Economic viability of Mount Wellington Cable Car: more than poles and wires
Picture: Grant Dixon
Picture: Grant Dixon
Mount Wellington is a treasured place for Tasmanians and visitors alike. The Lonely Planet Guide rated Hobart as one of the top 10 cities in the world for 2013, describing the area as “a wild and rugged monolith perfect for mountain and bushwalking”.
The scale of the Mountain, the integrity of its natural values and its close proximity to Hobart, combined with the intact ecosystems make Wellington Park a rare asset for our capital city.
Mount Wellington gives visitors arriving in Hobart a first taste of Tasmania’s world renowned wild places and is a constant reminder to residents of one why we pride ourselves on being recognised as the ‘Clean, Green and Clever’ island. Mount Wellington and Wellington Park are outstanding natural assets and their integrity and value rely on them being afforded continuing preservation.
On Friday 26 October I made a representation to the draft Wellington Park Management Plan 2012. I questioned if cable cars, aerial ropeways and funicular rail and cable rail systems along with ancillary developments such as a visitor and interpretation centre, associated retail, cafes, restaurant and take-away food premises should be provided for under a new draft plan for the Pinnacle of Mount Wellington.
This is a very significant change from the current management plan, which prohibits many of these developments and uses at the Pinnacle.
It is the position of my constituents and we Greens that these kinds of developments are simply not appropriate for the Pinnacle area and compromise the Mountain’s environmental and cultural assets.
The economic value of some of these activities and the impact they may have on our environment and community is also questionable.
I recently met with Cairns Sky Rail owner and consultant Dr Ken Chapman and he described the business case for a cable car on Mount Wellington as very complicated and far from certain to be economically viable.
What concerned me most from my meeting with Dr Chapman was his opinion a cable car wasn’t economic simply as a ‘transport business.’ He described the cable car business as a ‘packaged product,’ which requires a whole series of tourism experiences, services and assets combined with the transport element to be successful.
In other words the viability of the Cairns Cable Car relies on experiential tourism – comprising restaurants, cafes, shops, interpretation experiences, indigenous and cultural experiences, potentially requiring a whole swag of additional development.
It is up to $350 per person for this ‘packaged experience’ and $45 each way, $90 return, for transport on the cable car alone. Cairns receives an estimated 2 million visitors per year, around 10 times the current estimates for Mount Wellington.
Although he wouldn’t provide exact numbers, Dr Chapman indicated visitors to Skyrail was many times greater than the estimated Mount Wellington visitor numbers, a large percentage of which would be locals unlikely to be repeat users of a cable car in any event.
The comparatively low Wellington Park visitor numbers combined with weather and wind factors is likely to make a cable car proposal an economically, environmentally and socially unfavorable project.
The Greens support the shovel-ready visitor centre and restaurant proposal for the Springs, as Hobart architect Robert Morris-Nunn considered the environmental and cultural values of the Mountain from conception to design. Importantly the development proposal comes with business case and council approvals.
What we need to ask ourselves is does Tasmania need more conflict and division around development projects that are not economically viable?
In 1984 there was a serious push for a cable car and this happened again in 1993. On both occasions the proposal divided the community and there was no economic backing.
The Wellington Park Management Trust was then set up to protect the natural and cultural values of the Mountain and they have until now prohibited development, specifically cable cars, on the summit.
The Wellington Park Management Plan, the Trust including its board and staff must continue to work to enhance the eco-tourism and economic values of Wellington Park and Mount Wellington without threatening their environmental and cultural values and without dividing the community.
It is my sincere hope that these issues are taken into serious consideration in this final stage of the review of the Wellington Park Management Plan.
