious! Rural areas have to be made attractive to people. There is a model readily available: the U.K. is highly decentralised relative to Australia. London is one of the world’s largest cities but the second largest city in the U.K. is Birmingham with a population of about just over one million. (After Paris the next cities in France are Marseille and Lyon each with about 1.3M people!) Birmingham is a major manufacturing, engineering, commercial, and service centre. The city’s concert halls, theatres, and three universities also make it an important cultural and educational centre. Its chief products are motor vehicles, vehicle components and accessories, machine tools, aerospace control systems, weapons, electrical equipment, plastics, chemicals, food, chocolate, jewellery, and glass. The U.K. has many such cities. This decentralisation of population makes intercity rail and road networks viable and efficient and increases the flexibility of the economy. Over the past decade there have been substantial reforms in governance to clarify the two tiered (central government/county council) structure in the UK (which does not have a written constitution). The central changes have seen larger county councils using their powers more extensively. This is a model for Australia with only 20 million people. It is a model that shows the economic and social benefits of decentralisation and shows also that substantial changes are achievable over a very short time-span.

Australia would benefit immeasurably from the abolition of the States - from a reduction to two tiers of Government with the powers and functions of the States divided between new large county councils and the "Federal" Government. The county councils would be based on natural divisions such as "Mallee/Riverland" centred on Mildura and "Upper Murray" centred on Albury/Wodonga. With many of the powers and resources of the State Governments transferred to them, the counties would vigorously develop their local economies building on their local strengths and character. This would attract population naturally and it would be permanent. The natural advantages of different areas of Australia are not being exploited as they would if there were political power arising from the Constitution and substantial local populations. It is noteworthy that the Prime Minister, John Howard, has supported the desirability of two tiers of government for Australia ("The Age" 19/5/2004).

Australia’s States are an accident of history – of the development of Australia as a penal settlement – it is time to develop and adopt a more natural and suitable structure. This historical accident has been a disaster: the multiple railway gauges that inhibited interstate trade and development until relatively recently are merely the iconic example! In addition to draining of the population to the fringes, the States are artificial and enervating divisions that have stunted the growth of the regions. Albury/Wodonga is the salient example. The twin cities are divided by the Murray River but this is not a problem – many of the great cities of the world straddle rivers and inlets. The problem for Albury and Wodonga is that they are part of two different States. Recently the N.S.W. and Victorian Governments met to support an amalgamation of the two Councils but like all post-war attempts to boost the "twin cities" it can be only of limited success while the joint enterprise lacks real political power.

Australia also has national soil and water problems the solution of which is inhibited by the constitutional power of the States and which would be more easily tackled by a central government if the States were abolished. Similarly Australia with roughly the population of California is a reasonable education market, but having different books and software for the different States is a disastrous inefficiency (for both private and public schools) – is Mathematics different in Darwin and Melbourne? In so many areas we are suffering the "railway gauge" problem bequeathed by the accidental colonial States.

The Vision Statement of "Melbourne 2030" mentions only Melbourne although the policy claims to emphasise "the city’s interdependence with regional Victoria, to provide maximum benefit to the whole State" – why then is it not called "Victoria 2030"? In this policy "the whole state" is in fact the corridors to the regional centres closest to Melbourne (Geelong 125,000 people, Bendigo 95,000, Ballarat 90,000 and Traralgon 19,000). Wodonga (35,000) is mentioned: it is to be bypassed by the Hume Highway as is it by "Melbourne 2030"

But Wodonga and its sister City, Albury, across the Murray River have a combined population of 85,000 which would make it one of the largest rural cities in Victoria if Albury were in Victoria! This is a dramatic demonstration of the negative effects of our accidental States which in reality are Capital Cities that function in their own interests and deny real power to the rest of Australia as the Bracks' Government's "Melbourne 2030" abundantly demonstrates. Albury/Wodonga clearly should be one entity, and indeed many have had visions for its development, but it has not achieved its potential because of the competing and artificially divided local governments and their lack of power to influence and develop their region. In fact the Bracks' Victorian Government and the Carr NSW Government held a joint Cabinet meeting in Albury to encourage amalgamation but little has come of it because the people of Albury and Wodonga know that any moves they make could be undermined by a change of government or a change of mind in Sydney or Melbourne.

Rural Australia – and Australia – suffer still as A. D. Hope wrote: her five cities like five teeming sores, / Each drains her; a vast parasite robber-state / Where second-hand Europeans pullulate / Timidly on the edge of alien shores.

A Federally established and funded "Australia 2030" commission should formulate plans for the division of Australia into counties with the powers of the States to be divided between them and the Commonwealth Government. The Senate would become the "Counties' House" instead of the States’ House and with similar functions. The Victorian and N.S.W. Governments should not wait for this development but legislate immediately to create an Albury/Wodonga County Council and fund and support it as a vanguard scheme to demonstrate the benefits of the transmutation of the States into counties.

Each electorate in the County councils might have a paid elected representatives and an elected honorary representative so that their governance is professional but like our Municipalities is open to anyone.

TRANSITION. The Counties would initially buy services from the States but these would be transferred to them as the new counties develop.

The vision for Australia should include radically increased equality of services, opportunities and uniform prices for essential services in the Counties – initially Federally mandated and controlled.

Concentrations of people in cities has always engendered creativity. But modern information and communication technology means that smaller cities can now be equally creative and the full range of knowledge and culture is available in them as is evident in the UK. Proximity to desirable environmental and recreational possibilities will increasingly determine where people choose to live provided the population is sufficient to sustain educational and medical services.

In Australia we tend to think of a city as something like the sprawling mess of Melbourne or Sydney but many of the world's great and influential cities have relatively small populations. Boston in the U.S. has a population of about 550,000 but is very influential as a financial and services centre and is and has been massively influential in the history of the U.S. it has the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University two of the world's great universities and research institutes and several other famous universities (with about 150,000 tertiary students), the Boston Symphony has long been highly acclaimed. Unlike our cities Boston doubles in population every work day as 400,000 workers and 200,000 tourists and shoppers commute in. Seattle has a population of around 550,000 but it the home of Boeing. Edinburgh in Scotland has about 450,000 people and is home to an historically and presently great university and its many world-famous festivals throughout summer which draw hundreds of thousands of visitors and hundreds of millions of pounds each year. Newcastle upon Tyne (300,000) is on the high-speed London to Edinburgh railway line and has an international airport. It has two universities and is a base for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It has numerous art galleries and museums and a symphony orchestra. Like all of Britain's cities it builds vigorously and creatively on its local economic advantages and tourist attractions.

"Melbourne 2030" proposes improved transport and communication with the regions close to Melbourne for its own purposes. There has been pressure on improved transport from Melbourne to Sydney since the southern colony was formed but the road and railway are still poor. An Albury/Wodonga with a population of 500,000 in the year 2030 would produce a synergy in the Melbourne – Albury/Wodonga – Canberra – Sydney corridor: increased population produces increased demand for transport which in turn leads to increased population.

No doubt people will scoff at the suggestion that Albury/Wodonga could have such a population by 2030 but "Mebourne 2030" proposes twice that many extra people for Melbourne - let's pump the money that will be needed for transport and services in the Capitals into rural Australia and the population will follow. Little "pump priming" will be needed if we give the power to local County Councils to develop their own areas - to exploit their own characters. Consolidating the Albury/Wodonga tertiary educational institutions into one University and building residential colleges that would offer low rates for accommodation (until the city grows) and establishing a teaching hospital would lead to a generation of students who would stay to take advantage of a smaller city on the river and lakes and close to the High Plains and skiing in which to bring up their children. Many small cities in the U.S. have a tertiary institution as their backbone but the potential of Albury/Wodonga is great and the opportunities that have been lost there over the past generation can be regenerated.

A high-speed railway between Bendigo and Ballarat (as is being sought for Glasgow and Edinburgh) would generate a "twin city" county in Central Victoria that would soon be self-sustaining. Remember that the draining of population from rural Australia since World War II was precipitated by policies about telecommunication and postal services that removed jobs and became a cascade. If the power and services of the state governments were distributed to the regions and the money that will have to be spent on the cities to maintain their growth is spent in the regions the flow will rapidly become self-sustaining towards rural Australia. The brief for an "Australia 2030" commission would include development of a vision for Telstra as a Research and Development organisation with a brief to ensure that the counties of Australia have the Communications and Information Technology expertise and infrastructure necessary to enable it to compete in the world economy. The brief would include a vision for the CSIRO and coordination of its relevant sections with Telstra and their relationship with the Universities and private Research and Development. Telstra is the only entity that can hope to be truly Australian and truly guarantee that we will have the communications and computer expertise to survive as a modern and competitive nation.

"Australia 2030" is a proposal that should be whole-heartedly supported by the National Party if it really believes in an invigorated future for rural Australia!

"Melbourne 2030" has drawn little fundamental criticism: the critics have asked for better public transport for the extra million people or have lamented the rapidly developing destruction of historical neighbourhoods and houses as it overrides local planning schemes. This is merely to continue the process that both major parties have inflicted on Melbourne since WWII. European cities have an "old quarter" - Melbourne did have an "old quarter" until the ‘50s but it was destroyed. A little more sensitivity would have developed the south bank of the Yarra or what is now known as Docklands and left the East end of the city in its Victorian splendour. Similarly, St Kilda Road was one of the world’s great boulevards. It was destroyed in the name of the dollar. "Australia 2030" is needed as much for a belated attempt to preserve what we can of the graciousness of our cities and to ensure their liveability: with "Australia 2030" a new "Melbourne 2030" could concentrate unashamedly and honestly on Melbourne.

The Bracks-Brumby Government was elected by Rural Victoria - as the name demonstrates "Melbourne 2030" is the "thanks" they are offering the country: final decimation as Melbourne is built into a fat, dissolute, greedy giant that can hardly move while rural Victoria 2030 wastes to a skeleton as we see it doing month my month!

It is obvious that the accidental states are a barrier to Australia's progress: water – which clearly requires a national approach and a national authority - is merely the latest example. Changes to Federation and State powers are necessary anyhow. But we need to change the structures that implement those different powers. Many of the pressing problems that raise their heads over and over are national and demand a national Government with the authority and power to deal with them": National Curriculum, soil (the sleeper to the water issue), transport, communications (for example: broadband) … . But overriding all this is our massive foreign debt – dealing with it and bringing Australia into the 21^st Century with an economy to match requires a central government as a focus for our 20 million people as the UK has for over 50 million people!!

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11/05/2008

The new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, conducted an "Australia 2020" Summit. He put ten questions to the nation and 1000 people offered to go to Canberra and offer responses. The summaries of those responses demonstrate that the accidental states are holding Australia back. The compliance costs for business for a population (local market) of only 20M mean that we are wasting money daily – the same applies to interstate transport, education (as argued above) soil, water – indeed on every issue the states are dodos.