The time honoured technique to deflect unwanted scrutiny of poor decision making is to narrow the frame of inquiry. That way, what in plain view looks like a disaster can be made to appear inevitable, even desirable.
Those with long comedic memories may recall Monty Python’s “stream of bat’s piss” sketch (see title image and fire-up the link).
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Parodying the audacious wit of Whistler, Wilde and Shaw, it casts a credulous prince as the target of escalating foppish insolence. The three wags successfully evade the prince’s ire with absurd flattering similes that eventually collapse into an incoherent raspberry.
The same ducking-and-weaving skills may come in handy for those called before an upper house inquiry – announced on 7 February and due to report by 20June – into the traffic chaos following the opening of the WestConnex Rozelle interchange.
“this may not be the only inquiry into this inquiry “(sic)”
The terms of reference (ToR) mainly cleave to the causes of the traffic problem and possible solutions, but three foreshadow a wider reckoning:
(f) the social, environmental and economic impacts of the Rozelle Interchange project on impacted communities…
(k) the cost of the Rozelle Interchange and the total cost of WestConnex
(l) any other related matters.
The current Roads Minister, John Graham, welcomed the inquiry but added “that this may not be the only inquiry into this inquiry (sic)” – perhaps meaning that scrutiny of WestConnex is likely to be ongoing and more detailed.
Even though the Rozelle interchange was largely conceived and delivered by the opposition when in government, it now inadvertently considers an extensive enquiry worthwhile.
Its upper house leader, Damien Tudehope, rather too quickly complained that it would merely be a witch-hunt, essentially confirming that a whole coven awaits discovery following a good inquisitorial dunking.
However, these grumps are of little moment to those directly affected, whose daily encounters with the interchange resemble the darkly hilarious car-dominated UK dystopias of Kyle Branchesi (look it up).
But first in overview, who has actually benefited?
Though WestConnex has improved traffic flow from the west, the current traffic chaos has negated many of these benefits, particularly for those using existing streets, and is unlikely to improve for some time yet.
What was promised to be a new boulevard lined with apartments, Parramatta Road, remains an un-improved traffic sewer, a betrayal now generating increasing disquiet.
Those who might have been accommodated within those apartments are instead lining up to rent or buy in rabidly contested markets. Meanwhile, the state government is still hunting for spare land on which to build more housing but is unable to say when its report on the topic will be delivered.
Directly contradicting those initial promises, plans to acquire properties and widen the road to accommodate yet more Parramatta Road traffic were recently leaked. The resulting indignant outcry obliged the current roads minister to kibosh the idea.
An earlier plan to increase the vehicular capacity of Anzac Bridge was also abandoned late last year.
Councils close to central Sydney must now grapple with more intense local traffic chaos, well beyond the curtilage of WestConnex.
The only real beneficiary of the entire enterprise seems to be a large, privately owned toll-road company, Transurban, and its shareholders
Public transport agencies struggle to run road-based services amidst the intensified congestion but are likely to be tapped soon to increase those services to decant some of the congestion from cars.
WestConnex users must pay tolls that are contractually guaranteed to increase annually. It is unclear if those contracts will permit the extent of traffic modal adaptation within the toll road that may prove necessary to quell the congestion. Overall, it appears that taxpayers spent close to $20 billion, essentially just to relocate a traffic jam.
The only real beneficiary of the entire enterprise seems to be a large, privately owned toll-road company, Transurban, and its shareholders. Its management insists it has nothing to hide from the current inquiry.
Some useful perspectives for the inquiry
Firstly, for any inquiry to be useful complete context is everything.
This is why ToRs are so hotly contested.
To illustrate why, confining analysis of a phenomenon to reflected light might communicate a golden-lit pond, but expanding it to admit odour would reveal it to be a sewerage farm at sunset.
Rather obviously, urban motorways cannot exist without the cities that they serve, so confining inquisitorial scrutiny to individual components, like roads, would fail to acknowledge the predominant significance of these urban interrelationships.
It is frequently observed that the best way to reduce “tidal” traffic congestion is to build rail lines, not widen roads or twiddle with traffic signals
For example, it is frequently observed that the best way to reduce “tidal” traffic congestion is to build rail lines, not widen roads or twiddle with traffic signals.
Secondly, and as important as context, analysis must retain a unitary overview of the problem in order to avoid its atomisation into isolated, often excusable, components.
A good method is the correlatory “dog” test – if it barks, humps your leg and sh**s in your shoes then it’s probably a dog; its actual breed is a secondary matter.
According to some commentators, fundamental WestConnex pathologies were inhered from its inception; Rozelle interchange congestion is merely a confirmatory symptom.
Lastly, in what could well be a most useful outcome, the inquiry should examine the architecture of infrastructure decision-making with a view to the future.
On the heels of the failed promise of the Cross City Tunnel to transform William Street, how and why did WestConnex get up at all? How can we avoid making the same mistakes again?
Set within these larger perspectives the following recommend themselves for further examination.
What was the total land-take consumed by WestConnex?
Unless wholly in tunnels, urban motorways consume land.
When in cities, this land is very expensive, reflecting competing demands for land, such as for housing or workplace expansion.
Some of this land is used for motorways directly. Even tunnel portals directly consume land.
Land consumption is also indirect.
Some land is over-sailed or bisected by motorways and its alternative use thereby curtailed.
Conversion into “parklands” is a rather dodgy strategy favoured by motorway builders to disguise this consumption – recall much of Darling Harbour and new parklands to be delivered as part of the WestConnex project.
Other adjacent land is affected by the “negative externalities” of motorways – noise, particulate pollution, and proximate view – and its highest-and-best use is similarly compromised.
Motorways frequently require changes to existing road networks that in turn consume additional land, such as for road-widening near the start or ends of motorways.
Motorways frequently require supporting infrastructure – such as exhaust stacks – that consumes land directly and indirectly when they affect the desirability and uses of surrounding land.
However, a particular feature of the Rozelle interchange is that it feeds into existing elevated road networks, such as Glebe Island, Anzac Bridge, the Pyrmont and Ultimo road-decks, and those in Darling Harbour, effectively building them into the city.
Those networks can no longer be undergrounded and the potentially released land is therefore lost to the future accommodation of city growth.
It should be recalled that solutions to the housing crisis depend on better use of land close to where the jobs are, such as the inner-city.
What was the total cost of WestConnex?
The reported cost of WestConnex, including the $3.9 billion for the Rozelle interchange, is some $17 billion, give or take.
What is the opportunity cost – what alternative projects could have been undertaken – of the same outlay?
The almost $20-billion spent on WestConnex could have built five Parramatta light rails, or 100 primary schools, or 10 Parramatta high schools, or fourRoyal Adelaide Hospitals (the third most expensive building in the world at the time), or one metro-West extension.
However, the total cost including that borne by other agencies and the value of alienated land, as explored above, is probably much higher.
The direct and indirect consumption of all the land explored above should be added to the WestConnex project cost.
Too often, proponents of road projects propose yet more road projects to remedy shortcomings, like the congestion generated at the Rozelle interchange.
This is the “sunk costs” problem, or in colloquial terms “throwing good money after bad”, which the inquiry will no doubt be encouraged to recommend but should be on special guard to scrutinise closely.
What alternatives were and are being considered?
Even during its construction period, WestConnex looked like a 20th century relic. So, why was it built at all? Perhaps the inquiry can help us understand.
Infrastructure decisions are necessarily about the future. The nature of that future has been coming into glaring focus for some time now.
Contradicting our fondness for “truckzillas”, that future is no longer just an ideological dispute between tree-huggers and car-cuddlers, as the accelerating uptake of electric vehicles will illustrates.
Urban transport policy makers are being taxed by demands for greater transport sustainability and the dawning realisation that road congestion cannot be solved through more road building, as Greg Baker explains.
Baker concludes:
“What hasn’t been widely discussed is simply to cease funding new roads, allow the road network to congest further and at the same time invest heavily in public transport. It is probably cheaper to make public transport free than to build new roads”.
It seems his view is not fanciful.
The Canadian environment minister recently announced that central government will cease funding the construction of new motorways, nationwide.
Apparently conservative politicians were outraged, claiming that the minister was “out of touch”, an accusation commonly evinced most strongly by those levelling it.
The so-called cradle of democracy, Athens, has also had enough, apparently. It hopes that its new metro line will remove 53,000 cars from its roads each day – a prospect that might chill the spines of some WestConnex shareholders if the sentiment spreads.
Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, was recently awarded a prize as a visionary for urban development, in part due to her initiatives to reduce car usage in the city.
Some years ago, Wales appointed Sophie Howe as its first Future Generations Commissioner. Amongst her early successes was cancellation of the M4 motorway extension from London into Wales on the grounds that it would not fulfill the expectation of future generations.
Instead, her office has pressed for alternative more sustainable and integrated transport solutions to the common problem of journey-to/from-work peaks that characterise the Rozelle congestion.
Noting the project’s nascent canine qualities, University of New South Wales students were encouraged some years ago to explore alternative uses for WestConnex, such as a dedicated high-speed rail service to the Badgerys Creek aerotropolis.
Though just a student exercise, the idea of accommodating radically different transport modes to solve the congestion problem should not be discounted by the inquiry.
The fundamental importance of the decision-making context
We are currently witnessing the slow death of housing affordability promises by this state government, which appears to have ceded policy solutions to the industries and interests most vested in maintaining high prices.
Government also appears to have chosen not to foster many known workable alternatives for affordable housing provision.
It is difficult to understand how this slowly unfolding failure is allowed to continue, but many suspect that behind the scenes, vested interests whisper into sympathetic ears or are represented by embedded advisors.
However, if this current inquiry only manages to expose these networks of influence within and between government and its advisers – the discrete strategic nudges and off-the-record commentary – it will have served taxpayers well.
Redressing the accountability deficit of government is long overdue.
