Urbis associate director Riley Flanigan says Brisbane and other capital cities would have better public transport infrastructure if it was planned and delivered in the early phases of urban development, rather than trying to retrofit it into an existing neighbourhood.
By leading with train lines and other key infrastructure, it is cheaper than buying the land retroactively and there is less community opposition to deal with.
Rail lines should come first, then houses, says Urbis associate director Riley Flanigan.
“In more enlightened places like Europe, they actually use the infrastructure to drive the renewal, in order to basically choose where the growth goes, rather than just doing it more organically,” Flanigan said in response to yesterday’s Climate Council report, which ranked Brisbane as the city with the worst public transport access.
Much of Australia’s “piece-meal” approach to infrastructure delivery stemmed from politics and “this kind of obsession with business cases and feasibility”, Flanigan said.
Without existing residents to generate revenue to fund maintenance and operations of a new train line, for example, it was hard to make a business case stack up, he said, which becomes “a stick you could beat a politician with if you wanted to”.
The Climate Council’s Jennifer Rayner said it was hard and expensive to retrofit infrastructure into existing suburbs, especially heavy rail, and that was why she was an advocate for reliable and high-frequency bus services.
She said the shift to electric buses was an opportunity to attract people toward a quieter, more comfortable service when compared to ageing combustion-engine fleets.
AAP
Source Agencies
