2013 election: What the major parties will do about climate change, clean energy and public transport.

As you go into vote this weekend you may want to consider how the various parties rate on issues important to Transition Town Kenmore (TTKD) such as action on climate change and increasing resilience in the face of resource depletion (a good example of this would be policies on active and public transport). While TTKD does not endorse any particular political party I've written a bit of a guide to the policies of the major parties.

With regards to climate change both the Climate Institute (CI) and the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) have climate policy scorecards, which are very quick to look at.

See the CI pollute-o-meter here.
See the ACF environmental scorecard here.


Summary of policies on Climate and Public Transport
Price on Carbon:
Both Labour and the Green support price on carbon pollution where major polluters pay for each ton of carbon they emit. Total emissions of pollution are capped and decrease each year. Most people are compensated for price rises that occur as a result of polluting companies paying a carbon price. Such market based mechanisms are generally agreed to be the cheapest and most effective means of cutting pollution. The Green aim for a much more ambitious cut to Australia's carbon emissions.

The Coalition plan to scrap the polluter pays carbon pricing scheme and instead use general taxpayer revenue to pay major polluters to "decrease" the amount of pollution they emit. I say "decrease" because it is not totally clear to me if a polluter actually has to decrease their emissions. It may well be fine for a polluter to accept money to increase their emission, but by a smaller amount than they originally expected too. Credible estimates suggest by 2020 Australia's emissions will increase under this scheme. This is for 2 reasons. Firstly not a lot of money (in the scheme of thing) is available for grants to polluters and secondly because while some polluters will decrease their emissions using the grants, other companies not involved in the scheme will increase their emissions.
The Coalition also plan to fund a "green army" to plant trees and look after local environments.  This is unlikely to have an significant impact on Australia's carbon emmissions but may help in local re-vegetation and improve health of creek catchments etc.

Climate Change Authority:
Labour and the Greens plan to keep the Climate Change Authority (CCA), an independent body set up to advise the government on addressing climate change. The Coalition plans to scrap the CCA.

Clean Energy Finance Corporation:
Labour and the Green plan to keep the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which has $10 billion dollars to invest in clean energy and energy efficiency (ie: helping fund wind and solar farms, helping businesses to decrease their energy costs). The Coalition plans to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

2020 renewable energy target:
All major parties support the renewable energy target. However The Coalition plan to review the target in 2014.

Public transport:
The Greens will probably support any worthwhile public transport scheme and also support an eventual Brisbane to Melbourne (via Sydney and Canberra) high speed rail line.
Labour support new rail lines in Brisbane (ie: cross river rail), Melbourne and elsewhere, generally through these project being recommended by Infrastructure Australia as projects of national significance.
The Coalition will stop all federal funding for commuter rail. Locally this means Cross River Rail will not go ahead as it is very unlikely the State Government can afford the cost on its own. Without cross river rail much of the rail network will hit capacity in 2016 and not be able to take extra passengers at peak times.

City council releases its bus review and proposed network changes

The Brisbane city council has now released its planned changes to the Brisbane Transport bus network. You may recall that after the outcry over the proposed Translink bus changes the city council took over responsibility for redesigning the bus routes that it ran.

Reading the BCC's proposed changes it seems to me that the city council has thrown the baby out with the bath water. If Translink could be accused of doing too much (i.e. making dumb changes like cancelling the heavily used 444) the city council appears to be doing too little to fix what is quite an inefficient network.

For example: good changes to the bus network proposed by Translink, like a well overdue high frequency buz service to the Centenary suburbs, and some attempt to clean up the spaghetti of low frequency bus routes between Centenary suburbs and the city appear to all have been canned.

Locally, the combination of the low frequency 414 (Indoroopilly to UQ) and 417 (Long Pocket to City) buses into a circular St Lucia local route, (which seemed like a good idea to me) is also canned.

Why does this matter? Well the main benefit of the Translink plan would have been more high frequency bus routes servicing more people, with the cost of these extra buses offset by having a more cost effective bus network. My understanding is that the council's changes aren't allowed to increase the cost of the bus network. So, because they are removing very few duplicated and inefficient routes my guess is that they are unable to add lots of new high frequency routes.

Anyway you can review the city council's proposed changes here, which also contains instructions on how to have your say.

How do we fix public transport in Brisbane?

That's the question posted by the Brisbane Times.

Consider also that Brisbane has some of the most expensive public transport in Australia, and if blogger BrisCommuters' calculations are correct, in the world.

Here are the suggestions from those asked by the paper:

"Mike Veitch, managing partner for Veitch Lister Consulting, Toowong:

1. Introduce CBD parking levies to car park owners. The cost would be passed on to their clients, who in turn would become less likely to drive into the CBD and more likely to catch public transport. In Sydney's CBD each parking space has an annual levy of $2100.
2. Question any public transport fare increase above inflation - now 7.5 per cent. "From a public transport planning perspective, as opposed to a financial perspective, that is just not a good outcome."

Robert Dow, Rail Back on Track spokesman:

1. Make zone one adult Go Card fares $2 during peak times. Then increase them 40 cents for each zone for zones one to 10. From zones 10 to 23 increase it by 80 cents per zone. Fund this change by removing the free travel after nine paid journeys in a week and go back to the old scheme of offering a 50 per cent discount after nine journeys. "Queensland Transport are losing money hand over fist with the free journeys."
2. Lift the off-peak discount from 20 per cent to 40 per cent to discourage people from travelling during peak hour.

Michael Roth, RACQ strategic planning spokesman:

1. Like most experts, Mr Roth voted for the Cross River Rail Network, Brisbane's underground trains. "That will fix not just train reliability, but also some of the bus problems because the increased rail capacity allows them to divert some buses to major train stations working as public transport nodes, so not all the buses have to go through the CBD and create congestion bottlenecks," he said.
2.  Review all the concessions (health cards, unemployed) and off-peak fare discounts offered on trains and buses, given the ticket-price affordability issue. Mr Roth was not in favour of dropping fare prices markedly. "The research shows that making prices cheaper does not increase patronage much, it just leaves problems for governments who need more funding to improve the service and attract people out of cars."

Adrian Schrinner, acting lord mayor of Brisbane:

1. Introduce a daily travel ticket to encourage visitors to easily use public transport. "The new tourist go card is a start, but we'd like to see an affordable daily pass accessible to all," Cr Shrinner said.
2. Introduce Brisbane's second City Glider bus service - from the 'Gabba to Suncorp Stadium, which has already been announced.

Transport Minister Scott Emerson:

1. Investigate options to change the time of the XPT train from Sydney to Brisbane, so an extra passenger train can be added to the Gold Coast peak periods.
2. Stick to the plan of offering a 7.5 per cent annual fare increase, half the previous 15 per cent hike at a cost of $200 million.
3. Complete the review of bus routes and re-allocate the buses as the study reveals. "We are committed to getting people back onto public transport after four straight years of declining patronage by improving affordability, reliability and frequency," he said."

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/how-do-we-fix-public-transport-in-brisbane-20130108-2cey5.html#ixzz2Hf6cGC9U

 Here are some from Briscommuter:

• Stop the fare increases until Brisbane is more in line with it's peer cities
• Decrease the base fare rate (zone 1) to make shorter journeys cheaper
• Introduce a daily zone based fare capping option in line with it's peer cities, that cannot be rorted by long distance commuters
• Introduce a weekly zone based fare capping option (or alternative periodical fare option) that cannot be rorted by longer distance commuters
• The morning peak fare period should be based on journey finishing time (e.g. 7am to 9:15am) instead of journey start time (e.g 2am to 9am)
• Improve peak train frequencies to be as high as reliably possible with frequent timetable reviews (note: Queensland Rail / TransLink's stage 2 train timetable update due in 2011, is now not expected until late 2013 - absolutely disgraceful!)
• Improve off-peak train frequencies to every 15 minutes across the inner-suburban Queensland Rail (QR) network on weekdays and weekends
• Expand the frequent and simplified bus network to all main transport corridors
• Consider some consolidating of fare zones
• Purchase required software modules for the above required functionality

Any other suggestions?

Public transport fare increases in South East Queensland have been a complete failure

Back in 2009/10 Translink introduced it's new "fare structure" and with it the 15% a year increases in public transport fares. The stated reason, by both then Transport minister Rachel Nolan and Translink was to reduce the percentage of each fare that was subsidised by the government.

From the 09/10 Translink annual report section on fares:

(The new fare structure) "introduces a series of staged fare increases to ensure the long-term sustainability of South East Queensland’s public transport system. These fare increases will enable TransLink to continue to rollout services to meet growing demand, whilst gradually reducing state subsidies to a more sustainable level... TransLink aims to reduce the total subsidy requirement from 75 per cent to 70 per cent of the total cost of delivering public transport services, over a five year period."

Now you might have predicted that 15% a year fare rises would impact negatively on public transport patronage, and that the combination of less passenger growth and more services would outweigh any extra money coming from increased fares. And you'd have been right. Since 2009 the percentage subsidy paid by the government has actually increased to 77%. So not only is the government subsidising a larger percentage of each journey, the dollar amount of subsidy per journey has also increased. Although the entire 5 years period has not yet passed, I think it is already safe to call this policy a complete failure.

Looking at the actual patronage numbers (by comparing the 09/10 Translink report with the latest numbers) it also looks like the strong yearly increases in passengers seen between 2003/04 and 2008/09 have ground to a halt despite new and extra services. With customer satisfaction around affordability also taking a dive, it's not unreasonably to think it is the fare increases that have caused patronage numbers to flat-line.

So what about the future?
The Labour govt who introduced the fare increases is now gone, but it doesn't seem that the new LNP govt have fully learnt the lesson either. Although they have pledged to halve the fare increases, they are still planning yearly fare increases of 7.5% over the next few years. The last three years have shown that big fare increases don't work and don't save money for the government. Instead the state government (and transport minister Scott Emerson) should limit fare increases to CPI and focus on increasing passenger numbers.


HT to BrizCommuter for pointing me towards the latest passenger numbers and for their useful public transport blog.

September TTKD Meeting - Sustainable Transport for Kenmore

The TTKD September meeting will feature sustainable transport planner Linda Fullerton talking about sustainable transport for Kenmore.

When: Thursday 15 September from 7.30pm
Where: Kenmore Library (meeting room 3)

Linda is a transport planner who focuses on providing sustainable and integrated outcomes. For most of her career she has been employed by consultants but her recent professional experience includes strategic planning roles at TransLink and Brisbane City Council and guest lectures for UQ and QUT students.

Her presentation will cover:

• What is and isn't sustainable transport
• The impacts on urban living and society by continuing current practices
• The economic, environmental, community, health and social benefits of sustainable transport
• How to change travel behaviour
• What we need to do to encourage sustainable choices by decision makers

Hope to see you all there!

High speed rail in Australia

This week the government released stage 1 of a detailed study into high speed rail (HSR) for the east coast of Australia that would eventually connect Brisbane-Newcastle-Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne.

The major findings of the study, which were widely reported, were:

1) That the entire project would cost between $61 and $108 billion dollars (spread over several decades).
2) Train journeys between Bris-Syd and Syd-Mel would be ~3 hours, while Syd-Canberra and Syd-Newcastle would take an hour or less.
3) Trains would travel ~200 km/h in urban areas and up to 350 km/h elsewhere
4) Fares could be similar to air travel (eg: Bris to Syd from between $75 and $177 for non-business and business class respectively)

This report investigates potential routes and station positions, project costs and likely passenger numbers at various fare prices. It didn't conduct a detailed cost benefit analysis of the entire project (this will be in stage 2 to be released next year).

The idea is to have stations in the city centres of Brisbane, Sydney etc. From here trains will exit the city by tunnel (allows higher speeds, better safety and less resumptions). Near the city edge the trains will emerge, speed up to ~350 km/h and head to their destination with a small number of stops at major populations centers in between. For example Brisbane-Sydney would likely stop near the city outskirts (say Logan) and then at the Gold Coast with a total of 5-7 stops between the cities.

The passenger demand modeling in the study has some interesting findings:
1) Modeling predicts 54 millions passengers a year by 2036.
2) City terminus stations should be in the city center, moving them outside of city center decreases demand significantly.
3) The "rural" and commuter city (ie: Newcastle, Gold Coast) stops are important to patronage numbers with the majority of total journeys not being between the major cities. A lot of patronage will be from Canberra - Syd and Newcastle - Syd etc.
4) HSR would move a lot of people from plane travel to train travel, as well as stimulate extra travel because of the new opportunities available to people.
3) The Brisbane to Sydney route isn't predicted to have huge patronage numbers. Given the long distance and large cost of this route compared to other connections, it suggests to me any Brisbane to Sydney link would be last to be completed.

Overall high speed rail offers the chance to have a more sustainable, but still convenient, transport option for the east coast. It also offers a possible solution to Sydney's current need for a second airport for which there is no politically acceptable place to put one.
The cost of HSR is obviously large but would be spread over 10-20 years and it is likely any HSR would be built in stages. It is unlikely that HSR would ever repay the building cost but would be expected to run at a profit. Over decades we spend similar amounts of money on road transport without any second thoughts or demands that many of our road make a profit.
Moreover, as well as being a good way to get around, HSR would bring economic benefits to those areas connected to it.

The report identifies the cost of buying the land along the preferred route at $6 billion dollars, purchasing this would be a good start for government action, so that even if only some of the sections are economically viable now, the land for the rest will be available in the future.

Purpose of a Carbon Tax

Many commentators seem to think the purpose of a carbon tax is to reduce consumption. This is only part of the story, as many uses of energy have inelastic demand, i.e., the amount you use is independent of price up to the point where you can’t afford it, and go out of business or have to make major changes in your lifestyle. The increasing price of oil and the consequential change in price of petrol is a case in point. Car usage hasn’t changed much. It can’t for those who do not have access to public transport and have no other option for commuting.

While some of the problem can be addressed by infrastructure changes (e.g. spending more on public transport rather than roads), those changes don’t rely heavily on a carbon tax.

The bigger purpose for a tax that is seldom mentioned (but is a key component of economic models) is narrowing the price gap between clean and dirty energy. That has the biggest effect on large-scale investments, such as new power stations, and it is hence critical that we put the scheme in place soon and have a realistic plan for ramping up the price.

In the meantime of course we should still address the other components of the problem including changes in infrastructure, mandatory renewable energy targets and promoting energy efficiency (where but in Brisbane do shopkeepers air condition the streets, I ask with tears in my voice).

Any alternative to a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme needs to fit in with the big picture. It must at very least include a mechanism for promoting clean energy over dirty energy.

Carbon price musings 1: Petrol should be included

Nobody likes petrol price rises but an effective carbon price should include transport fuels.

Carbon pricing creates many options, one is whether transport fuels should be included. In my opinion, they should be. There are multiple reasons for this, but they generally fall under preventing market "distortions".

1) Making emission reductions more expensive

Not including large segments of the economy in the carbon price means that more greenhouse gas emission reductions need to be squeezed out of a smaller section of the economy in order to meet your targets. The overall effect of this will likely be a higher cost for reducing emissions. The reason for this is that any low hanging fruit (ie: cheap ways of reducing emissions) in the transport sector will be essentially off-limits and you might be forced to make more expensive reductions in the sectors which are included.
The point of a market mechanism is to allow the cheapest emissions reductions to be made. To achieve this you want to include the largest amount of the economy possible.

2) Creating perverse incentives

Excluding transport fuels from the carbon price could have the perverse effect of actually promoting fossil fuel use (the exact opposite of what the scheme is trying to achieve). A good example of this is public transport by train. Electrified trains are mostly powered by electricity from coal (although they still produce less C02 per person than driving a car). Under a carbon price electricity rates will rise and so will train fares. If fuel is not included and does not increase in price, the net result will be to encourage driving and so more C02 emissions. In cities like Brisbane with over crowded roads the last thing we need is more congestion and more pollution.


No one like rises in petrol prices, but the rise being promoted by the coalition of ~6 cents a litre (although no one can be sure if this is at all accurate) is not extreme. In fact petrol prices in most capital cities have increased by significantly more than this in the last few months and the world hasn't ended.

So the government should include fuel in the carbon price and not cut other fuel taxes to prevent any actual rise in the price. Compensation either through rebate checks, cuts to income taxes (better to cut a tax for productive activity ie: work, than a tax for consumption ie: fuel excise) or benefit schemes would be better. This way compensated households can spend the rebate as they see fit and there will be an incentive for people to find ways to cut their fuel consumption.

A final note: Tony Windsor (one of the rural independants) has expressed concern that unlike city dwellers, people in rural areas don't generally have the option of public transport (although that doesn't mean there is no way for them to decrease their fuel use of course). I don't think I agree with him that rural regions should be excluded from a carbon price on transport because of this, but it might be worth looking at higher compensation for people in rural areas etc.

Paying for the floods: Rail devolution? and a billion dollar cut to solar power

Now that the flood clean up is well under way, governments are looking for ways to pay for all the infrastructure repairs that are needed, while I'm not planning on commenting on the federal government's flood levy I do want to look at some of the cuts.

In SEQ the biggest causality of the floods (so far) has been Cross River Rail, the $8.2B project to put a second rail link from Brisbane city across the river and so massively increase capacity on the "Gold Coast, Beenleigh, Cleveland, Ferny Grove, Airport and Doomben" lines. This project had been seen as essential because the one current north-south rail bridge into the city, the Merivale bridge, is expected to reach capacity by 2016 after which there will be no room for extra peak time services. By delaying the four year long project for several years there is now no way it will be finished by 2016, assuming it is built at all (given that "several" years is a long time in politics). The implications for expanding the SEQ rail network are not good.

The cross river rail was to be the centerpiece of the State Governments long term SEQ transport plan, which ironically, had its main focus on a "rail revolution" and on increasing the sustainability of the transport network.


At the federal level things aren't any better with many the axe falling on many climate change and clean energy programs. While I'm not particularly sad to see the scrapping of "Cash for Clunkers" (an extraordinarily expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) what you probably didn't know was that this program was "funded" by raiding ~400 million from solar power programs in the first place. Now solar power has been cut again by the tune of another ~500 million. The net result is an almost billion dollar cut to solar power programs. Also cut was 230 million dollars from the Green car fund.

The government appears to be hoping the introduction of a carbon price will mean these clean energy cuts won't matter. This seems naive. Although a carbon price is widely regarded as the cheapest and most effective means to cut carbon we shouldn't consider it a magic bullet. In the short to medium term, even with a carbon price, the first installations of large scale solar will likely require some government assistance in the deployment stage. The Solar Flagships program is designed to do this and is now ~250 million dollars poorer.


Headslapping really begins when we consider the wider implications. Climate change likely played a role in exacerbating and/or increasing the likelihood of these floods. The government response to which has been to cut to climate change mitigation and sustainability programs to pay for the damage. I find myself in agreement with this commenter who said this is "like putting off a hospital visit for a serious wound to pay for some more bandaids".

Obviously hard decisions need to be made to find the money required for the flood recovery, actions, though, say a lot about priorities.

Not happy? You can contact the PM here.

PS: These are my personal opinions.

QLD govt draft transport strategy - Connecting SEQ 2031 - Have your say

The Queensland Government recently released Connecting SEQ 2031, a draft plan of rail, bus and road development over the next 20 years for SEQ.

The plan is available to download from the website and the website also contain summary's from within the plan. Overall the plan has targets to increase the percentage of journeys made by public and active transport (although note that due to population growth the absolute number of trips made by car will still increase).

There are also some very brief summaries of their rail, bus and active transport plans as well as a breakdown by region (if you want more detail look at the report, it's pretty easy going). Perhaps of most interest to people out west is the plan (although as yet not formulated in detail) to provide bus priority (although not a busway) between Kenmore and the city.

If you want to have your say, you can here, although Transition Kenmore will look at providing some comment as well. Public submissions close on the 26th of November.


Fun fact off the website:
"Some parts of the SEQ busway network carry about 12 400 passengers per hour (in one direction). For comparison, a typical motorway lane carries about 2000 people per hour."

If you want change - Follow up with your political representatives

There were a number of good speeches after the Walk against Warming. For its relevance to how we can create change locally the speech from Cr Helen Abrahams was quite interesting.
Similar to her message at the 350.org day of action, Cr Abrahams emphasised that if we want to create change not just at a personally level, but at a local level, turning out for events such as walk against warming is necessary but not sufficient.
We need to follow it up with our political representatives.

The BCC has a policy of making Brisbane carbon neutral by 2026, for now, I'll let you decide how well that one is going.
The BCC also has a policy of being carbon neutral council by 2026, which does seem to be making progress.

But as Cr Abrahams pointed out, if we want change at the rate we know is necessary, we need to tell our political representatives. Some semi-quotes follow.
"the council uses 50% Greenpower and plans to move to 100% Greenpower in 2010, tell your councilor you support this"
"everytime the council builds a bikeway, fill-up that bikeway and then demand more and bigger bikeways".
"everytime the council adds a new bus, fill that bus and then demand another bus"

So if you want change - Use the "green" initiatives provided by the council and follow up with your political representatives!

On its current trajectory it seems unlikely Brisbane will be carbon neutral by 2026, but this is council policy, if you don't want this otherwise laudable aim to be simply window dressing ...... well, you know what to do.

Opposition to the Sherwood Road Bus Depot – Is NIMBYism at work?

The BCC’s plans to build a new bus depot on industrial land in the suburb of Sherwood has stirred up a lot of controversy. The ensuing debate has also revealed how many people feel about public transport and development in general. These issues are likely to impact on all areas of Brisbane, including the Pullenvale ward, as the Council and State Government look to expand public transport infrastructure and promote higher density living in general.

The planned depot at 469 Sherwood Road would accommodate up to 200 buses. Clearly, in order to provide the extra buses Brisbane needs there has to be somewhere to put them. Spreading depots over the city allows bus drivers the opportunity to live near their place of work, means buses can be kept nearer to the start of their routes and (hopefully) will improve their reliability. At capacity, buses will come and go from the depot about 700 times a day. Current traffic on local arterial roads is over 30 000 vehicles a day.

At first glance the proposed site would appear to be a good one, it is near urban areas but is actually industrial land and is next to a major road that could presumably handle the extra traffic.

So why are so many local residents opposed? Is the site simply inappropriate or is it a case of Not In My Backyard? As usual the opposition runs from reasoned, to irrational scaremongering.

Objections and (some) counter arguments include (click to expand)

Depot will pollute the Oxley creek – Will it? And would a factory be less polluting?

Buses will cause traffic congestion – If some buses are used on local runs they can decrease congestion. In any case ~700 buses (mostly travelling to/from depot outside peak traffic hours) will have little effect compared to ~30 000 cars.

Better sites available – Could be true (the BCC claims to have picked the best one).

Nearby school, traffic dangerous to children – School at busy intersection. Bus routes already go past, extra buses would increase traffic by less than 0.5%. A cynic might suggest this would probably pale in comparison to the traffic created by parents driving their kids to and from the school.

Pollution/diesel fumes from buses – New buses run on natural gas, which is cleaner burning that petrol/diesel with much lower particulate emissions. Even if some depot buses were diesel buses when you have ~30 000 other vehicles a day would it make much difference?

Safety of storing fuel near homes – Any more dangerous than a service station?

Will Sherwood/Corinda residents get extra bus services? – Currently unclear.

Bus/depot noise.

So, is this a case of NIMBY or have the council got it wrong? How would we feel about a similar depot in our area?

Nb: Residential concerns mostly sourced from here.
Information sourced from BCC website and Walter Taylor South Action Group.

SEQ Draft Climate Change Managment Plan

The Queensland Government recently released the: Draft South East Queensland Climate Change Management Plan, part of the greater SEQ Regional Plan to 2031. It contains a number of proposed “actions” to implement the climate change policies of the SEQ Regional Plan.

This plan is open for public comment until 5pm Friday the 11th of September.
Importantly the “government wants to know how you think the draft actions should be prioritised—and whether there are any additional actions that should be considered”.
This can be done online here.
This article provides some background to the plan, summarises the plan itself and provides some comments on the proposals. Click on the blue "links" below to show/hide the extra detail. TTKD will submit a response to the plan, so if you have thoughts to add please leave a comment.

Background on Plan; Click to show/hide detail

There are three essential points we need to keep in mind when evaluating the draft actions and policies.

1. Queensland emission reduction policy “The Queensland Government’s, Toward Q2: Tomorrow’s Queensland target is to cut Queenslander's carbon footprint by one third by 2020”

2. The Population growth predicted in the Regional Plan: “SEQ is Australia's fastest growing region with a projected growth from 2.8 million to 4.4 million people by 2031. This will require around 754 000 new dwellings, and supporting infrastructure and services by 2031”. Whether or not this level of population growth is a good idea is an important point in itself, but, needless to say, this much growth will require new communities and large increases in the population density in existing ones.

3. SEQ’s emissions profile. The breakdowns are included below. To summarise, electricity generation and transport fuels (petrol + diesel) are by far the biggest by source and industry + transportation are the biggest by sector. Therefore in order to achieve point 1 above, the actions must be capable of decreasing these emissions as a top priority.

Plan Vision

The vision for the future is:
“The region grows and changes in a sustainable manner—generating prosperity, maintaining and enhancing quality of life, minimising the use of resources, providing high levels of environmental protection, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and becoming resilient to natural hazards including the projected effects of climate change and oil supply vulnerability".
Source: South East Queensland Regional Plan 2009–2031

Actually the vision is much longer than that but essentially they are saying they want to promote sustainable development.

Policy Areas

As to the plan, it lists 32 draft action all related to the policy areas below

Aim 1: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Transport and settlement pattern
Energy efficiency
Renewable energy
Storing carbon
Waste emissions
Community awareness and behaviour

Aim 2: Natural hazards and climate change adaptation

Coastal hazards
Riverine flooding, bushfires, high temperatures and other hazards
Biodiversity conservation
Climate change adaptation research
Building resilience through increasing awareness and behaviour change

Key proposals and Actions
-Integration of transport and development, including “Transit orientated developments”. (Broadly aims to create communities where homes, workplaces and amenities are clustered together with integrated public transport so that public and active transport are favoured.)
-Promoting adaption of best practice energy efficiency in developments and promotion of solar hot water.
-Fast tracking “green” development and so making them more attractive to developers
-Increasing low emission and renewable energy
-Tree planting to store carbon
-Reducing waste to landfills in addition to reducing methane release from landfills
-Mapping coastal hazards (Appears to be using predictions of future sea level rise/ storm surges to regulate future development)
-Local planning to provide advice on designing climate change resilient communities and ensuring future development creates resilient communities.
-Increasing communities' awareness of behaviours leading to mitigation and adaptation, so that communities not only take action to reduce greenhouse gases but are also more resilient to changes caused by climate change.

Comments on the Draft South East Queensland Climate Change Management Plan

Comments Summary

Overall most of aims and plans sound good and cover a lot of the important areas. However the plan is lacking in vision for large-scale renewable power generation. The question is whether action will match the rhetoric and whether this overall vision is embraced and central to the thinking of everyone in government as well as central to thinking of the public at large and developers.
If we ignore what effect the expected huge population increase in SEQ will have on our local environment and focus solely on the climate change actions, a major concern is whether the largest efforts to reduce emissions are targeted at the largest sources of emissions? Currently I’d say the answer is no, the plan contains far too little in the way of plans for large scale renewable electricity generation and many of the development proposals appear targeted too much towards the residential sector, the emissions from which are dwarfed by those generated by industry.

Detailed look at some of the programs and draft actions on reducing greenhouse gas emissions

1 Transport and settlement pattern

Program A. Achieve higher integration of transport and land use planning in SEQ to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Connecting SEQ 2031: An IRTP for SEQ will plan the future public transport networks for SEQ and a range of measures to encourage people to travel by active and public transport.

"Some examples that could be considered in SEQ include:
- Identifying priority transit corridors suited to high frequency all day / all week public transport suited to increased urban densities
- linking car parking rates to pricing and timing
- prioritising investment in public and active transport over investment in private vehicle transport
- offering incentives to increase the use of public transport, e.g. reduced fees and off-peak travel incentives
- offering incentives to increase the use of existing services
- increasing frequency of services
- providing park-and-ride facilities
- providing shuttle feeders to main transit hubs
- allowing individuals to salary sacrifice public transport fares."

Comment
The one I have bolded is likely to be most important and would cause the greatest shift in mindset about transport. I would also add:
Park-and-ride facilities should provide covered and secure bicycle parking.
Require widespread availability of ticketing machines to speed up services.
Due to increased congestion issues certain to be created by higher population and population density in the future. Major transport infrastructure projects should favour rail/busways. But if a new highway is to be built, provision of active transport lanes and/or bus lanes/ways in all new highway projects should be mandatory.


Program B. Increase adoption of leading practice design of transit oriented communities (TOD) and concentrate planning efforts and infrastructure investment in priority locations


Comment
Plan essentially is to create guidelines for TOD precincts, identify locations and implement guidelines.
Idea sounds good. The test will be ensuring the “guidelines” are standard practice.
This will have immediate effect on new communities but how much effect will TOD guidelines have on transitioning established suburbs and communities which is where the majority of people will still live in 2031?

2 Energy efficiency

Program C. Increase adoption of leading practice energy-efficient design for multi-unit housing

Comment
Guidelines will inform best practise and benchmarking tools will allow comparisons between dwellings etc but would they be more effective if required under the building code.
From the report: “These energy efficiency guidelines will need to complement and not duplicate the Building Codes and code requirements.”

Comment:
Strict miminum standards, especially in areas where improvements are low cost, would likely provide faster progress.What about commercial and industrial buildings, they both use as much if not more power than residential dwellings?

Program D. Increase adoption of leading practice energy-efficient planning and design for urban developments

Comment:
The programs appear mostly focused on residential, a greater focus on the commercial and industrial sectors is required.


Program E. Increase the proportion of energy derived from low-emission sources
(solar hot water scheme)

Comment:
A good idea but why not have the building code make renewable/climate neutral hot water mandatory for all new homes? Assuming the solar profile is good (though solar profile should be central to dwelling design) or access to carbon neutral energy source available.
What about hot water in non-residential buildings?
What about other schemes in program E, solar hot water will only go so far.

Program F. Improve uptake of exemplary sustainable and Climate Smart urban developments

Comment:
Fast tracking green development sounds like a good idea. But how can the ideas from program C, D and E be used to promote program F for non-residential developments.

3 Renewable energy

Program G. Increase the proportion of energy derived from low emission and renewable
sources in SEQ

Comment
Ideas are good but are piecemeal and more is needed. Since 42% of emissions come from electricity generation this area needs a lot of action and fast. Large scale renewable or at least carbon neutral power stations need to be prioritized and built quickly. SEQ will simply not meet the The Queensland Government’s, Toward Q2: Tomorrow’s Queensland target of a cut in Queenslander's carbon footprint by one third by 2020 if power continues to be mostly sourced from “dirty” coal.

Program G requires a whole of systems approach, the mapping of potential renewable sources is good, but concurrently we need to determine how much electricity we will need in the future? How many renewable plants that will require and what the most cost effective way of building them is? Then aggressively pursue these aims.

The Queensland Government in general and SEQ should also legislate targets and timeframes for the phase out of non-renewable electricity generation. At a minimum, actions should include no new power stations that do not produce carbon neutral electricity and mandatory replacement of these when they reach they end of there life span with renewable plants. The early retirement of C02 emitting power stations that do not incorporate best practice for emission reductions should also be an aim. Furthermore allowing new coal plants as long as they can be retrofitted with CCS, which is yet unproven at a commercial scale is shortsighted. Even ignoring issues CCS technology and long-term feasibility, no coal plants should be built unless they are currently carbon neutral.

The feasibility of local communities in rural areas with available land to build and run renewable energy plants as a method of rural economic development and for increasing renewable electricity generation should be investigated. This would apply to SEQ but also to remote parts of the state outside of SEQ.

4 Carbon storage

Program H. Increase stored carbon through the retention or planting of trees

Comment
Re-vegetation provides benefits beyond carbon storage and is likely to be manpower intensive. The feasibility of expanding Landcare to provide the manpower required should be investigated.

6 Community awareness and behaviour

Program J. Increase community awareness and influence behaviour regarding regionally
specific actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Comment
Good idea. Could be enhanced by supporting relevant experts in fields related to climate change to speak to a wide range of community groups and spend time in communities to discuss the causes, impacts, mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change and so increase the level of knowledge in the general community.

Source for all images and quotes: South East Queensland Climate Change Management Plan, published by the Department of Infrastructure and Planning.

The best way to support active transport is.... to actually support it

Despite improvements, and a lot of rhetoric, recent decisions by the State Government shows it still has some way to go before sustainability and promoting pubic and active transport become central to its decision making.

Locally, the newly announced Kenmore Park n Ride is a good example. While we thoroughly support new facilities such of the Park n Ride, (which should help to ease congestion along Moggill Road and give local residents a chance to decrease their carbon footprints). It is disappointing that the plans for the Park n Ride do not include any bicycle facilities, even though the addition of such facilities is now becoming common place at other major public transport facilities such as QR train stations and Busway stations.

Adding secure and covered bicycle parking facilities to this (and any future) Park n Rides would greatly enhance the facility at a minimal cost. Benefits of adding bike parking would include increasing the number of people able to park their “vehicles” in the same amount of space (likely to be important given that demand for Park n Ride parks often exceeds supply). Providing an option for people travelling by bus to get to the bus stop in a healthy and carbon neutral manner and the promotion of cycling more generally.

The newly released Draft SEQ Regional Plan, Section 12.3 states that plan “strongly supports public transport and active transport modes such as walking and cycling”. Adding bike parking to public transport hubs would allow the government to do both at the same time and at least start to address the serious lack of cycling infrastructure on this side of town (ignoring for the moment the similar lack of public transport infrastructure). After all, the best way to promote cycling as a credible way to get from A to B is to actually make it convenient enough for this to be true.


Ps: TTKD has been in touch with our local state representative about this issue, but if you feel the same way, feel free to get in touch with the member for Moggill Dr Bruce Flegg.