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Residents, councils should help pay for new trams

Jul 07, 2015
Councils and residents need to contribute to tram network extensions, says Rod Hook.

Councils and residents need to contribute to tram network extensions, says Rod Hook.

Homeowners living along proposed tram routes should help pay to get the Labor’s light rail vision up and running, according to the man who oversaw most of the State Government’s recent infrastructure projects.

The Weatherill Government’s latest revamp of its Integrated Transport Plan talks up an EastLink tramline to sweeten the deal for developers interested in buying into the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site.

Transport Minister Stephen Mullighan yesterday spoke determinedly about extending the tramline along North Terrace, around the corner into East Terrace and up the Parade into Liberal leader Steven Marshall’s Dunstan electorate.

But if Labor was expecting breathless excitement about the “announcement” – with no funding allocated and a five to 15 year timeframe placed on any genuine activity – it’s clear former bureaucrat Rod Hook didn’t get the memo.

“Do we get too excited about another announcement or just roll with it and see where we go?” said Hook, who has been a frequent critic of Labor’s agenda since Jay Weatherill pushed him aside as head of the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure last year.

Hook points out that none of the “priority” light rail projects – EastLink, CityLink and PortLink – are currently funded. The latter two have been on and off the table for years now and, as of yesterday, are firmly back in the too-hard basket.

“This seems like someone’s idea (of saying): ‘Let’s roll that out there while we put the RAH site out to market, we’ll tell ‘em they’ll get a tramline’,” Hook told InDaily.

“(But) I don’t think anyone should be taking that as a genuine opportunity any time soon.”

He said “if we’re going to have tramlines I don’t think we can sit back and rely on state governments funding these things, without other levels of government and the private sector coming to the party”.

Rod-Hook

Rod Hook.

Hook suggests this should take the form of “value uplift”, whereby property owners on a road earmarked for a tramline extension pay an extra rates levy to help fund it. Residents a block or two back would also pay a levy, albeit a lesser one.

“That might be a way to get light rail delivered any time in the foreseeable future,” he said, noting that modelling suggests the introduction of light rail can boost an area’s property values by 40 per cent.

“There’s an uplift in values and rates, there are often development opportunities … so that benefit essentially goes to the property owner or local government,” he said.

“The problem is the rates are going to a different level of government – you’d have to see local government coming to the party.”

A study of Australian light rail transit in Australia published by the University of Canberra last month assessed the impact of the Glenelg tramline extension, completed in 2007, determining: “Property values within 400 metres of the tram extension increased relative to the rest of the CBD, but the increase was not statistically significant.”

However, the report found that “total employment within 400 metres of the tram extension also increased compared to the rest of the CBD, and the difference was highly significant statistically”.

Hook is adamant there needs to be better funding model than simply waiting for second-tier governments to assign capital, pointing to the on-again-off-again Gawler rail electrification as a case in point.

“I was never happy with that; it was part built, then it was stopped (and) we had to write down about $40 million in investment and give $70 million back to the Commonwealth,” he said.

“I just thought that was a very unfortunate decision.”

He also suggested there could be logistical problems with the tram turning east from North Terrace, saying it could potentially disrupt the flow of traffic city-wide.

“It will impact the traffic (but) who knows what the traffic will be in 15 years time,” he said.

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