Ideas@TheCentre

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NSW Transport misses the bus by sinking the ferry

Jessica Brown | 07 May 2010
Long suffering Sydney commuters could be forgiven for thinking that the NSW government and its conglomerate of over-manned, state-owned transport bureaucracies would take any help they can get to address sardine-like peak hour road and public transport conditions. But, based on a story this week in the Sydney Morning Herald, they can think again.

Water-taxi fleet owner Shane Kearns was set to launch the “Rozelle Rocket,” a daily service to carry inner-West workers to their offices near Circular Quay. He planned to unload passengers at a little used wharf on the Western side of the Quay.

But NSW Transport told Kearns that as his service would keep to a regular timetable—rather than operate as an ad-hoc taxi service— it would be classified as a ferry and incur docking charges of up to $30,000 a year, a fee which would render the ‘Rocket’ commercially unviable.

While Sydney’s transport system is inefficient, at least its spin doctors aren’t. It took just a day for NSW Transport to backtrack and discount the charges by 80%. It even hinted that small commercial ferry services plying the harbour may soon be deregulated.

So can the back flip be chalked up as a win for consumer and the power of the market? Instead of the twice-a-day drudge on overcrowded buses, will harbour-side commuters soon be gliding across the sparkling waterways to the Emerald City?

If it seems too good to be true, it usually is. The catch is that deregulation will only happen “in circumstances where it does not affect existing (government run) services.”

In other words, while the bus lines grow longer, bureaucracy and waste— not competition and choice—will continue to rule the waves in Sydney transport.

Jessica Brown is a policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies.