Labor doubles down on ACT Light Rail white elephant

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By Leith van Onselen

Back in June 2016, the ACT Auditor-General released a damning assessment of ACT Light Rail Project – the $710 million project to build a 12-kilometre light rail line connecting Gungahlin in the north and Civic – claiming that the cost-benefit analysis used to support the Project was chock full of erroneous assumptions and spurious benefit inclusions, and is unlikely to provide net benefits to Canberra residents.

This followed damning assessments by the Productivity Commission and the Grattan Institute, which both found that investing in bus rapid transit could have delivered the same benefits but at around half the taxpayer cost.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.