Simon Rumble’s blog

Ben Fowler is right to be cynical about the NSW government's planned metro railway. After all, Action for Transport 2010, launched in 1998, was supposed to see us have a railway line from Chatswood to Parramatta, a North West Rail Link, 7 rapid bus transitways and an extensive bicycle network. Also started by 2010 was to be a new line linking Strathfield to Hurstville, a link to allow trains to run from Fairfield to Hurstville, a railway to Bondi Beach, and a pony for every child in NSW. Instead the only parts that were implemented as publicised were the roads projects. This is precisely what transport activists lobbying for public transport predicted at the time.

The problem we have is that roads can be started and completed within an election cycle. Heavy rail and the like takes much more time. So our gormless politicans have every incentive to talk about public transport while doing nothing.

What's more, our government is still working to the 1945 County of Cumberland Main Road Development Plan, Sydney's answer to Los Angeles, where freeways have been such a success. Just have a look and see how much of it they've managed to build. Notice how the next links in the motorway network are still those from this 1945 planning document?

Now if you were serious about new rail in Sydney, there are two areas that urgently need attention.

The big bottleneck is Central station going into the City Circle. At this point you have seven lines reduced to two, which causes obvious problems. My solution to this would be to install a very fast, very regular metro-style line underneath the platforms at Central and connecting to the city. All the suburban trains then stop at Central (except the through trains to North Shore and Eastern Suburbs) and passengers change to the metro for the final part of the journey. This system, of course, requires that the metro be incredibly regular, every five minutes as a minimum for peak hour, and the interchange be cleverly thought out. It's basically the same system used in Paris (RER and metro) and Tokyo (JR and subway).

The second big thing that's required is a vast new network of suburban lines. There are huge swathes of Sydney that don't have railways, with the city expanding in all directions even further out of the reach of public transport. A massive programme building lines to these areas will improve many social indicators for these areas by improving transport. After all, what do you think 12-17 year olds do when they can't get our of their suburban hell because there's no public transport? That's right, they fuck, commit crimes, take smack. Here's my prediction: Castle Hill will experience a crime wave in the next ten years or so, precisely because of this factor. Rouse Hill will be a bit later.

Howard has been quoted as saying the "emergency" in Australian indigenous communities is "Australia's own hurricane Katrina" and I think he's right. Just as Bush did nothing for years knowing about the danger, Howard's government has had more than ten years to sort this situation out, or at least make some inroads.

Instead they've been pushing their ideology instead of actual solutions, talking about "mutual obligation", encouraging property ownership over traditional shared ownership, fighting tooth and nail to stop the land rights movement and of course refusing to apologise for the mistakes of the past, mistakes often made in the same paternalistic frame of the current intervention.

Now it's all come back to haunt them. Where Bush will be remembered for Lake George, the puddle that was once New Orleans, Howard will be remembered for his refusal to do anything to help indigenous Australia, and acting far too late and with characteristic paternalism.

I must say, I certainly agree with Howard when he says "we should have been more humble". If only he were.

WTF?

I've been out to Telstra Stadium in the Olympic precinct twice in the last few weeks. The first for the Australia vs Uruguay football match and last night for the Swans vs Collingwood AFL match. They've really got a lot of things sorted out in this development, testament to what you can do when you've got an unlimited budget and a hard deadline.

The first time we drove out because we were going with Holly's Dad and he wanted to drive. It was a nightmare and we nearly missed kickoff, traffic jams starting miles away from the car parks. And you have to pay an exorbitant amount to park, then walk miles to get to the stadium.

Last night I caught the train and my 17:05 train from St Peters to Redfern got me, after changing, to the stadium by 17:25. Amazing! And the price of transport is included in the ticket for the match.

The thing that blows me away, though, is the number of cars we saw queued up to leave after the match. So despite the public transport being free and insanely efficient, loads of people still chose to take the expensive, slow and frustrating transport option.

We've got a long way to go to get these people out of their cars. I'm not sure what more you can do though, considering the alternative is so damn good.

Peter Lieverdink blogs on the government's regional broadband plans. I actually think they've done a pretty good job of balancing service provision with cost. It's never going to be easy to provision all of Australia's vast, mostly uninhabited regions, and I don't think it really should be the government's job. Governments aren't forced to provide free water, gas and electricity connections, so I don't see why broadband has suddenly become some must-have.

That said, there are clear economic benefits to getting the regions some form of connectivity. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh showed this at a base level when it covered the country with mobile towers and built a workable way of getting phones out there. It meant farmers could phone ahead to see what prices they could expect for their crops before paying a truck driver to take their crop to market.

Similarly there's a lot of tangible benefit farmers in remote areas will get from internet access. Climate information. Remote education. The latest best practices in farming.

But we shouldn't necessarily be writing a blank cheque to subsidise this. The cost of communications should be factored in as part of the farmer's cost of doing business. Just as transport costs, rising and falling market prices for their crops and the inputs like fertiliser are built into their costs.

Many years ago, when Telstra still had a monopoly and a duty to provide telephones to anyone who asked for one, I visited a vast sheep station outside Quilpie in Western Queensland. The homestead had a phone line, provisioned by a huge microwave tower. He'd paid only $5,000 for the phone line, a tiny fraction of what must have been an immensely costly installation. Because of the massive subsidy, he also had such a phone line put into their other, uninhabited, house across the other side of the property. Previously anyone staying in that house had, quite effectively, used HF radio to keep in touch with the main house, but due to a massive subsidy they'd installed a phone line that would rarely ever be used.

What needs to be kept in mind with the Opel rollout is that the most important factor is the rolling out of ADSL2+ to regional towns and cities. For people living in these towns and cities, they'll soon have access to the same broadband we currently get in some parts of the capital cities. That's a major step forward, and the fact it's being done as an open, competitive platform open to all ISPs is an incredible leap forward, and something Telstra would never have offered.

Peter's quip about hosting servers in the regions misses the point. You'd never dream of hosting out in the bush when you can, much more cheaply and much better-connectedly host in a world class data centre in the big smoke. Hell, I'm amazed anyone bothers hosting anything in Australia at all given our high prices and the ridiculously cheap, reliable hosting you can get in the US.

All up, and somewhat surprisingly given how clueless Coonan is, I think the government have made a good decision here. It remains to be seen if they are rushed into making a poor decision under Telstra's hectoring when it comes to the FTTN proposals that are (in the case of the G9 at least) on the table. I would much prefer they deferred a decision on this until after the election, or we risk seeing Telstra effectively re-monopolize the entire telecommunications market in Australia. Again. Remember when it used to cost $300 (probably $600 in today's money) to get a phone line connected?

The Grauniad has this great photo and caption taken by Billy Bragg at Glastonbury. Very jealous of all the people there, even with the mud!

Do you see the problem with this form? Now I don't know about you, but when I'm looking for jobs I've never thought Hmmmm, I'd love to take that job but it's paying too much. How about you?

Two "news" sites have stolen one of my photos from the last Glastonbury. Fortunately Google News makes it easy to find such infringements. Does this or this look familiar to you?

They'll be receiving invoices shortly.

If you're going to Glasto this year, I'm very jealous. Looks like you'll need your wellies!

I'm looking aroung my Linked in network vaguely looking for a graphic designer to work on a project I'm pitching for. Anyway one of my network knows someone who calls himself a designer. I go to his site only to find the front page Javascript resized my browser and has a Flash animation as the only content on the front page. Bing! You're no longer in the running buddy.

If anyone can recommend a good, reliable designer who knows standards and isn't addicted to superfluous Flash crap, get in touch. People with personal sites that behave as described above, don't waste my time.

Now this makes being back in Sydney quite worthwhile. Last night we went for dinner at The Lansdowne and I ordered a $5 steak. Could you imagine what a £5 steak would be like? Well the $5 steak was delicious, and well (i.e., not very) cooked. Yum!