M2 upgrade contract should be cancelled

John Goldberg had this letter published in the Northern District Times on 5 Jan. It is worth repeating now the state election is nearing, and with the EcoTransit Forum taking place on Sunday 6th at the Pennant Hills Community Centre at 7pm.


"Understandable attempts by the Transurban interests to talk up the “benefits” of the M2 upgrade in terms of travel time savings have little credibility (“M2 rubbishes ‘no benefit claim’”. NDT 15 December). The claims of travel time savings are part of a derisible economic analysis prepared by a Transurban consultant with the clear aim of justifying the project.


"The claims have been shown to be spurious by the author in a paper to be published shortly in the refereed Proceedings of the 2010 Australasian Transport Research Forum based on the author’s research at the University of Sydney. The results already reported in the Sydney Morning Herald (7/10/2010) show that Transurban overstated the savings by a factor of four times. This result means that the savings are worth far less than the cost of the project over its concession lifetime.

"Why then proceed with this uneconomic project which will be of minimal benefit to road users? The real reason lies in the need for Transurban to generate increased cash flow. In 2010, the total expenses of Transurban exceeded its total earnings by $234.60 million, and its group debt is over $7 billion and keeps rising. Yet Transurban continues to assert group profitability.

"Increased revenue is to be obtained by taking advantage of induced traffic. This will have the effect of increasing congestion, reducing travel time savings but it is likely to increase revenue. These hopes have been publicly expressed by Mr C.J.Lynch the CEO of the Transurban Group(The Australian, 15-16/5/2010) while the possibility of induced traffic has been marginalised, not unexpectedly, in the EIS published by Transurban and endorsed by the RTA.

"The M2 upgrade affair generally demonstrates that transport planning in a major Australian city cannot be reliably carried out by incompetent agencies such as the RTA using deception and community manipulation disguised as consultation. There is no substance in this M2 upgrade project which would support Kristina Keneally’s2009 claim, clearly influenced by the RTA, that the M2 upgrade project was “critical” infrastructure and one of “state significance”.


"The incoming government should therefore invoke the doctrine of executive necessity and cancel the contract for this essentially fraudulent project and also undertake serious reform of the RTA."