Having unveiled his Big Transport Plan, Premier Jay Weatherill today set about selling it to voters.

Doing the rounds of the radio stations, the Premier pitched the value of a blueprint.

“We know that over the next 30 years we’ll be spending $23 billion (on transport) – this shows the plan of where it will be and the sequencing of it,” he told ABC radio.

“It’s a blueprint that we can get behind.

“People can now invest in this state knowing what our transport system will look like.”

On FIVEaa’s breakfast program Weatherill defended the return to trams, a system ripped out of Adelaide roads in the 1950s and 1960s.

“We had a great system of trams; sadly we ripped up the network.

“But lots of cities around the world are putting them back.”

The plan received support from long-time critic and former Transport department head Derek Scrafton, now based at UniSA.

“In all fairness, we’ve been crying out for something for years; and this is at least a comprehensive plan,” Scrafton said.

“It’s now out there for discussion.”

Scrafton said the plan was honest: “It doesn’t shy away from the fact, for example, that there’s a $7 billion funding gap.”

The Premier was short on some of the detail; individual costs estimates of parts of the plan would come, he said, after the consultation period on the draft proposals.

And he wasn’t sure how long the tram network would be: “I don’t know, I haven’t measured it,” he said.

Beyond the suburbs, one of the highest priorities (also uncosted) appears to be the sealing of the Strezlecki Track this side of the Queensland border.

The Track is mostly unsealed with a few short sealed sections to facilitate overtaking.

The 459 km Track links SA outback town Lyndhurst to Innamincka in the north (464 km) and then across the Queensland border to Boulia (a further 796 km). It passes through the Strzelecki Desert.

“It’s to get people to the Cooper Basin,” Weatherill said.

“It’s about competing to be the mining services supplier for the Cooper Basin.”