By Bronwen Beechey
MELBOURNE — Victoria's already beleaguered public transport system is in for a further battering. More cuts to rail services are to take effect in the next two months, despite warnings from environmental and public transport user groups of the damage that will be done to health, safety and mobility.
Transport minister Alan Brown announced on April 30 that three country rail lines will be closed. Services from Melbourne to Mildura and Leongatha, and from Ballarat to Dimboola, will be replaced by private buses, as will services between Shepparton and Cobram, and Sale and Bairnsdale. Services from Melbourne to Shepparton and to Warrnambool will be contracted out to private operators, creating the nation's first regular privatised train lines.
Brown claimed that the consortium taking over the Warrnambool line would retain all current services. He said that both private lines would be regulated by V-Line, and that current fare structures would be retained. All positions are to be declared vacant; current V-line employees will be interviewed first, and any staff left over will be made redundant. The operators of the Warrnambool line, West Coast Railways, have stated that staff will be employed on contracts.
Public transport users in the Melbourne metropolitan area are already experiencing the effects of the cuts on a daily basis. Trains are still running on a summer holiday timetable, and are frequently late or cancelled because of understaffing.
Rail passengers, particularly young people, are frequently harassed by Metropolitan Transit staff who appear to be frustrated would-be cops, checking for fare evasion. (Because many stations are not staffed, it is often impossible to purchase a ticket at the beginning of a journey.)
Trams are often cancelled or break down from a lack of maintenance. Tram drivers are expected to run to unrealistic timetables; for example, drivers on the city to St Kilda route are expected to complete their journey in 20 minutes, difficult at any time and impossible during peak hour. As a result, on a number of occasions drivers have been forced to cut the trip short and turn back, leaving passengers facing a long walk through some of the less pleasant parts of St Kilda.
Response by unions to the latest cuts has been muted, to say the least. Barbara Lewis, Trades Hall Council vice president, told the May 1 Age that unions were "disappointed that the government had not heeded the call from the communities that will lose their passenger trains". She also claimed that 300 country rail jobs had been saved under an April agreement between public transport unions and the state government.
In fact, the agreement foreshadowed the closure of several country privatisation of country services. Along with the agreement to allow the Public Transport Corporation to phase out tram conductors and station staff, this appears to have been the trade-off for the government agreeing to retain suburban train services after 8 p.m., and to retain, at least for the present, the Upfield and Alamein lines.
John McPherson, assistant secretary of the Public Transport Users Association, told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that while the association agreed that costs needed to be cut in certain areas, the agreement between unions and the government had completely ignored issues such as passenger safety and accessibility of services to the disabled and elderly.
The PTUA recently released a report, Public transport's financial crisis, which pointed out that Melbourne's public transport system is rapidly becoming one of the most infrequent, slow and inefficient systems in Australia. It is already the most expensive.
The report shows clearly that the arguments used to justify cutting services are false and based on "an implacable ideological hostility to public transport, especially rail, and a love affair with roads, especially freeways". It refutes the argument that deregulation or privatisation will improve services, looking at the example of Britain, where buses in all cities other than London were deregulated in 1987. Between 1987 and 1992, patronage of the London bus system increased by 3.9%, while in the other cities it fell by 26.1%.
The announcement of the rail cuts ironically coincided with the release of another report calling for a different attitude to public transport. Making money from better service, a research paper written by John Stone of the Conservation Council of Victoria, draws many of the same conclusions reached by the PTUA. It points out that the structure of the PTC is top heavy, but that staff cuts are being made in the "front line" rather than at management level.
Stone outlines the health risks caused by inadequate public transport. Sixty per cent of Melbourne's air pollution comes from cars, and the percentage is increasing. Increased smog levels have been implicated in a dramatic increase in the number of asthma sufferers seeking emergency treatment at the Royal Children's Hospital. Already asthma is the primary cause of death for five Victorians every week.
He compares Melbourne's public system to that of Toronto, a city structurally and demographically very similar. However, Toronto has a public transport service that works, because "system managers in that city understand very clearly the link between service levels and patronage levels". Stations are staffed at all times, trains are fast, safe and clean and run every few minutes until 1.30 a.m. Frequent bus and tram services act as feeders to the rail system, and operate 24 hours on main routes. Thirty years ago Toronto had no suburban rail lines and public transport carried less than 8% of travellers. It now carries nearly 25% of all travellers and recovers 70% of its operating costs from ticket sales, compared with 30% in Victoria. Stone also looks at an "experiment" conducted by the PTC last year, in which services on the Sandringham line were increased by 23% and staffing levels at stations were improved. According to PTC estimates, patronage grew by around 30% almost immediately. "In the first few months after the Sandringham changes were introduced", Stone writes, "the PTC were keen to claim success". But, "Since the change of government and changes in senior management ... there has been a disturbing tendency to try to downplay or disregard the significance of the experiment."
Rachel Evans of the Environmental Youth Alliance, which is campaigning on the issue of public transport, welcomed the report. "It is clear from both the Conservation Council and PTUA reports that the Victorian government's strategy of cutting public services will lead to a reduction in their use, which in turn will be used as an excuse by the government to impose further cuts", she said.
"Young people, women, the elderly, disabled and people in rural areas are being increasingly denied the right to safe and accessible public transport. The issue is one that environmental and community groups can unite and organise around."