All Australian cities struggle to balance their transport systems with urban development that achieves more economic benefit. In Perth, the State Government has announced that MetroNet will use a new approach to developing Karnup Station in the City of Rockingham section of the Southern Railway.
It is based on how to better use government land adjacent to the proposed station. The goal is to create greater involvement of the private sector from the beginning, not at the end after stations are completed. It is called “the Karnup Station Precinct Problem and Opportunity Statement” under the Market-Led Proposals framework (aka unsolicited bids in other states). This could be a major shift and an important step forward in creating a more transit-oriented urbanism in Perth.
According to the Minister Rita Saffioti, the statement and request for tenders “has been released, seeking feedback from the private market interested in constructing a new passenger train station, and transit-oriented community and precinct in one of the State’s highest growing suburbs”.
The Problem-Opportunity approach has been a necessary response to how to better enable closer integration of land development and public transport, something that has only rarely been achieved in the rapid delivery of new rail lines across Perth. In this article, I explain why this is necessary and how it can be used in ways that the Minister suggests when she says Karnup will be “the first of many Problem and Opportunity Statements that aim to leverage Government land holdings and deliver public infrastructure at minimal cost to the ratepayer”.
Why is it necessary to integrate land development into rail?
The history of rail and tram development shows that the integration of transit-oriented urbanism was entirely based on the involvement of the private sector (Davies-Slate et al, 2021). These modes were funded by private finance as real estate projects.
The much-loved station precincts and tram-based streets in Perth like Beaufort Street, South Terrace, Oxford Street and Rokeby Road were all based on developments that embraced private sector entrepreneurs and partnered with government to ensure common good outcomes. The same can be seen in every Australian city and these tram streets are now the most popular areas to live and work.
In the post-war economy the public sector took over rail and tram systems when they began to fail as profitable ventures under the pressure from car and bus lobbies. From the 1950’s they became more and more welfare-oriented in their markets and in their planning and delivery.
At the same time, funding of transport around the world in the post war era became more and more of a top-down process, even Stalinist in its features, as the modernist city was deemed to need massive freeways now the era of rail and trams was over.
The history of rail closures and tram removals was fully underway and indeed hit its high point in Perth with the closure of the Fremantle rail line in 1979 as the start of removing all rail lines; the state’s intervention was because “Perth was a car and bus city that would never need rail”. However, the reaction from the public was huge and a rebuilding of rail began in Perth and has continued ever since.
The “second rail revolution” began largely in the 1990s after the digital economy-based services jobs all found that they worked best in the walking-based and transit-based fabrics of the old cities.
These places are where people meet and plan projects together and where the new economy was emerging in both interactive and easily accessible work and living areas. Cities therefore began to rejuvenate and extend old railways and to rediscover the value of trams and light rail.
The model for funding, however, remained as a top-down government process with little involvement of the private sector though benefit-cost ratios that included the potential land value outcomes were always impressive due to agglomeration benefits.
In two recent studies the economic value in these newly rejuvenated urban walkability-based places has been explained. Smart Growth America (2023) examined the 35 largest cities in the US and discovered that only 1.5% of the spatial area of these cities was possible to describe as “walkable” and yet these places gave rise to 20 per cent of America’s GDP.
Another study of 27 global studies as part of a PhD at Curtin has shown that the most critical factors creating great cities were whether they had a good rail system and whether they had place-activated centres around those rail lines; this study used some 20 economic, social and environmental parameters .
Walkability is about enabling rapid communication and face-to-face connections that are critical to all creative economic activity. Jan Gehl showed us implicitly how activating old walkable centres helped to create economic activity but now we have powerful quantitative proof.
Walkable city centres and sub-centres across the city are necessary for productivity, and they depend on quality rail and place activation being integrated; the old rail and tram corridors had the right integration of urban fabrics to enable these processes. But can we manage such integration with the transport and planning models that we use from the era of Stalinist-oriented transport planning?
Perth has done the rail part of this equation though mostly it has not achieved the urban fabric so necessary for this economic benefit. The model has been very top down with major rail projects being built in the same way as major road projects.
The Karnup Problem and Opportunity Statement appears to help with that, recognising that private sector expertise and finance are necessary for transit-oriented urbanism. As the Minister said, there are “many other” opportunities along the rail system that need this kind of transit-urbanism.
To see transit-oriented urbanism happen across the city, there will need to be significant public and private creativity and innovation as each new project in stations being built by MetroNet, will be different and will need to work closely with local communities.
This is fundamentally a job that cannot be done without the private sector who in the end are the people who build cities. The move to establish a private role in integrated transit and land development in Perth, is the right step; now we must find out how to ensure it keeps working in many other parts of the transport system.
The most significant other part of Perth needing such attention (and indeed all Australian cities) is providing the missing link after the demise of trams. This is now being called “mid-tier transit” as its clearly not a train or a bus but needs to provide mid-range capacity and speeds that provide the integrated options in a public transport network.
At the same time, we know that such services raise land values considerably and hence will enable greater urban regeneration of walkable spaces with high economic value. Mid-tier options being considered around the world are bus rapid transit, light rail and the new trackless trams.
Mid-tier transit is the exercise that is being reviewed by MetroNet and the Public Transport Authority in Perth as that is considered to be the role in providing ‘the next major opportunity in public transport’ as the Minister said while announcing this review. MetroNet and the PTA are looking at how the city can create better networks using mid-tier transit that go along main roads and enable connections to MetroNet stations across the major Perth corridors.
The review recognises that mid-tier transit provides not just a better public transport service (higher speeds and capacities) with greater integration to trains but becomes the basis for much greater urban regeneration that can produce transit-oriented communities. This Mid-Tier Transit Review needs to now consider the problem-opportunity model.
Fusing land development with mid-tier transit
For the past decade or so the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre has been examining, across all Australian cities, how to rejuvenate urban development along main roads using mid-tier transit. It began by looking at Light Rail and for example proposed the Knowledge Arc Light Rail.
However, local governments were wary about the disruption of light rail and were a major part in why the MAX Light Rail in Perth was not pursued after its detailed studies and business plan were completed. Then the research group discovered the Chinese Trackless Tram which promised all that Light Rail provided but without the disruption and at significantly reduced cost as it did not need an electric overhead catenary or steel tracks. There was an immediate positive response.
Local governments embraced the concept in Queensland (Townsville, City of Sunshine Coast), NSW (City of Inner West and City of Liverpool – see Figure 1), Victoria (City of Wyndham) and in WA (15 local governments in Perth led by City of Stirling, and City of Bunbury). They began looking at where preferred routes could enable urban regeneration and provide the connection that enabled walkability.
SNAMUTS modelling was used in most of these projects (eg Figure 1) and the results showed powerfully why such mid-tier service improvements can enable not just better public transport networks but also better opportunities for land development due to land value improvements that could be captured.
Hendrigan’s research on polycentric cities showed that such opportunities would enable the next 30 years of urban development to happen without urban fringe developments. At the same time as enabling such important transport and planning objectives, the mid-tier urban regeneration approach can help create net zero cities and thus provide even more opportunities for a cross government set of objectives being fulfilled.
Creating net zero cities is now a major global and national agenda being addressed by most state climate strategies. Further research on the net zero concept and how it can be delivered in precincts and corridors is now part of a large national project through CRC RACE and SBEnrc using main roads as the focus for mid-tier transit rejuvenation of station precincts – see Figure 3.
Mid-tier transit is now being encouraged by local governments, most major professional bodies in urban development, and indeed much of civil society, but the most difficult part of achieving mid-tier goals is simply: how do we make sure land development is integrated into mid-tier transit corridors and their station precincts?
In Melbourne the Suburban Rail Loop is integrating land in a 1km radius around all the proposed stations. The Problem-Opportunity model in Perth suggests that this may now be possible to apply to mid-tier transit as well as to MetroNet rail stations.
The core of the approach is that the private sector is brought in before stations are built in order to help provide the capital and the expertise on how to make a walkable, attractive, productive place that can be easily activated and become the focus for a surrounding precinct and wider urban area. This can also be done on any mid-tier corridor where there are frequently government land sites and indeed the main road is already government land and often has significant setbacks.
The agenda then is to help local governments, and private sector landowners, to begin to consider how such land development opportunities could drive the value of a mid-tier transit option into being much more the driver of the whole urban development system.
Indeed, such a problem-opportunity model is more likely to be successful along mid-tier transit corridors than in Karnup where the land value is much lower due to its location in the outer southern suburbs. Figure 4 shows the extent of Perth’s sprawl and how local governments now see the reconnection and regeneration possibilities around mid-tier transit.
Building out the mid-tier
The redevelopment of Australian cities based around rail and tram urban fabrics continues to grow. The next phase is likely to be focussed on mid-tier transit opportunities to recreate the urban fabric of tram corridors. The key issue in this is how to integrate land development through private sector expertise and finance into each stage of the corridor redevelopments.
In Perth there is a new development that can assist this called the Problem-Opportunity approach. This paper suggests that there needs to be an integration of planning agencies (Department of Planning Lands and Heritage and DevelopmentWA) with MetroNet and the Public Transport Authority around how to ensure such a model is part of the Mid-Tier Transit Review.
It is important that the review does not just consider technologies of vehicles, but that it pursues the concept of the Problem-Opportunity Approach and applies it to the next opportunities in public transport.
The desired end product across all Australian cities is more walkable urban fabric with its power to create economic, social and environmental advantage. This needs more obvious involvement of private sector innovation and finance from the start, as in the historic processes that created our transit-oriented urbanism so critical to urban economic advantage today.
The opportunity to save money, save land on the urban fringes, save greenhouse gases, and save travel time, can all be integrated but needs a clear new model for governance, procurement and delivery.
Trackless trams, are they also called a bus?
They are better looking, higher capacity, more reliable, smoothing riding buses, yes. But buses are just worse looking, lower capacity, less efficient, bumpy riding trams.
How about start building mini scale walkable cities on the edges of big cities to show the way and take pressure off other areas of cities? Any cities in Aust bold enough to do this?
I grew up in the 60’s we had one income families, one car and a government work car, we had the local deli, hairdresser, butcher and supermarket, even local swimming pool and schools all walkable. Mothers with no car walked with the trusty shopping trolley in tow or send their children to get the items required. Pharmacy and doctor wasn’t walkable to us though. Visits to city was done by bus. The bigger shopping centres killed the local community walkable facilities, even though it was now a car trip to the mega shops it was not far to drive and City trips wained. So many factors effect our commuting ways, one size doesn’t fit all. Trackless rail sounds great for the suburbs and planning will be essential for them. Another problem is Government makes too much tax on fuel so wouldn’t they promote more use of driving, catch 22 scenario, just like cigarette sales, which should be phased out and eventually banned as a lethal substance, they usually ban anything lethal, so we can see the Government does not work in the people’s interest when taxes can be collected? Get the government out of the cookie jar and things might change quicker.