*Pic: Paulkimo9 Flickr: Light Rail Sacramento Transit Mall
Deputy Speaker … building light rail in Hobart would link communities, reduce road traffic congestion, ease the cost of living and help clean up the environment. And it could be easily achieved because the land corridor is there, the community wants it and the media is on board.
Indeed a recent opinion poll put support for light rail at 62 per cent in Denison, and the Mercury newspaper seems keen to promote the venture.
So Deputy Speaker, the fact that Hobart still doesn’t have light rail really does beggar belief. It is, I regret to say, yet another symbol of the long-running failure of governance in Tasmania, and of too many lazy and incompetent politicians.
Of course it should never have come to this, especially when you consider that between 2010 and 2013 there were Labor power-sharing parliaments simultaneously in Canberra and Hobart.
But did anything ever come of that? Of course not, even though Labor and Greens candidates promised light rail at the 2010 state election, a Greens Minister for Sustainable Transport was elected, and I pleaded with the State Government repeatedly to ask the Federal Government for funding.
More recently the Liberal State Government has at least pledged to reserve the land corridor and that’s a good thing, as far as it goes. But even then it’s hard to detect much genuine interest in the project, which is unsurprising when you consider the bureaucracy, and key Premier’s staff, are captive to road transport and happy to heavily subsidise bus services.
But where to from here Deputy Speaker? Well for a start it won’t be good enough to leave this until the next state election when we run the risk of candidates, naively or wilfully, again promising light rail and again failing to deliver.
So frankly I see an opportunity for the current state government because this is a wonderful opportunity for the Premier to stand up and show some vision and leadership, to deliver what Labor and the Greens didn’t, and to finally build the mass transit system essential for significant urban growth and economic development.
Indeed Deputy Speaker, if we are going to build the Hobart of tomorrow, then we need to show that sort of vision. Only then, along with projects like the University’s move into the city and visionary STEM project, and the redevelopment of Macquarie Point, only then will we genuinely be putting down the new foundations of one of the world’s great cities.
In closing Deputy Speaker, I say let’s just build this thing.
And let’s do it now while we have a Prime Minister who appreciates the value of rail, and who’s open-minded about finally restoring passenger rail in Hobart.
• Peter Brenner in Comments: … And we should not reduce the freedom of walking to a humiliating begging for permission to cross thunderous roads like scurrying rabbits (for example). The hard edge fast, individual motor traffic is oh, so passé. Oh, so fifties of the last century …
