Common Urban Myths About Transport

Myth: Freeways are for freight, not commuters

Fact: Freight movement has become a convenient excuse to build freeways. However, there is no road in Melbourne where trucks outnumber private cars, and the extra commuter traffic generated by new roads is an impediment to efficient freight movement. The only empirical study of freight movement in Melbourne found that, outside peak hours, there is relatively little interference to freight traffic, and most freight travels outside peak hours anyway.

A popular road lobby argument used to disarm freeway critics is that even if we encourage public transport for passengers, we will still need to build freeways for freight transport. This is just another fallacy, which was developed after commuter freeways first became unfashionable in the 1970s.

The 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan treated freight as an afterthought, but in the 1980s the road lobby found it could persuade the supposedly anti-freeway Cain Government to build freeways by claiming they would carry freight and so support Labor's economic strategy. The argument was resuscitated in a big way in the 1990s to fit the Kennett Government's pro-business agenda, which has continued under the Bracks Government. Thus Linking Melbourne (the Kennett freeway planning document) devoted 25 of its 71 pages to freight, in contrast to the 1969 report, which gave freight just 18 pages out of 383!

This fallacy has reached its apotheosis in the Bracks Government's Melbourne 2030 strategy. Here, you won't even find the freeway plans in the section headed 'Transport'. That section, like the 1969 plan, is full of platitudes about the importance of public transport, but the real plans are elsewhere. Sure enough, turn to the section on 'The Economy' where it talks about freight, and here are all the freeways from Kennett's Linking Melbourne strategy in their concrete glory!

As Professor Peter Newman of Murdoch University in Perth puts it, Melbourne was marketed throughout the 1990s as 'Australia's freight hub' while Sydney was marketed as 'Australia's international city'. It's no wonder tourists and investors bypassed Melbourne in favour of Sydney as a result! Now that Sydney is building freeways even faster than Melbourne - and using freight as a justification - investors are viewing Melbourne in a more favourable light.

The only independent assessment of the freeways-for-freight argument in Melbourne was the Eastern Freeway Review by Professor Bill Russell. VicRoads argued that the freeway was needed as a freight route, but Professor Russell (in contrast with previous 'studies') examined the evidence. He found that, outside peak period, there is relatively little interference to freight across Melbourne, and that freight formed a minority of traffic on the freeway. He concluded, I am forced to discount this argument as a prime justification for investment in the freeway extension.

Other offical sources confirm Russell's findings - even if they then proceed to ignore the evidence.

Much of the truck traffic generated by the Port of Geelong travels outside the conventional peak hours. Queuing of trucks is sometimes evident around the Port of Geelong. This is not due to a lack of arterial road traffic capacity, but due to activities off the road, within the wharf area or on particular industrial sites during peak activities....
[T]he Geelong end of the route.... is a significant impediment for both tourist and freight traffic which moves between south western Victoria, the south-east of South Australia and Melbourne. This completion of the Geelong Bypass will assist in resolving this issue.
---AusLink Melbourne-Geelong Corridor Strategy, February 2007, pp. 11 and 17

Even the freight managers of Melbourne's businesses seem to agree. When surveyed as part of the Environment Effects Statement for the Scoresby Freeway in 1997, only one business in the Scoresby corridor nominated the freeway as a priority for freight transport. Three nominated rail freight, while most focussed on the quality of the existing road network (including CityLink, which was then being completed).

Freight transport solutions suggested by local business (Scoresby Freeway Environment Effects Statement, 1997)
Total surveyed	72
Scoresby Freeway	1
Better rail freight	3
Local road improvements	14
City Link / SE Freeway	10
Other	6
No suggestions	38

(Source: Scoresby Freeway EES, Supplement G, p.37)

The only outcome to be expected from building more roads for freight is to encourage all the freight that still moves by rail to go by road instead, leading to more big trucks in residential areas. A case in point is the Ford factories in Campbellfield and Geelong, which are connected by rail. Materials used to travel between the two sites on freight trains, but after work was done in the 1990s to widen the Geelong Road (while the railway was left to decline), Ford switched to using B-triple road trains instead. More recently, in January 2007 a rail freight shuttle service operated by CRT Group between Altona North and the Port of Melbourne was forced to close, due to inability to compete with state-subsidised road freight. As a result of this latter closure, residents of the western suburbs could expect 3500 more truck trips a day through their streets.

Freight is also subject to the 'induced traffic' effect: new roads can increase freight traffic even when there's no more actual freight to be moved than before. For example, many large retailers have their main distribution depots in the western suburbs, where land is cheap. But many of their customers are in the eastern suburbs, so they also maintain secondary depots in the east because it's not currently worth their while to truck all their stock to the eastern suburbs from the other side of town. If new roads make it cheaper to move freight from the west to the east than to maintain a second warehouse, retailers will switch to trucking everything from the cheap depot in the western suburbs. Melbourne's liveability will have been sacrificed for a marginal increase in shareholders' profits.

Official figures confirm this induced traffic effect: while total freight tonnage in Australia increased by 70% in the 20 years from 1986 to 2005, the total distance over which freight is moved (tonne-kilometres) increased by nearly 140% - twice as rapidly.

Induced freight traffic can also result if freight is being carried less efficiently. A survey by the Port of Melbourne Corporation in 2004 found that although the average capacity for trucks using the port is 2.12 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), the average loading of trucks was actually just 1.05 TEUs. In other words, the average truck is less than half full. In its submission to the 2005 Melbourne congestion inquiry, the Corporation stated that:

There are significant opportunities to reduce the number of truck trips required to handle the existing container movement task to and from the port.... [However,] improving the utilisation of trucks is [currently] not a high priority since the stevedores do not bear the costs of most road truck empty running, nor the congestion additional movements cause.
---Port of Melbourne Corporation, submission to the VCEC Inquiry into Managing Transport Congestion, 2005

A frequently-heard variation on the freight fallacy is that no matter how much 'household travel' is shifted to public transport, freeways will still be needed for 'business travel'. But Professor Russell's findings apply just as much to general business travel as to freight: journeys for business purposes are vastly outnumbered by personal trips, and outside peak hour (when most workers are travelling to or from home) are relatively unimpeded. The more personal travel is shifted to public transport, the easier it becomes to accommodate any kind of business travel on the existing road network.

This is recognised even by those businesses surveyed above for the Scoresby EES, who when asked about passenger transport solutions overwhelmingly nominated public transport, followed by local roads:

Passenger transport solutions suggested by local business (Scoresby Freeway Environment Effects Statement, 1997)
Total surveyed	72
Scoresby Freeway	3
Better public transport	27
Local road improvements	11
Other	3
No suggestions	28

(Source: Scoresby Freeway EES, Supplement G, p.39)

Another appeal is to the so-called 'cost of traffic congestion'. Linking Melbourne claimed that congestion costs the community up to $1.8 billion per year, with 70% of this cost borne by industry and business. If this were true, the logical response would be to segregate freight from other traffic so it can avoid congestion. The least logical response would be to encourage a massive increase in commuter traffic, which holds up freight. But this is exactly what freeway building does!

The suggestion that congestion 'costs' vast sums of money is bunkum according to Melbourne road engineer Bill Saggers, and patently absurd in the words of leading British transport specialists:

The costs of congestion are measured from the difference in journey time under 'ideal' conditions and in reality....The definition [of 'ideal'] chosen is that condition where the driver is unimpeded by any other driver, in effect where [s]he is travelling in the dead of night (say 3am)....These are patently absurd conditions....The cost of congestion is therefore an invalid concept in an urban area.
---M.J. Mogridge, Transport Studies Group, University College London, 1990

I have to say I cannot endorse statements of the form congestion costs the economy £15 billion a year, updated from time to time by inflation, implying an annual dividend of £1000 waiting to be distributed to each family. This is a convenient, consensual fiction. It is calculated by comparing the time spent in traffic now, with the reduced time that would apply if the same volume of traffic was all travelling at free flow speed, and then giving all these notional time savings the same cash value that we currently apply to the odd minutes saved by transport improvements. This is a pure, internally inconsistent, notion that can never exist in the real world. (If all traffic travelled at free flow speed, we can be quite certain that there would be more of it, at least part of the time saved would be spent on further travel, and further changes would be triggered whose value is an unexplored quantity). It is a precise answer to a phantom question.
---P.B. Goodwin, Professor of Transport Policy, University College London, 1997

If congestion imposes such a high cost on freight, why did so many truck drivers in the 1980s drive around the Westgate Bridge, increasing their travel distance and congestion, to avoid a toll of $1.80? And why is King Street still designated by Melbourne City Council as a major freight route, despite the fact it runs parallel to CityLink? So much for the economic benefits to freight!

In the words of Fred Kent, president of the Project for Public Spaces in the US, congestion is healthy. It means something is going on.

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Last modified: 15 August 2008