The following formal submission have been made public
Submitter: Kent FitchRaising of London Circuit
I am aware that it is not the NCA's remit to determine whether the purpose of this proposal, the reason London Circuit is to be in-filled and a major traffic intersection proposed to be created on Commonwealth Avenue, is worth the candle: how the ACT Government chooses to spend its Commonwealth allocation of taxes and the rates raised from its citizens is nothing to do with the NCA. However, effective transport along Commonwealth Avenue is a direct concern of the NCA, as are the aesthetics of the area, and so I have confined my response accordingly.
1) Permanent damage to the aesthetics of the area.
Thanks to the foresight of the NCA's predecessors, Commonwealth Avenue is both grand and an efficient thoroughfare. Three cloverleafs support the safe ingress and egress of traffic from and to Parkes Way and from and to London Circuit without the visual clutter and paraphernalia of traffic lights. Traffic is not delayed by signals and accidents caused by running red lights and rear-ending stopped vehicles are avoided.
Until the relatively recent permanent addition of pedestrian signals at Commonwealth Park, the very busy route from Northbourne/London to Commonwealth/Coronation was unsignalised and free flowing for 2.5km, enhancing the vista of the lake, Parliament House and the Parliamentary Triangle from both Commonwealth Avenue and surrounding areas. The NCA's predecessors went to great lengths to create and preserve this valuable national asset, including the effort to construct the pedestrian underpass near Albert Hall. [ It is disappointing that rather than continuing this tradition and respect for the significance of this area, the NCDC's successors opted for the "cheap and nasty" option of a pedestrian crossing rather than an underpass at Commonwealth Park, noting that it may have been "cheap" in the short term, but for all road users (including the pedestrians wanting to cross), the initial cheapness has long been outweighed by their costs in time, fuel, accidents and safety. ]
The proposal to raise London Circuit necessitates a fully signalised intersection with one of the busiest roads in Canberra which inevitably detracts from the aesthetics of Commonwealth Avenue.
2) Disruption during construction
Even the ACT Government admits that Commonwealth Avenue, probably the most nationally significant thoroughfare in Canberra, will be severely disrupted for many years ("Traffic congestion Canberra 'hasn't seen in its history': Up to four years of disruptions expected for next stage of light rail" : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-21/light-rail-stage-2a-cause-traffic-chaos-act-government-says/100310422).
The extent of the disruption is indicated by the scope of the works necessary to raise London Circuit. Publicly, the ACT Government has admitted that 60,000 tons of in-fill is required. To visualise this amount, think of 24 Olympic swimming pools and the 6,000 10-ton dump trucks needed to transport the fill into the centre of Canberra. A line of 6,000 dump trucks parked bumper-to-bumper would extend from Parliament House, across the lake, along Northbourne Ave and the entire length of the Barton Highway, past the Yass Post Office.
However, 60,000 tons ain't the half of it: the proposal's "Greenhouse Gas Assessment", AECOM, Appendix B Table B-1, page B-2, states that 124,200 tons of "General Fill" will be needed.
On this basis alone, surely the NCA has the responsibility to tell the ACT Government that regardless of what it is trying to achieve, it is in the national interest that it finds a better way to do it (and there are two simple suggestions on the route below).
3) Permanent and significant degradation to traffic flow on Commonwealth Avenue.
The addition of a permanent major intersection at Commonwealth/London will be the first road crossing between Northbourne and Coronation Drive, a previously uninterrupted 2.5km route except for the relatively recent addition of the pedestrian crossing at Commonwealth Park which is both relatively little used and deliberately heavily prioritises traffic on Commonwealth Avenue. The proposed intersection at London Circuit will need to prioritise the tram (which will cross in one direction every few minutes in peak periods) and allow significant priority for cross and turning traffic (which currently either flows on the London Circuit underpass or uses a cloverleaf to turn from Commonwealth northbound to eastbound on London).
The safety concerns, congestion and longer travel times caused by such a change would normally be unfathomable and unsupportable: it is proposed to replace a safe, efficient underpass and cloverleaf with a signalised intersection.
4) Undesirability of the end-position this proposal seeks to anticipate.
The terms "salami-slicing" and "creeping normality" are used to describe a technique by which an undesirable end-point is reached by incremental steps, each of them seemingly small and of less consequence.
This proposal to raise London Circuit is ostensibly to prepare for "a future light rail system", the economically bereft "Stage 2A" with a barely-above-zero benefit to cost ratio. I understand that the benefit to cost ratio, or indeed the ineffectiveness of the transport benefits are of little or no interest to the NCA. However, because "Stage 2A" is so senseless on its own, it inevitably leads to "Stage 2B".
Also inevitably, the disruption of "Stage 2B" to the aesthetics and transport utility of the lake, Commonwealth Avenue, the Parliamentary Triangle and Adelaide Avenue, both during construction and permanently thereafter, will make "Stage 2A" look like a picnic. But the "sunk cost" of this current proposal will weigh heavily in support of NCA's rolling-over to the wholesale destruction and devastation it will entail.
Hence, the NCA should respond to the current "salami" proposal by requiring that before it can be considered further, the ACT Government must provide a complete and detailed inventory of the entire "Stage 2" proposal so that the NCA can assess the indigestation to be caused by the entire 12km sausage rather than just the topmost sliver. Failure to do so will weaken NCA's future effectiveness to the extent that "Stage 2B" on the ACT Government's terms will be a fait accompli, and the most you'll be able to influence will be the colour of the benches at the tram stops.
5) Alternatives to raising London Circuit
The former CSIRO researcher and transport expert, Dr John Smith, has made two clever proposals to reduce the cost, disruption during construction and permanent degradation of transport flow on Commonwealth Avenue.
The first adds the "fourth cloverleaf" for the exclusive use of the tram and pedestrians, traveling eastwards on London Circuit as it passes under Commonwealth Avenue to join Vernon Circuit as it exits southbound at the top of Commonwealth Avenue. A location near where it joins Vernon Circuit would be a convenient place for a tram stop to service the SE sector of Civic, including the nearby large offices along London Circuit, Constitution Avenue and Vernon Circuit. The vertical rise from the underpass to Vernon Circuit along this cloverleaf path is well within the acceptable grade (1 in 20) of the current tram. A new set of traffic lights is required by this proposal where the tram crosses the southbound Commonwealth Avenue into the median just south of Vernon Circuit, about 140m from the existing "upstream" signalised intersection at Vernon/Constitution, with which it could easily be synchronised. Traffic on the northbound carriageway of Commonwealth Avenue is unimpeded.
Construction of this tram/pedestrian cloverleaf is not only much easier, cheaper and less disruptive, it also increases the utility of the tram by adding a stop close to the high-density of office buildings nearby.
His second proposal is even simpler: a direct route for the tram from the corner of London/Edinburgh to the top of the existing cloverleaf from northbound Commonwealth Avenue to eastbound London Circuit, and across Commonwealth Avenue (again just south of Vernon Circuit) to the median. The most northern parts of that existing road cloverleaf ramp would need to be slightly realigned to the south to accommodate the tram, and new traffic signals installed for the tram crossing of Commonwealth Avenue northbound (just south of Vernon Circuit). These new signals would still be much less disruptive than those of the original proposal as they need only cater for the tram rather than cross and turning vehicle traffic from/onto London Circuit, and of course, they only affect the northbound carriageway of Commonwealth Avenue.
--
Between 1938 and 1989, the National Capital Planning and Development Committee and then the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) oversaw the development of Canberra and its town centres whilst the population grew from 11,000 to over 300,000. As the administrative successor to the NCDC, the NCA is but a meagre and pale shadow, restricted to rubber-stamping proposals pushed through by the ACT and Commonwealth Governments with only inconsequential tweaking and pro-forma "public consultation", and is otherwise confined to running incidental planning interference on sites mostly in the Parliamentary Triangle. With neither the technical nor administrative heft of its predecessor, it has little enthusiasm beyond creating and endlessly repeating meaningless platitudes about an imaginary and diffuse yet endlessly adaptable "Griffin legacy".
Hence, I am completely aware that this submission is extremely likely to be a waste of everyone's time (mine and yours), yet the proposal to raise London Circuit is so egregiousness that even a one in a million chance of the proposal being rejected based on logical argument returns such as high computed public benefit that the effort is objectively worth it.
There is a chance for the NCA to provide the ACT Government with a much-needed excuse to abandon Stage 2 of the tram.
With increasing "work from home" and hesitancy towards using packed public transport, what was at very best a marginal transport justification for "Stage 2" of tram has evaporated. Technology has progressed so quickly since the original proposal for Stage 1 of the tram network that rejection of this "Stage 2A" by the NCA would secretly be welcomed by many parts, if not most of the ACT Government: in the short term, electric buses are now commonly available that provide silent, pollution-free and much cheaper transport that travels faster and more flexibly than the proposed tram; in the medium term, autonomous vehicles providing shared 24x7, on demand, door-to-door transport are already being tested in public deployments in USA, Europe and Asia and are very likely to offer very cheap "transport as a service" within 4 years.
Sincerely,
Kent Fitch
1) Permanent damage to the aesthetics of the area.
Thanks to the foresight of the NCA's predecessors, Commonwealth Avenue is both grand and an efficient thoroughfare. Three cloverleafs support the safe ingress and egress of traffic from and to Parkes Way and from and to London Circuit without the visual clutter and paraphernalia of traffic lights. Traffic is not delayed by signals and accidents caused by running red lights and rear-ending stopped vehicles are avoided.
Until the relatively recent permanent addition of pedestrian signals at Commonwealth Park, the very busy route from Northbourne/London to Commonwealth/Coronation was unsignalised and free flowing for 2.5km, enhancing the vista of the lake, Parliament House and the Parliamentary Triangle from both Commonwealth Avenue and surrounding areas. The NCA's predecessors went to great lengths to create and preserve this valuable national asset, including the effort to construct the pedestrian underpass near Albert Hall. [ It is disappointing that rather than continuing this tradition and respect for the significance of this area, the NCDC's successors opted for the "cheap and nasty" option of a pedestrian crossing rather than an underpass at Commonwealth Park, noting that it may have been "cheap" in the short term, but for all road users (including the pedestrians wanting to cross), the initial cheapness has long been outweighed by their costs in time, fuel, accidents and safety. ]
The proposal to raise London Circuit necessitates a fully signalised intersection with one of the busiest roads in Canberra which inevitably detracts from the aesthetics of Commonwealth Avenue.
2) Disruption during construction
Even the ACT Government admits that Commonwealth Avenue, probably the most nationally significant thoroughfare in Canberra, will be severely disrupted for many years ("Traffic congestion Canberra 'hasn't seen in its history': Up to four years of disruptions expected for next stage of light rail" : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-21/light-rail-stage-2a-cause-traffic-chaos-act-government-says/100310422).
The extent of the disruption is indicated by the scope of the works necessary to raise London Circuit. Publicly, the ACT Government has admitted that 60,000 tons of in-fill is required. To visualise this amount, think of 24 Olympic swimming pools and the 6,000 10-ton dump trucks needed to transport the fill into the centre of Canberra. A line of 6,000 dump trucks parked bumper-to-bumper would extend from Parliament House, across the lake, along Northbourne Ave and the entire length of the Barton Highway, past the Yass Post Office.
However, 60,000 tons ain't the half of it: the proposal's "Greenhouse Gas Assessment", AECOM, Appendix B Table B-1, page B-2, states that 124,200 tons of "General Fill" will be needed.
On this basis alone, surely the NCA has the responsibility to tell the ACT Government that regardless of what it is trying to achieve, it is in the national interest that it finds a better way to do it (and there are two simple suggestions on the route below).
3) Permanent and significant degradation to traffic flow on Commonwealth Avenue.
The addition of a permanent major intersection at Commonwealth/London will be the first road crossing between Northbourne and Coronation Drive, a previously uninterrupted 2.5km route except for the relatively recent addition of the pedestrian crossing at Commonwealth Park which is both relatively little used and deliberately heavily prioritises traffic on Commonwealth Avenue. The proposed intersection at London Circuit will need to prioritise the tram (which will cross in one direction every few minutes in peak periods) and allow significant priority for cross and turning traffic (which currently either flows on the London Circuit underpass or uses a cloverleaf to turn from Commonwealth northbound to eastbound on London).
The safety concerns, congestion and longer travel times caused by such a change would normally be unfathomable and unsupportable: it is proposed to replace a safe, efficient underpass and cloverleaf with a signalised intersection.
4) Undesirability of the end-position this proposal seeks to anticipate.
The terms "salami-slicing" and "creeping normality" are used to describe a technique by which an undesirable end-point is reached by incremental steps, each of them seemingly small and of less consequence.
This proposal to raise London Circuit is ostensibly to prepare for "a future light rail system", the economically bereft "Stage 2A" with a barely-above-zero benefit to cost ratio. I understand that the benefit to cost ratio, or indeed the ineffectiveness of the transport benefits are of little or no interest to the NCA. However, because "Stage 2A" is so senseless on its own, it inevitably leads to "Stage 2B".
Also inevitably, the disruption of "Stage 2B" to the aesthetics and transport utility of the lake, Commonwealth Avenue, the Parliamentary Triangle and Adelaide Avenue, both during construction and permanently thereafter, will make "Stage 2A" look like a picnic. But the "sunk cost" of this current proposal will weigh heavily in support of NCA's rolling-over to the wholesale destruction and devastation it will entail.
Hence, the NCA should respond to the current "salami" proposal by requiring that before it can be considered further, the ACT Government must provide a complete and detailed inventory of the entire "Stage 2" proposal so that the NCA can assess the indigestation to be caused by the entire 12km sausage rather than just the topmost sliver. Failure to do so will weaken NCA's future effectiveness to the extent that "Stage 2B" on the ACT Government's terms will be a fait accompli, and the most you'll be able to influence will be the colour of the benches at the tram stops.
5) Alternatives to raising London Circuit
The former CSIRO researcher and transport expert, Dr John Smith, has made two clever proposals to reduce the cost, disruption during construction and permanent degradation of transport flow on Commonwealth Avenue.
The first adds the "fourth cloverleaf" for the exclusive use of the tram and pedestrians, traveling eastwards on London Circuit as it passes under Commonwealth Avenue to join Vernon Circuit as it exits southbound at the top of Commonwealth Avenue. A location near where it joins Vernon Circuit would be a convenient place for a tram stop to service the SE sector of Civic, including the nearby large offices along London Circuit, Constitution Avenue and Vernon Circuit. The vertical rise from the underpass to Vernon Circuit along this cloverleaf path is well within the acceptable grade (1 in 20) of the current tram. A new set of traffic lights is required by this proposal where the tram crosses the southbound Commonwealth Avenue into the median just south of Vernon Circuit, about 140m from the existing "upstream" signalised intersection at Vernon/Constitution, with which it could easily be synchronised. Traffic on the northbound carriageway of Commonwealth Avenue is unimpeded.
Construction of this tram/pedestrian cloverleaf is not only much easier, cheaper and less disruptive, it also increases the utility of the tram by adding a stop close to the high-density of office buildings nearby.
His second proposal is even simpler: a direct route for the tram from the corner of London/Edinburgh to the top of the existing cloverleaf from northbound Commonwealth Avenue to eastbound London Circuit, and across Commonwealth Avenue (again just south of Vernon Circuit) to the median. The most northern parts of that existing road cloverleaf ramp would need to be slightly realigned to the south to accommodate the tram, and new traffic signals installed for the tram crossing of Commonwealth Avenue northbound (just south of Vernon Circuit). These new signals would still be much less disruptive than those of the original proposal as they need only cater for the tram rather than cross and turning vehicle traffic from/onto London Circuit, and of course, they only affect the northbound carriageway of Commonwealth Avenue.
--
Between 1938 and 1989, the National Capital Planning and Development Committee and then the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) oversaw the development of Canberra and its town centres whilst the population grew from 11,000 to over 300,000. As the administrative successor to the NCDC, the NCA is but a meagre and pale shadow, restricted to rubber-stamping proposals pushed through by the ACT and Commonwealth Governments with only inconsequential tweaking and pro-forma "public consultation", and is otherwise confined to running incidental planning interference on sites mostly in the Parliamentary Triangle. With neither the technical nor administrative heft of its predecessor, it has little enthusiasm beyond creating and endlessly repeating meaningless platitudes about an imaginary and diffuse yet endlessly adaptable "Griffin legacy".
Hence, I am completely aware that this submission is extremely likely to be a waste of everyone's time (mine and yours), yet the proposal to raise London Circuit is so egregiousness that even a one in a million chance of the proposal being rejected based on logical argument returns such as high computed public benefit that the effort is objectively worth it.
There is a chance for the NCA to provide the ACT Government with a much-needed excuse to abandon Stage 2 of the tram.
With increasing "work from home" and hesitancy towards using packed public transport, what was at very best a marginal transport justification for "Stage 2" of tram has evaporated. Technology has progressed so quickly since the original proposal for Stage 1 of the tram network that rejection of this "Stage 2A" by the NCA would secretly be welcomed by many parts, if not most of the ACT Government: in the short term, electric buses are now commonly available that provide silent, pollution-free and much cheaper transport that travels faster and more flexibly than the proposed tram; in the medium term, autonomous vehicles providing shared 24x7, on demand, door-to-door transport are already being tested in public deployments in USA, Europe and Asia and are very likely to offer very cheap "transport as a service" within 4 years.
Sincerely,
Kent Fitch