While the recent announcement of the reintroduction of trams in Auckland, via a small heritage tramway in Wynyard Quarter, is in some ways the smallest possible step towards trams playing a large role in meeting Auckland’s future transportation needs, it’s interesting to see some of the plans being discussed in Perth, Western Australia at the moment about the role that modern trams may play in their public transport future.
Auckland can learn a lot from the renaissance of public transport in Perth over the past 20 years, as Perth’s an even lower density city than we are, so I’ll be following what comes of this.
Processing...
Where is Aucklands Peter Newman?
I wish i’ve had a dollar for every time i’ve heard a right wing politician trot out those same old lines like the Liberal party transport minister does there – “I just want to introduce a dose of reality here” or “Rail is very expensive”.
It would be fantastic if we had someone as influential as Peter Newman here to advance the cause.
Perth’s trains are awesome (and their buses are very sleek LPG-powered Mercs). The intial route is a tough one by current public transport, as Perth’s rail system runs north-south but there’s significant important things inland, like the major universities (UWA, Curtin). I travelled from Fremantle to Curtin Uni when I was Perth in January, and it took 2 trains and 2 buses to get there, simply because of the way the system is laid out. If I could have changed to a tram at Central station, I don’t think I would have come back to NZ.
The other significant problem with Perth is the lack of a proper Central train station – Perth Central (Fremantle, Midland lines) and Perth Underground (Joondalup, Mandura lines) are connected by a pedestrian corridor, but its a decent walk and it can be hard to find the route from Central to Underground. The Australind regional train leaves from Central, but the other regional trains, and the Indian Pacific, leave from Perth East, 4 stations along the Midland line!
And yes, where’s NZ’s Peter Newman?!
I agree that Auckland needs that kind of “activist public transport supporting academic”. The kind of person who the media goes to for comment on transport stories, who is pumping out papers on how and why we need to change our transport funding structure and so forth.
A big problem in NZ is that everyone who knows anything about transport ends up working for NZTA, ARTA etc. or for a consultancy who does most of their work for one of the aforementioned agencies – and therefore can’t really speak out on everything.
One who can defeat the road lobby on such a regular occasion must deserve a nighthood