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PTUA transport

The balance

The next time you hear the government making excuses as to why they can’t extend train and tram lines, and how they have to provide a “balance” between freeway and public transport expansion, keep this in mind:

Melbourne transport network expansion 1996 to 2006

(Current and past ten years dollars spent on freeway expansion: $7.2 billion. Rail/tram network expansion: $225 milion. Full figures here.)

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

5 replies on “The balance”

That sure puts it in perspective! Good luck with the mess of extra bodies due to the Commonwealth Games. Ugh, so not fun, I bet.

Daniel
that’s only the capital spending.
The Govt’s recurrent costs of propping up the old franchise companies is hundreds of millions a year (that’s why EastLink is a tollway to pay for the failure of Kennett’s privatisation experiment).
PS You could have changed Excel’s default colours to make the graph look nicer!
Rog.

Can you add bike paths to your graph?? We took part in a Darebin survey that promised work to be done, and currently I have to avoid one part of path where the bridge has been out of action for what feels like 6 months…

When you add the small change of that local government spending, the big amount of roads would look even bigger. Even more disturbing, and it is no wonder we all can’t breathe easily…

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