Planning for affordable transit infrastructure and service expansion: Two European case studies

Public transport use in Melbourne and Sydney was stagnant or in decline for many decades. Recently, more positive trends have emerged. These new demands challenge current service planning paradigms. Public transport in both cities faces an alleged ‘capacity crisis’, with planning agencies arguing that huge infrastructure investments are essential for further patronage growth. This paper provides case studies of two well-established planning processes from German-speaking Europe that offer the potential in the Australian urban context for the development of more affordable plans for infrastructure expansion and improved efficiency in the use of existing operating budgets. The first case study is the planning framework used by the Swiss Federal Railways since 1990 in the Rail 2000 and Rail 2030 programs. Known by its practitioners as a ‘planning triangle’, this framework uses an iterative process to identify the cheapest infrastructure investment required to deliver a desired level of service. The second case study explores the process used to maximise returns from expenditure on high-quality bus services in the City of Munich over 10 years from 2002. Called TopBus, this project of the Munich municipal public transport operator (MVG) has seen a progressive increase in investment in service-kilometres. Increases in revenue have exceeded the costs of this investment. This has been achieved through the iterative development of a network of high-quality bus services providing effective links between key interchanges. Together the case studies allow us to begin to articulate a new paradigm to frame understandings of requirements for public transport planning in Australian cities. This work is part of an on-going ARC Discovery Project that is seeking new ways to meet the challenge of continuing growth in demand for public transport in Melbourne and Sydney