Making our cities better

Australia has entered a infrastructure boom. This follows on from a building boom and before that a resources boom. Each boom was manufactured by the "Over World" as I like to label them - i.e. those that benefit the most - so that Oz doesn't fall off the economic cliff or for some other altruistic reason such as "making our cities better".

The current crop of major infrastructure, and in particular transport, projects planned across the country is being dressed up as "making our cities better".

Hmmm.

The big-ticket transport projects that get approved really don’t solve much – apart from giving the pollies a tool to campaign with and a photo op at the ribbon cutting somewhere later down the line.

They are almost always delivered later and at far greater expense than originally forecast.

Plus, their economic benefit is dubious at best and more often than not they actually add to the problem rather than make things better.

Our cities are going to get bigger. We shouldn’t waste our time trying to stop this. We should be making our cities better. And that must start with a plan.

And frankly I think it is very simple.

The plan involves just three things:

1. Getting people to travel less.

2. Getting people to travel at different times.

3. Getting people to travel in different directions.

That’s it. This should be easy.

Just stop of a minute and think about the list above.

1. Travel less? I work from home, it costs the government nothing and I (and the tax payer too) save heaps. I have staff and they work from their homes. Most don't need to sit on top of each other - in a downtown office somewhere - to get things done. The cost of the major ticket infrastructure projects across Australia equates to about $300,000 per job, with no way of getting that money back. Getting people to work from home costs nothing. Zip. In fact we should get tax breaks, plus free WiFi etc.

2. Travel at different times? We still go to work or school like it is the industrial age. We don't have human assembly lines anymore - well not in most western countries - yet we still insist of being at work at 8.30am so that we can all be ready to pull our level or push our button at the right synchronised time. As for school terms and times, don't get me started. Working four days a week, but not all of us working the same four days each week, will help too and apparently help with climate change too. Win-Win!

3. Travel in different directions. Make the amenity in our suburbs - where most live - equal, if not better, than the inner city locales. Start using the vacant shops and share land uses. A bit of thinking out of the box is needed but it is simple once you start. I use, for example, our local rural hall on a regular basis. It was only being used a few years back for dances a few times each year until a younger local set got involved and started to change things. Now that hall has a heavily booked calendar; a coffee caravan is open each morning; a monthly food market is held (which my wife runs and has a stall); on many Saturday evenings it is booked of a wedding and on most Friday's it hosts a food truck or two with movies for the kids (and drinks for us oldies too). I run my master class sessions at the hall. People come from Australia wide and everyone thinks the location is great, smart even, yet it is miles from the Brisbane CBD or where typically such training events are held.

The market is already supporting this strategy. In fact across most spheres, business is actually pushing this agenda.

Politics, bureaucrats, regulations, vested interest groups and the 24-hour media cycle are – pardon the pun – the road blocks.

If we implement these three things, we can improve our cities and save many billions of dollars each year in wasted infrastructure spending and incidental costs caused by traffic congestion and unnecessary business expenses.