The recent major infrastructure funding announcements in the Federal Budget revealed what a half-hearted effort the ACT Government put into Canberra’s light rail bid.

Clearly the Federal Government was supportive of the light rail concept – they funded $365m for the first stage of one on the Gold Coast.

But the bid for Canberra went nowhere. Why? Many people suggested that the bid was merely a pre-election ploy to placate a movement that is getting a strong head of steam – if you’ll pardon the pun. Many pointed out that, rather than a staged approach and only asking for funding to kick off the first stage, the government’s bid was an ‘all or nothing’ approach that seemed designed to fail. And fail it did. Moreover, the submission proposed not even starting until 2011, when the Federal Government clearly wanted projects that could commence immediately.

A look through the submission prepared for the ACT Government by Price Waterhouse Coopers (at great cost to ACT taxpayers) shows it to be a truly light-weight submission, full of broad motherhood statements, complaining about the short submission timeframe, and stating a need to do more work on bus options.

But the submission’s cost-benefit analysis does not even include likely increased land sale prices or rates revenue resulting along key routes! This one missing component would go so far towards paying for the Gungahlin link at least, and it didn’t rate even the most basic of costings? Truly amazing.

Putting aside that most critical omission, what did the cost benefit analysis find? That the whole network would cost, over a four-year construction period, $2012m. Over the 30-year appraisal period, total operating and maintenance costs would be $1222m. Savings or benefits resulting from light rail over that same period included $1707m for highway savings, $543m bus system savings, $35m environmental savings, and a whopping $376m savings to consumers – us.

PWC boiled all this down to a return on investment of 14.92% – not shabby at all. Factor in the crucial missing additional land sale and rates revenues, and we have something that says ‘if the ACT Government does not go ahead with light rail (with or without federal funding), it is being grossly negligent with our funds.’

With many millions of dollars worth of land sales coming up in Gungahlin – including a heap along the key Flemington Road public transport corridor – it is vital that the ACT Government get serious about planning a staged approach to light rail. Obviously, the Gungahlin to Civic route would be in the first stage, possibly with links to the airport and South Canberra/Woden, then to Molonglo when that development gets going.

And it needs to make a public commitment, so that it can start to reap the benefits of increased land values along these routes. Is this minority ACT Government we have prepared to show vision and foresight on Canberra’s public transport? Or will it be negligent with our money?