News & Discussion: Roads & Traffic

[raulduke]

Sounds like prudent policy in a time of an economic downturn Shuz

[AtD]

Well, what would relieve the most congestion for the greatest number?

It would certainly be nice if they could complete both, as they are long overdue. Maybe the feds can pay for the road and the state taxpayers can cough up of the PT?

Which would reduce congestion the most? I would suggest the PT, unsurprisingly. But if you think about it, that makes sense. The South Road upgrade would alleviate congestion along its length but do nothing positive about any other congestion anywhere else.

The South Road upgrade would see a Braess’ Paradox effect. For example, people who would normally take Goodwood Road may now chose to take South Road. This means there is more congestion along Anzac Highway and Greenhill Road, slowing travel times along those arterials.

Both the PT projects and the South Road upgrade will see an induced demand effect. However, the scalability of PT would mean it’d be far less noticeable than for the road. The marginal cost of an single extra road user (given the average number of passengers per vehicle is barely above 1) is a few in moving traffic and arguably greater in stop-start traffic at either end of the expressway. The marginal cost of an extra PT commuter is zero for any vehicle below capacity.

Then the marginal cost of a few thousand extra vehicles per day could be several minutes delay, especially at many inner-metropolitan intersections. For a train network so glaringly under capacity as Adelaide’s, it can be as low as just one or two extra units of rolling-stock.

I agree that PT is not going to be the answer for everyone, or even the majority of people, but it makes sense because there is the potential for substitution between modes. If you make the road more attractive, people will abandon PT, and vice versa. So if we can encourage a few thousand people to take PT, we can take a few thousand cars off the road and both systems are better off.

If we encourage a few thousand cars onto South Road, that’s a few thousand cars on Anzac Highway, Port Wakefield Road, and so on. It’s realistic that neither system could be better off.

[Waewick]

well this thread caught me by suprise!My lovely one liner look nice and stupid amongst the pages and pages of serious debate
.I’d like ot make the point that I am not some “build roads everywhere” type of guy, I much prefer a mix of roads and rail, I see the old photos of Trams down duthy street and the parade and wonder how much of a congestion problem Greenhill Road and Kensington road would be if the trams still existed.

Infrastructure is something that interests me to no end, especially on how to make it work. I can remember driving back to the Riverland on the dodgy Sturt highway wondering how the Riverland managed to be lumped with a single lane highway with no overtaking lanes and a bridge (which was rebuilt in the 90’s) which does not allow for expansion to a dual lane highway.

So moving to Adelaide I then took note of the stupidity of our fore fathers, we have lovely 4 lane roads which flow through the city, only to hit dual lane suburban roads, bizarrely made round abouts or we have very minor roads that used to accommodate trams (Duthy street) which basically stop and the city loop (Cross Roads and Green Hill roads) being upgraded whilst roads like Fullarton go down the gurgler. Look at the Parade, that big 4 lane road last only between Portrush and Fullarton Road, It turns into a single lane road past PAC which feeds into another minor road now being used for major traffic, the same can be said for the other road it feeds into.

I’m a bit of a fan of the sim city theory that is when you extend your city you extend you light rail and major roadways to match, you don’t substitute minor roads into semi-major roads and tell everyone to take the bus. But those mistakes have been made and it’s up to us to fix them.

So back to my comment, The South road extender is a physical representation (to me) of what South Australian is. Always half way there, near enough is good enough. The fact that a single lane, reversible highway was even built represents everything I hate about Adelaide. I realise the moving of congestion doesn’t fix the congestion, but lets face it, we are in Adelaide congestion should be a thing we are planning on avoiding not something we are trying to fix. When they built the Freeway why weren’t they wondering what else could be done (apart from adding another lane) at that point the penny should have dropped that the rail network was inadequate which was causing the congestion on South Road in the first place.

So in short, Freeways and major road upgrades should always be looked at in conjunction with Rail, as another poster mentioned this gives people the choice between driving and sitting on a train.

Oh and finally, fix up the bloody stop lights so they are more in sequence

[AtD]

well this thread caught me by suprise!My lovely one liner look nice and stupid amongst the pages and pages of serious debate :

Heh, sorry for hijacking the post, but it is interesting how a one-liner like that can reveal a deeply contested issue.

[Prince George]

TooFar, haven't we seen this pattern from you before - when someone has disagreed with you often enough you switch to throwing stones at them. This one's a NIMBY, that one's juvenile, I've got my head stuck in the textbooks. It hardly does you (or your argument) credit to stoop so low.

I assure you that I look out the window plenty often, and don't forget that when I do I get to see a city built on Freeways. As for theorizing, this marks my 12th year of daily commuting to work by public transport; and not Kent-Town-to-King-William-St, but cross town, including three years between Port Adelaide and Edinburgh that finished with a 15 minute trudge over a dirt track. I'm not all theory.

Here's what we agree on. Adelaide has a million people spread over the area of NYC or London; even Los Angeles is more dense than Adelaide. We're like Phoenix, except they have a freeway system and we don't. Our economy is not in a great shape, we are (more or less) the poorest of the major cities in Australia.

You say: become like Phoenix, build the freeways. It's too late for us to change, we're always going to be a sprawling mess. Better to try to fix today's problem now than waste time and money on some theoretical future.

I say: Phoenix pretty much defines what I don't want Adelaide to be. I would sooner spend billions of dollars changing the layout of the city to suit our transit options than change the transit to suit a bad layout. The land that gets released at our edges - at Seaford, at Buckland Park, at Gawler - shouldn't be happening. While you may lobby for a freeway, I'll be lobbying to cut that crap.

And it's because we're not the wealthiest city that I want us to think outside the road square. Roads cost a fortune to build, easily more than transit, and then cost us more money to use. Transport is a big-ticket item in most family's budget - even the RAA agrees with that. And it has a bigger effect on the poorer family than the wealthy one. Building freeways brings negligible improvement to that.

It's not a coincidence that the nation that was most in love with the freeway was the one that had the biggest economy, they were the only ones that could afford it. Now the US has gone into a steep recession and it looks like it's only a matter of time before China overtakes them economically, and mass transit is suddenly back on the map for them.

All in all, I am staunchly in favour of making big plans for tomorrow over patching up today. Especially when all the evidence is that the quick-fix just brings on further problems later -- OPEC were meeting to consider restricting supply, I guess they liked it better when they were getting $150/barrel. People are complaining that Adelaide's becoming irrelevant, as if freeways are the reason. We started to become irrelevant because we became a follower when we were once a leader; there are people that seem to think we can solve that by doing the same thing as everyone else. Well, good luck to them.

I'm not going to claim that any of this is a magic wand that brings prosperity in a year, or even a decade. But Adelaide's got the deck stacked against it and any plan to turn the city around for the future is going to be brutally difficult. I'm up for it, and I hope more people are too, because it's going to take a lot of work.

[Update - remove high-horse sections from beginning]

[AG]

Here's what we agree on. Adelaide has a million people spread over the area of NYC or London; even Los Angeles is more dense than Adelaide. We're like Phoenix, except they have a freeway system and we don't. Our economy is not in a great shape, we are (more or less) the poorest of the major cities in Australia.

Los Angeles is far bigger in area than Adelaide, although you correctly state that it is more dense. The greater Los Angeles metropolitan area covers an area in excess of 12000 square kilometres. Relative to other states growth rates, SA's economy is beginning to gain ground. ABS recently released statistics that show that SA had an annual growth in GSP of 3.8%, the third fastest in Australia.

And it's because we're not the wealthiest city that I want us to think outside the road square. Roads cost a fortune to build, easily more than transit, and then cost us more money to use. Transport is a big-ticket item in most family's budget - even the RAA agrees with that. And it has a bigger effect on the poorer family than the wealthy one. Building freeways brings negligible improvement to that.

It's not a coincidence that the nation that was most in love with the freeway was the one that had the biggest economy, they were the only ones that could afford it. Now it looks like it's only a matter of time before China overtakes them and they've gone into a steep recession, and mass transit is suddenly back on the map for them.

What needs to be considered here is not just the cost of projects but the benefits. It's easy to get caught up in looking at the costs. If a project brings significant social and economic value that outweighs the cost, it should be considered even if it is a very large and expensive project. That goes for both road and rail projects as well as all other types of social infrastructure.

China is not in a recession. 8% GDP growth is notably slower than the 12% they were achieving over a year ago, but that's still far larger than what many other countries would consider a boom. China's fiscal stimulus package that it announced recently is investing heavily in both road and rail projects. Many of the largest cities have been rapidly expanding their subway systems (Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing in particular) as well as their highways and high speed intercity rail links.

For a good transport system to work, it needs to come from a good mix of various types of systems. That doesn't just mean roads and rail, it also means providing options for those who cycle and walk as well. Not everyone is able to drive a car for various reasons, and public transport won't ever be able to cover every single trip that people will want or need to make. The N-S link in Adelaide is important because it provides an important road link for freight from south of Adelaide to the port of Adelaide at Outer Harbor and it is important to the local economy. This is also why the state government been planning and constructing the Port River Expressway, the Northern Connector, the Northern Expressway and the Sturt Highway Upgrade.

[Prince George]

It's not a coincidence that the nation that was most in love with the freeway was the one that had the biggest economy, they were the only ones that could afford it. Now it looks like it's only a matter of time before China overtakes them and they've gone into a steep recession, and mass transit is suddenly back on the map for them.

China is not in a recession. 8% GDP growth is notably slower than the 12% they were achieving over a year ago, but that's still far larger than what many other countries would consider a boom. China's fiscal stimulus package that it announced recently is investing heavily in both road and rail projects. Many of the largest cities have been rapidly expanding their subway systems (Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing in particular) as well as their highways and high speed intercity rail links.

Clearly I didn't make that clear - the "they" who are in recession and who are looking at transit again are the United States. China are doing fine. I'll edit that part of my post.

[TooFar]

Prince George, I guess my subtle brand of humour gets lost in a forum.

What frustrates me is the amount of studies and reports that have looked into the ideal transport system for Adelaide. Generation have gone by and what do we have? A system that has not really changed since the early 70’s. 4 different PT systems with no central terminus. (Only this year the Tram has made it to the Train station.) And a poorly implemented road system where heavy traffic rumbles down residential roads or through the CBD. There comes a time when enough is enough with the studies and just get out and build something. Forget trying to come up with the perfect solution and just copy some other proven processes. I mean look a the Britannia round-a-about, is it really that difficult to come up with a workable solution.

I spent 30 years living in Adelaide reading about new proposal for underground train lines, extended train & tram line, freeways, bridges, tunnels, multi-function-polis (remember that one) ect. Most of these came to naught. Meanwhile the rest of the country developed in leaps and bounds. For me personally, that was enough, so I left. I did not want to live in a city of studies, but a city of solutions. I have lost patience for theories. I wanted to get real life experience as opposed to reading about it in a book.

For me, building a North-South freeway is a proven system that will move people and goods in a quick and effective manner across the metro area. They are safe, and for a climate like Adelaide, relatively simple to maintain. Freeways work, I have experienced enough first had to know that. I don’t need to read another report. If it is good enough for Perth why not Adelaide? Is Perth not the most similar city to Adelaide you can think of?

I’m not advocating the full MATS plan, nor am I against an increase in Public Transit. I have also spent enough time in places like London, NYC, Barcelona, Paris ect to appreciate great PT systems. But the difference between those cities and Adelaide is density. One thing that will not be coming to Adelaide anytime soon.

Housing is already way to expensive, some of the most expensive in the world in fact. How do you propose keeping the cost of housing down to an affordable level when you employ fixed boundaries for the Metro area? Don’t you think the day the metro stops expanding is the day house prices go further through the roof?

BTW, nice trip on the high road with you own subtle digs.

[AtD]

I think you're being a bit unduly harsh towards Adelaide TooFar. Political and bureaucratic inefficiency are by no means unique to South Australia. I'm not sure how much Australian news you're subject to. For example, NSW has cancelled a large number projects and thrown out as many studies this year alone.

I don't think your notion that freeways lead to lower median property prices is a strong one. In fact, I think the relationship between the existence of freeways and median property prices seems to be very weak. Take Canberra and Hobart, two similarly sized cities with large freeway-standard road networks. Canberra is the second most expensive city after Sydney, while Hobart is one of the two cheapest capitals. There are many other factors effecting property prices with significantly stronger statistical relationships.

It's inappropriate to use house prices as an all-encompassing measure of the cost of living. There's no point in saving $50 per week in rent when you're required to spend an extra $50 per week in fuel just to access jobs and services. This is precisely why dwellings closer to urban centres is generally more expensive than comparable dwellings in purely residential regions.

It is entirely too difficult to build a high-density development in suburban Adelaide, because the structure of our LGAs sees the vested interests of local property. Their small size and non-compulsory elections mean only those with an agenda participate. More often than not the agenda is to protect the resident's property prices from the laws of supply and demand and prevent new development. Holdfast Bay is the classic example, with senior councillors campaigning vocally against high-rise apartments even though they own apartments themselves.

I disagree with the notion that an urban growth boundary inevitably leads to higher property prices - it's not the volume of land consumed but the quantity of suitable dwellings that matter in the supply and demand argument.

Higher population density leads to more efficient provision of services such transport, education, health, etc. though economies of scale, and therefore leads to an overall reduction in the cost of living.

[Omicron]

The fundamental flaw of a freeway network is that the more vehicles it attracts, the lesser its ability to handle these vehicles. By creating a desirable, efficient and effective route on paper, we damn a freeway to become a victim of its own success when these theoretical characteristics are exploited by users in practice.

Both freeways and public transport systems have maximum theoretical capacities - the total number of vehicles that can be squeezed into the available roadspace, and the total number of people that can be squeezed inside every available bus, train and tram running at a given time. The difference, however, is that a greater volume of vehicles on a finite space of road negatively affects travel time (tending towards a causal relationship), whereas a greater number of people on a finite number of public transport vehicles is less ikely to affect travel time (tending towards a correlated relationship). It is true that more public transport passengers mean more time wasted boarding, ticket-buying and squeezing in (hence the correlation) but it is far more tenuous of a relationship. In other words, a busier day on the trams is less likely to make Cecil late for work than if he encounters a busier day on the freeway.

It seems to me, anyway.

[DM8]

I’m a bit of a fan of the sim city theory that is when you extend your city you extend you light rail and major roadways to match, you don’t substitute minor roads into semi-major roads and tell everyone to take the bus.

Our government (specifically the "planners" and Pat Conlon) could learn a thing or two from Sim City...

[Queen Anne]

Queen Anne, I think our views are more similar that you think, although maybe I’m more of a glass half full type of guy.

I agree that American downtowns are mostly a sad facsimile of the Australian version, barring a few notable exceptions. And you a most likely correct in stating that the freeway has in some part helped this decline. But to me the freeway was a solution to a problem, not the cause. After the 2nd World War huge numbers of families wanted their own house with a ¼ acre block. Obviously they could not all live within a few km’s of downtown so the suburban sprawl was born. This was the same in Australia. As petrol was cheap and everyone wanted their own personal transport, Freeways provide the solution to moving large numbers of people over long distances. Thankfully for Australia, this move to the suburbs did not destroy our downtowns the same as the US. The US did/does have additional social problems that Australia never had to deal with.

Downtown Philly is a nice historic city and is on the way back with lots of city development going on. However it does have a bad reputation for violence and there are certainly large sections that many consider a no go area. Last year I read that it is far more likely that an urban black man has more chance of being shot and killed in Philly than if they were deployed to Iraq. Not something to be proud of that is for sure. This has played a large part in the move of family’s to the suburbs. Many people I now work with grew up in/near downtown, but moved to the suburbs when the violence got too bad.

I was recently down in Dallas, and once again the downtown was a little sad. There are some very nice glass towers that make an impressive skyline, but on the weekend the downtown was mostly lifeless. Lots of homeless and transient people wandering but little else. The entertainment areas appeared to be on the fringes of the CBD, and there was a lots of condo activities just to the north of the city near the American Airlines Center. However the freeway system was unbelievably impressive, I have never seen a better road system. Interchange stacks 6 levels high is many areas. All paved in concrete and most 8 or 10 lanes wide. Along the length of many freeway was 10’s and 10’s of restaurants and shopping centers. And from where I visited some very beautiful suburban housing developments. So for most people living there, there would be no need to ever go downtown.

I also lived in Montreal for a number of years. Montreal downtown is very much alive everyday of the week with lots of restaurants, shopping and festivals in the summer. No one could accuse the city of being dead after hours, cold yes, but not dead. However Montreal also has a very comprehensive freeway system, not as complete as the original planner in the 60’s had envisioned, but does provide good coverage. In additional it has a large Metro(Subway) and heavy gauge train network. Toronto appear very similar. More importantly, both these cities and there American cousins, offer cheaper housing than Adelaide.

So where is this small essay taking me? What I’m trying to say and have said before, is Adelaide developed just like other US, Canadian and Australian cities after WW2, however it was one of the relatively few that did not provide adequate roads to go along with the sprawl. Just by building a freeway does not mean the CBD will turn into a US style downtown, as Canadian and the other large Australian cities prove. There is something very wrong when it is more expensive to buy a house in suburban Adelaide than it is in suburban Toronto, Philadelphia or even New York. Or take an hour and a half to drive from Noarlunga to Elizabeth.

TooFar, really interesting reply, thank you for taking the time. I've heard Philly has a functioning downtown. I can also say that Santa Fe, Austin, Seattle and Portland (Oregon) are major cities I have seen in America that are doing alright, so far as their downtowns go. I've also seen a few smaller towns that are doing pretty well too, which is encouraging. I think there is some attitude shifting happening in America, and not before time!

I think you make a fair point that I am looking at the freeway system in a 'glass half empty' way. I don't like what I have seen in quite a few American cities and it has left me feeling strongly negative about freeways - so far as they are configured within city limits, anyway. I've driven down the I-35 in Dallas and, man, I hated it. I don't remember seeing 'real' restaurants, just the usual freeway fare of chain eateries, 'strip malls' (those one storey shopping complexes with the parking in front) and box stores. My strongest memory, though, is that it all looked worse and worse the closer to downtown we got. If we are talking about the same stretch of road, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, so far as amenity goes, because I could possibly sink into a depression if I had to drive down that road every day..there's my half empty glass again

trying to be brief, these are the points that I think are really important speaking of a north-south Adelaide freeway.

* How do we ensure that the sprawl encouraging nature of freeways is kept in line when developers (according to someone on here a few months ago) have lobbied for, and received, a 20 - 25 year supply of greenfield land? This would make an urban growth boundary difficult, I think, and I could not personally support a freeway system without an urban growth boundary.

* As Adamo and Norman have said on this thread, where would the freeway go and what would it look like? Over summer we drove through Wichita, Kansas and hardly saw any of it because it seemed to be below us nearly the whole way. Ugly, ugly freeway that did nothing for Wichita, so far as tourists go. Adelaide's pleasant looks is one of its most promising assets, imo. It might sound trivial but I think this issue really matters. A freeway through Adelaide would be a real scar, whether raised or ground level. Not to mention the sound walls and on and off ramps and all the other stuff they seem to need.

* In Australia there is also the issue that we have a much more limited supply of arable land than America does - I think we should be giving really serious thought to how much of it we can afford to keep paving over and living on (I know this issue has been mentioned throughout the thread but I'd like to give it 'star' billing.

* I do agree that a freeway system wouldn't leave Adelaide with the serious dead-downtown problems that many Amercian cities have. You're right that the US has unique issues in that area. But anything that takes away from the vitality of the CBD in Adelaide still leaves us more vulnerable than I am comfortable with. Adelaide doesn't have a sufficient handle on its 'brand' as a city, just yet, to be cavalier about how we encourage people to distribute themselves. I think for Adelaide to thrive we need to manage things down to a very fine level. For instance, you said earlier something like, "Adelaide is not growing fast enough for high density living around PT hubs to happen any time soon." I think it's up to us to manage things so that people are spoon-fed the TOD concept. We, as a city need to decide to get this ball rolling. In essence we need to sell it as a future-making investment. We need to support it and build it and then they will come. They won't come first and then wait around - we need to capture people's imaginations and get them excited about Adelaide. A few nights ago I was watching TV and saw the Pearl District of Portland Oregon (Very central Portland, apartment living). They said it was currently the US's most successful housing development. Adelaide can do this if Portland can - they are our TOD gurus, after all.

Before I go, I'll also mention I heard the mayor of Seattle on the radio today. At the recent election, Seattle passed a proposition to pour loads of money into public transit. He said how encouraged he was by the result and that he hopes that people will see that the alternatives to constant road building are cheaper and more convenient in the long run. I would say that his words reflect some of the attitude shifting I mentioned before. Freeways are coming under scrutiny up here - I have even noticed it increasing in the two years we have been here.

Cheers, Caroline

[Prince George]

Prince George, I guess my subtle brand of humour gets lost in a forum. BTW, nice trip on the high road with you own subtle digs.

Fair enough - TooFar I am sorry for the holier-than-thou attitude in my post. I'll remove those bits.

Let's talk housing affordability for a moment, because it really is super important.

You've mentioned the places that you've been to that had attractive houses at lower prices than back in Adelaide. It is true that most of America has cheaper housing than Adelaide, but cheaper houses doesn't exactly mean more affordable. For millions of them it still wasn't cheap enough and they're facing foreclosure. In many cases, these cheap houses are now worth less than they owe on them; apart from losing their house, they're going to be bankrupt. That was the start of this whole credit crisis: there were a mass of loans getting made to people that couldn't afford them. They managed to complicate it further, but that's the heart of the problem.

So unrelenting spread hasn't solved the problem in the States, how is it doing in Australia? According to http://www.domain.com.au, the median price in Evanston is $230k, Seaford is $290k, and in Mt Barker it's $330k - it doesn't seem to me that spreading has worked for Adelaide. Meanwhile, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane are all frighteningly expensive and in our favourite comparison city - Perth - everything that I hear is that it's now as bad as Sydney but with lower wages. There's a number of Perthites that I meet over here and the common story is "I couldn't afford to live in Perth anymore, so I left". Just yesterday I was talking to one of them on the bus - he had been living in what he called a "really bad neighbourhood, there were bars on the front windows and if you parked your car in the street it'd get a broken windscreen". He was paying $300/week for that unit.

And where is it that we are told the affordability crisis, the credit crunch, are hitting the hardest? In "the mortgage belt" of the outer metropolitan suburbs. All in all, I don't see any examples of unchecked growth solving anything. And it's folly to persist in persuing a losing strategy.

The alternative will have to involve increasing the supply of accomodation within the city itself - aka increased density. I'm heartened by what I hear about the developments that are planned for places like the Clipsal site and Cheltenham (although I'd love to see each be even denser). They all feature targets for providing a percentage of affordable housing, for example Playford Alive up at Munno Para is almost entirely about affordability. Are they built yet, are people teeming to them? No they're not, but neither are any of the greenfield developments.

They also show a better level of engagement for the state government with developers - I don't think that developers will act to improve affordability if left to their own devices, they profit from inflated prices. And it wouldn't be the first time that the state government acted directly to influence the price of housing in Adelaide, that was original reason for the Housing Trust, to maintain low rents for workers in industrial areas to make Adelaide competitive with the other cities.

But enough of that, back to the road talk!

[Shuz]

Do correct me if I'm wrong, because I haven't read up on any of this housing affordability stuff, but I'm just going by a theory which sounds about right.

As far as I know, the cost of building and developing a new neighbourhood like Seaford Rise costs about $2billion to provide telecommunications, power, water, roads and parks. That cost has to be covered by taxes - land tax, council rates, and 'installation' fees of phone lines, power boxes, water metres, etc. to each home in this development. In a development of say, 400 homes being sold at an average price of $300,000 plus the land tax and stamp duty fees etc. of about $40,000 - That only gives the government about $160million in taxes (not taking into account of the taxes accrued thereafter by each resident living and taxes acquired with changeover of home owners in a lifetime of 50years) - a revenue that isn't anywhere near enough tax to justify the $2b cost of developing that suburb and its essential needs. Even the revenue from the taxes gained in that 50 year lifetime of the suburb wouldn't subsidise the cost of developing that suburb in the first place by a long margin.

So who has to subsidise the cost of developing these suburbs? The taxpayers living elsewhere. Everyone else's rates just 'marginally' go up each year, the water bills go up, the power bills go up - to keep up with the cost of subsidising these suburbs, and the problem continues year after year, because another 5 developments like this get added onto our already excessively large area of urban sprawl. It is no wonder that businesses can't afford to match wage increases with the rate of inflation - Therefore the rates go higher and higher again, taxes are increased again. And I think its important to note particularly in these times of economic failure that what has happened is that the government has been pressured for so long to 'cut taxes' so that we as the taxpayers can afford to pay off our tax burdens... it is very much a snowballing effect.

(I could type a whole essay on this whole thing, but I can't be stuffed doing so) You guys get the gist right?

Solution.

Stop the urban sprawl at once. The urban boundary simply needs to be the extent to which we have developed so far. And focus on massively increasing the density within our existing suburbs. Why? The land tax on an allotment of 700sqm should be the same whether a single storey dwelling occupied the site, or if a ten-floor apartment block of 20 units occupied the same space. Those residents would be paying their share divided amongst the other 30 or so occupants of the land, therefore massively decreasing the taxes and rates paid to live in their homes. Therefore buyers would pay less to purchase these properties in sync with the reduced tax burden of doing so, and therefore rental prices and the such can follow suit. However, this effect wouldn't occur immediately, for you'd need a substantial number of medium-density developments within a specified area to justify this outcome. Hence why I believe that the Adelaide CBD is the prime candidate for being the 'Mother of all TOD's' as someone quoted elsewhere within these forums, not that it neccessarily has to be a TOD, but really just a zone of medium and high-rise living that is affordable to live in.

And there are more benefits to be gained from this principle that people can spend more on luxuries - eg: dining out, stimulating the local economy further, the council can provide more services within the same coverage zone (in a sort of bulk-buy effect), etc.

I'm prepared to chuck this out the window if I'm wrong, but I think it sounds right.
Oh and apologies for drifting off-topic to the roads debate, but in the end, this is a contributor to the argument of affordability for it is our taxes that contribute to paying for the development of these roads - in particular a North-South freeway.

[raulduke]

Shuz - you're missing the point, the urban sprawl we currently have is what it is and it is here to stay. I accept that we probably don't want to spread further, but we really do need to do something about what we have now - and it means building a freeway - NOW.