WIN News - Pretty Canberra - 20090710

At a recent conference held in Canberra there was a strong call Australia and Canberra's planners and developers to get urban sustainability right by focusing on moving people not cars by applying the concept of Transport Oriented Development.

The clip shows clearly how 240 people travelling in 175 cars could be replaced by three buses or just ONE light rail vehicle.

It is important to remember one of the main advantages that Light Rail have over buses is the ability to scale to meet capacity needs in a cost effective manner.

Even with this simple example we see that 3 buses (each with their own driver and need for expensive ongoing whole of life maintenance on each bus) are required to move these 240 people. To move any more people with a bus solution will require yet another bus!

However with light rail the technology is truly scalable: several additional carriages can be added to the primary carriage. No additional driver is needed, the additional carriages will have a significantly cheaper whole of life maintenance cost (as they do not all have to be fully powered like the engines in each bus) and the most incredible thing is that each additional carriage that is added is the equivalent of another 3 buses!

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• TOD
• Light Rail
• Public Transport
• Urban Sustainability
• PB
• Portland
• saving
• transportation
• reducing costs
• investment
• opportunity