Australia's cities are getting more congested, which is why the government committed $660 million in 2019 to build more car parks at city train stations to get more people catching trains.
But it turns out, deciding where to build car parks to improve traffic isn't as easy as asking a handful of politicians.
The federal government picked 47 car parks to fund by canvassing the opinions of 23 Coalition MPs and candidates in five Labor seats the government wanted to win at the 2019 election, according to an audit of the program.
The choices made for where to build those car parks do not line up with Australia's most congested roads or its city's fastest-growing areas, and city planners say getting it wrong could put more cars on the road without improving congestion.
The ABC has compared traffic data with the locations of commuter car parks to see where they could have gone, and what the consequences could be if the wrong spots have been picked.
Have car parks been built in the right place?
Of the 47 car parks picked by politicians, 31 were in greater Melbourne (although several have since been cancelled), and it was those car parks that became the focus of a National Audit Office investigation.
That audit found the focus on Melbourne for car parks did not line up with Australia's traffic problems: eight of the country's 10 most congested roads are in Sydney and just one is in Melbourne.
By 2031, Infrastructure Australia projects that south-east Queensland will have a greater share of the most congested roads than Melbourne.
ABC News: Emma Machan
)And within Melbourne, the locations for car parks also don't line up with the city's traffic patterns, population growth or even the conventional wisdom on which train stations were best suited for commuter car parks.
Monash University senior lecturer in urban planning Dr Elizabeth Taylor said international and Australian research showed commuter car parks were effective when they were built in lower-density, outer suburban areas, where people lived too far from train stations to walk or cycle.
"Where there's really issues around accessing the rail network and where car parks are under the most pressure is out in our growth suburbs, out in the fringe, in the west and in the south-east [of Melbourne]," Dr Taylor said.
"There's a lot of pressure on the stations, where the patronage is growing, where local people are actually saying 'we definitely need car parking as a priority'."
But it was Liberal-held eastern Melbourne electorates like Goldstein and Kooyong, where the annual population growth is less than 1 per cent, that received multiple car parks.
The government canvassed proposals from members in those seats and others held by Victorian Liberals, as well as the Liberal candidate for Macnamara, an urban Melbourne electorate.
Places like Werribee and Melton, in Melbourne's west, where population growth is four times faster and which are considered safe Labor seats, did not get car parks and representatives were not given a chance to propose any.
The National Audit Office did not analyse Sydney or Brisbane car parks as deeply, but the same pattern repeats itself in both cities.
Along Sydney's most congested routes in the city's north, no commuter car parks were funded.
But in the marginal western Sydney electorate of Lindsay, which contains none of the city's most congested roads, the government funded three commuter car parks after canvassing proposals from candidate Melissa McIntosh.
At the time, Labor held Lindsay but Ms McIntosh won it at the election.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to detail his involvement in the car park scheme, saying it was the former urban infrastructure minister Alan Tudge who was responsible for the program — though the Prime Minister's Office was involved in deciding locations.
The responsibility to deliver the car parks now rests with current Urban Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher, who told auditors Melbourne was prioritised because it was the fastest-growing city and had a lower level of public transport access than Sydney.
ABC News: Marco Catalano
)He also noted the government had made other investments in Melbourne's west and north-west, including the Melbourne Airport Rail Link and the Geelong Faster Rail.
Only a handful of car parks were funded in Brisbane — all of them are in Liberal-held seats.
One other car park in the Western Australian electorate of Canning, held by Liberal Andrew Hastie, was also part of the $660 million fund.
In total, 77 per cent of car parks went to Liberal-held electorates, and another 10 per cent went to marginal seats where the government canvassed hopeful candidates.
These car parks probably won't reduce cars or congestion
Dr Taylor said even when commuter car parks were effective, they didn't necessarily take cars off the road.
For every person who drives to a car park and then catches the train instead of driving into the city, there is usually another person who used to walk, cycle or catch the bus to the station who now drives.
"The numbers vary a little bit, but you basically end up neutral in my assessment, on average," Dr Taylor said.
"That comes across pretty consistently, partly because one of the best ways you can encourage people to drive is to provide car parking and make it free."
Monash University
)A 2010 study of seven commuter car parks built in Victoria found a third of users had previously driven for their entire journey, while a quarter had previously walked or used public transport entirely.
Dr Taylor said commuter car parks were one way of getting people to use the train network, but the numbers were "fairly neutral".
"If the Urban Congestion Fund's stated purpose is to manage congestion, there's certainly not an obvious correlation between congested roads and where the commuter car parks are going," she said.
"We know that commuter car parking is a very limited tool to do that, it's neutral — it's not going to make congestion worse from what we know, but it's a relatively small impact compared to all the other options for improving transport."
What's the cost of getting it wrong?
There are other costs to the government skipping steps to build these car parks.
Only two of the planned 47 car parks have been built, as others have been slowed by problems with finding sites and costs to build, while some, such as at Brighton Beach and South Morang in Melbourne, had to be cancelled entirely.
The Commonwealth had to take on the full cost of at least 20 car parks in Victoria, where the state government would not agree to co-fund car parks, because it said they were not priorities for improving congestion.
And where there are details for the costs of car parks, they've proven expensive.
The cost at Woy Woy in NSW is tracking to be more than $211,000 per car park space, four times over the standard cost, and $166,000 per space at Panania.
In Melbourne, each space at Berwick is tracking to cost $115,000, twice the expected cost.
Google Maps
)By the end of March this year, the department had advised the minister that expenses were at risk of blowing out at 21 commuter car parks, according to auditors.
The department has agreed to the National Audit Office's recommendations to develop assessment and evaluation criteria for future programs.
But Dr Taylor said the lack of planninghoweve was a common problem when local and state governments build car parks too.
"There's such an emotional power to the promise of a car park or the loss of a car park, and I think that's what underscores the politics of it."
"Some of these stations have over a thousand car parks already, it's never enough … you're never going to have enough car parks for everybody."
The whole issue will now be considered by a public inquiry, after the Senate agreed to refer it on Tuesday.
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2021-08-12 19:08:57Z
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