Via Domainfax:
Crowding on Sydney’s trains has worsened significantly in just a year, new figures show, frustrating passengers and placing greater pressure on an aged rail network struggling to cope with a booming population.
Trains are running during the morning peak with loads as high as 185 per cent, way above the level at which passengers begin to suffer from overcrowding.
Average passenger loads during the morning peak across the city’s suburban lines hit 120 per cent in September last year, up from 112 per cent a year earlier, just-released figures from the state’s lead transport agency show.
There is no plan to fix it. There is no plan that can fix it. The plan is the opposite, to make it worse. To force in millions more:
Which Infrastructure Australia has already documented will result in much lower living standards in every build-out scenario:
Why? So that Queen Lucy’s development courtiers can get richer as everyone else gets poorer. To wit, Transurban is positioning itself to be prime beneficiary of Australia’s mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy. From The SMH:
Toll road giant Transurban is positioning itself to manage the entire road networks of Australia’s three major cities as governments make the “inevitable” shift to road pricing.
A senior Transurban executive told a private meeting of investors this month that the company wanted to be viewed as the “natural custodian” of the nation’s motorways, in the likely event of motorists being charged to drive on them.
The Melbourne-based company has a near monopoly on private roads in Australia already, controlling 13 of the 15 toll roads in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Analysts Morgan Stanley have described a Transurban-run, user-pays system across all roads as a “meta-monopoly”.
Such a move would further entrench the company – which owns Citylink in Melbourne, the M2 in Sydney and all of Brisbane’s toll roads – as a de-facto private sector planning agency in those major cities.
Few, if any, countries in the world have allowed a private operator to control so much of their road network.
Even Jeff Kennett, the man who in effect launched Transurban through its Melbourne CityLink contract in 1996, now warns governments against granting the company more toll road projects, arguing that taxpayers are being “ripped off”.
This is the plan. To privatise the gains from mass immigration among the King and Queen’s best mates while socialising the costs on everyone else.
Former treasury secretary turned NAB chairman, Ken Henry, explained this model in a speech last year:
Research NAB carried out earlier in the year showed that among our customers there’s not wholesale support for a larger Australia. For many, the prospect of a higher Australian population means more stress in the ability to buy a house, to live where you want to live, to get to work with a reasonable commute time. And many in the community are also concerned about our ability, as a nation, to maintain norms of Australian social and economic inclusion, and to continue to provide access to high quality services in areas such as healthcare and education…
But what is the business perspective? The same NAB research showed that most of our business customers would strongly prefer a larger population, which supports better business growth.
With Australia’s two biggest cities desperately trying to find infrastructure ‘solutions’ to keep pace with the population ponzi, private companies like Transurban are making out like bandits, paid for by ordinary citizens.
For example, the Victorian Government’s $6.7 billion West Gate Tunnel Project will see Transurban contribute $4.4 billion towards the cost, but in exchange motorists will have to pay additional tolls on CityLink until 2045 estimated at $15 billion. It’s a sweet deal for Transurban, but a dud deal for Melbourne motorists.
In a similar vein, Sydney’s $17 billion WestConnex project – which Transurban is the front-runner to acquire – will see existing free public roads like the state-owned M4 (that have already been paid off) being tolled to help fund the project. Toll are contracted to rise by 4% per year for the 43 years, thus raising costs for residents.
Clearly, private businesses like toll road operators, retailers, banks and property developers get to enjoy the easy growth in revenue and profits that come from an ever expanding customer base, whereas households suffer from the increased competition and reduced bargaining power at work, rising housing costs, rising infrastructure costs, and longer and more expensive commutes.
This is the plan. There is no other, via Herald Sun:
AUSTRALIA’S pace of accepting migrants is one of the main causes of overdevelopment in our suburbs, according to Ryde state Liberal MP Victor Dominello.
As concerns grow about the Berejiklian government’s role in the increasing densification of Sydney, Mr Dominello has called for a mature discussion about the nation’s migration laws.
Mr Dominello said he did not blame migrants for coming to places such as Ryde, with its employment centre and university at Macquarie Park.
But he said more work was required so infrastructure could be aligned with population.
“I am of the strong view that we need a mature national debate around the pace of migration,” Mr Dominello, whose grandparents migrated from Italy, said.
“The states need to be involved in this discussion as we are required to build the roads, rail, schools and hospitals.
“And, critical to Ryde, we need to plan how we house all these people.”
The MP’s comments come after the State Government last week announced it would delay introducing its medium-density housing code to Ryde for a year.
The government has also offered $2.5 million to fund a review of the council’s planning rules so these can be harmonised with the code.
Ryde Mayor Jerome Laxale, also Labor’s state candidate for Ryde, said the announcement was “another Berejiklian government backflip”.
Mr Dominello responded to suggestions his migration comments were a ploy to shift responsibility for overdevelopment from the state.
“People who say that overdevelopment is a political issue really do not understand the core problem,” he said.
“There is no simple solution. It requires all three levels of government to do their part.”
There will be no co-operation between levels of government. Because if there were then Canberra would be faced with the responsibility of having to pay for the over-development. That’s entirely contrary to King Malcolm’s major goal of budget repair via stuffing in people.
The entire mass immigration plan is a scam run by the royal court in Point Piper. There is only one way to stop it. Revolution at the ballot box that cuts immigration.