Trans Scan: a global scan of emerging trends in mobility and the built environment

Has Perth Forgotten it's Rivers

WOULD Perth function better if it made greater use of its rivers? There is increasing evidence both locally and from overseas to suggest that from social and economic standpoints, Perth has much to gain from giving its rivers a more important role.

In recent weeks the internationally renown urban designer, Jan Gehl has focused attention on Perth’s river system by proposing that a lively new residential area be built by the waterfront close to the CBD to enable thousands more people to live, work, and study within the central precinct.

Added to that there is now growing evidence internationally that where cities have viable river systems, the waterways can play an important part in the adaptation to climate change and in the alternatives this can offer if a future surge in oil prices disrupts road transport networks.

In Perth, much of the preparatory work for assessing new river transport has already been done - at least for passenger ferry services. For example, a study conducted for the Western Australian Government in 2000 found that the best time to introduce additional ferry services would be when major new foreshore developments were complete. The 2000 study was interested in introducing ferry services like Brisbane’s CityCat. It investigated 20 possible jetty sites along the Swan and Canning River foreshores and suggested that riverside developments like those near Burswood, Canning Bridge, East Perth, as well as the University of Western Australia, could provide the passengers to make new services viable.

So is it time to re-examine the 2000 report?

Nine years on, the arguments for expanding Perth’s river services are certainly much stronger and today there is an even greater likelihood that new services would succeed. Perth’s population is larger than it was in 2000 and ferry services are an attractive travel alternative to commuters. New ferries would also offer a valuable addition to Perth’s tourist infrastructure.

The newly published Gehl report itself sees Perth’s future foreshores becoming peppered with jetties over the next 15 years and the “Perth Metropolitan Transport Strategy1995-2029” predicted that by 2029 ferry services would be responsible for about 12.5% of the city’s enlarged public transport network.

If as Jan Gehl suggests, Perth’s central foreshore was to be opened up for high-density mixed use development, then ferry services could become an integral part of the new “riverside city” - and that 12.5% share could be greatly exceeded.

Previous arguments for a build up of ferry services have included the benefits the city could enjoy from a reduction in car dependency, lower petrol consumption, and less pollution. In addition more ferry services would provide an opportunity to intensify land use around individual ferry piers.

But from a broader perspective, there are now many other reasons to expand river transport. TransScan has just conducted a survey of international developments involving inland water transport (IWT) and found that despite global economic difficulties cities around the world are now investing heavily in advanced new ferry and barge services.

From the Danube to the Hudson, from the Thames to the Pearl River Delta, transport planners have begun to refer to new “marine highways” as a solution to their economic, social and environmental challenges.

Interestingly in many cases it is Australian technology that is providing the solutions - and as the photo on page one shows, it is advanced new ferries from Western Australia that are answering particular challenges along China’s Pearl River.

Two places where ferries are set to come into greater prominence are on the Thames and in Hong Kong where the international airport is about to open an advanced new SkyPier to ferry airline passengers to and from the river delta’s surrounding cities. At the same time waterways - and that includes rivers, canals, and protected coastal seaways - are receiving considerable attention for the opportunity they can offer to remove freight from the roads and so reduce greenhouse emissions.

In California, government approval has just been given for a major road-to-water switch that will eliminate literally thousands of truck journeys.

The reasoning behind such a move can be explained by a study released by the US National Waterways Foundation. It compared the performance of America’s barges, trucks and trains and discovered that as a means of freight transport, barges won easily. “One common 15-barge river tow has the same capacity as 1050 trucks and 216 rail cars pulled by six locomotives,” says the study. It said that apart from the enormous savings in fuel, there were also significant safety benefits from a switch to IWT. In terms of cargo moved, for every person injured by a barge, 125.2 people were injured in rail crashes and 2171.5 injured in truck crashes.

The scan showed:

Olympic boost

Signposts have begun to appear at key London railway stations suggesting commuters avoid the Underground rush hour and travel instead aboard a far less congested Thames ferry. The encouragement to switch modes is part of a larger plan by the city’s mayor, Boris Johnson, to offer added stimulus to river transport and give London an effective and integrated network of ferry services in time for the London Olympics in 2012. Even without the mayor’s help, there is little doubt that many Londoners are taking to their new breed of ferry services. For example, last year London ferries carried some 5 million passengers - 3 million more than they did in 2000. Interestingly many of those extra passengers are travelling on Australian-made ferries - the so-called “River Runners” manufactured by the Cairns-based Queensland shipbuilder, Aimtek. Under Mr Johnson’s plan the aim now is to boost ferry passenger figures to 7.5 million annually by 2012. In that way London will give itself a viable and considerably less congested transit system to carry the tens of thousands of spectators to the various Olympic venues. The Mayor’s expansion plan includes building more piers in central London, offering better signage to the piers, and an integration of ferry fares with the rest of the city’s passenger transport services. In particular this will mean that ferry passengers will be able to use London’s inter-modal “Oyster” smart card to pay their fares.

Barge Games

London’s plans for river transport to serve the Olympics also include a river freight program to ensure a large proportion of building material is carried by barge rather than truck. One of the main Game’s venues will be Stratford on Avon - a town amply served by waterways. The UK’s Olympic Delivery Authority is now having waterways into the town upgraded to handle large-scale barge traffic.

Space to build

Sigurd Grava, Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University and long time advocate of river transport, describes inland waterways as frequently “the only underused or under-

utilised surfaces within the boundaries of contemporary cities”. He certainly believes the time is ripe for a revival and it is a belief shared by many across North America and Europe. The European Commission now sees “significant potential” for increasing the modal share of inland waterway transport “due to the fact that congestion on roads will increase and rail capacity is limited, while waterways offer free capacity”. Most importantly the commission points out that during climate change the impact on the environment will be lower from building up water transport than any other form of transport. The EU is now has a Europe-wide program called “Marco Polo” to encourage a switch from road transport to rail, coastal ships and services on inland waterways. The EU has also just compiled its first collection of “good practice” examples of where such a switch has worked. For

example, in Finland manufacturers have successfully diverted an annual 200,000 tonnes of paper shipments from road to inland waterways. In the Netherlands, the Dutch are pioneering a new breed of “inland containership” and in France, Airbus has designed special roll-on roll-off self-propelled barges to collect and deliver aircraft components to the assembly centre at Bordeaux. (One special Airbus requirement was that the barges be designed to squeeze under Bordeaux’s unusually low and narrow stone bridges.)