Light rail the latest in a line of NSW public transport failures

When Gladys Berejiklian declared that NSW was ‘not good’ at building public transport, she forgot to add we aren’t great at buying it either, writes James O’Doherty.

Within 24 hours of Gladys Berejiklian declaring last year that NSW is “not good at building trains”, the clanger had been turned into a state Labor attack ad.

It’s the kind of regrettable sound bite that will continue to dog the ­government: “NSW is fantastic at a lot of things, but Australia and NSW are not good at building trains. That’s why we have to purchase them,” she told reporters, when asked why taxpayers were forking out billions to buy trains built overseas.

It’s not just trains that we have ­imported — whether it’s by road, rail, or on the water, foreign vehicles have been purchased to carry commuters.

Trams on the Inner West have been decommissioned for up to 18 months while cracks are fixed. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

Berejiklian may have believed NSW isn’t good at building public transport here, but it’s also painfully clear the government isn’t good at buying it either.

The major cracks in Spanish-built trams which have taken the Inner West Light Rail offline for up to 18 months are the latest in a string of procurement problems.

The situation has also highlighted just how much the taxpayer has spent importing public transport infrastructure.

New suburban trains were ordered from China and Sydney Metro train sets were built in India.

Light rail trams, including the cracked Inner West carriages, came from France and Spain, and we have buses built in Malaysia.

Two of the most troubled transport projects have also come from costly overseas purchases.

Gladys Berejiklian: NSW is ‘not good at building trains.’

The $2.8 billion intercity train fleet built in South Korea, first announced in 2016, is still not running, despite ­initially supposed to be in service by late 2019.

The “New Intercity Fleet” was beset by problems when it arrived.

Tunnels had to be widened to fit carriages that were too wide, and ­safety standards changed to reduce the minimum clearance between the trains and the walls.

The union is also still refusing to staff the trains amid safety concerns.

Former transport minister ­Andrew Constance blamed Covid for the delays but, if the trains had been on time, they would have been in ­service before the pandemic was even discovered.

On the water, new River Class ferries arrived carrying asbestos. They are too tall to fit under bridges on the Parramatta River with passengers on the top deck, and still can’t drive at night.

The new Emerald Class boats, bought to replace the Freshwater Class Manly ferry, had a string of ­defects identified by the union.

Commuters on the service were shunted on to replacement buses last month due to heavy swells (the new boats are designed to handle swells of up to 4.5m, while the Freshwater Class had no such limit).

Improvements were even needed to stop water leaking (in small amounts) through the rudder seal.

As a taxpayer, you’d be forgiven for having buyers’ remorse.

Cracks in the fleet of Transdev trams are the latest in a litany of problems with new transport vehicles.

Last year, Andrew Constance suggested we’d pay a 25 per cent cost premium to build trains locally.

But we could be paying more in cost blowouts than we’ve saved by shopping overseas.

A recent report from the Labor-aligned McKell Institute observed an average cost blowout of larger than 40 per cent across six public transport projects — the intercity train fleet, suburban trains, Sydney Light Rail, Sydney Metro, B-Line buses and new ferries.

“Four of the six projects would have produced greater economic value were they to be built in Australia, after cost increases and wider economic benefits are taken into ­account,” the report says.

If those four projects had been built here, the McKell Institute found, 4196 jobs would have been created.

The analysis found 1746 of those would be direct jobs and 2445 would have been indirect jobs.

Amid the fog of Covid, public transport problems took a back seat to the stress of a global pandemic, particularly when we were all forced to stay inside our homes.

But as our lives get back to normal, old political battlelines have ­re-emerged.

The latest debacle is a two-pronged gift handed on a platter to the Opposition — transport chaos and a debate about sending jobs ­overseas.

No matter who pays for the inner west fleet to be repaired, it will cost Premier Dominic Perrottet. Picture: Terry Pontikos

One of many lessons learned during the pandemic was the importance of local manufacturing capacity to cope with disrupted supply chains. Building locally and supporting jobs here has never been more important.

In the face of the latest transport debacle, Dominic Perrottet’s tune was notably different to his predecessor.

“Certainly we don’t have the capability at the moment (to build our own trains) and I think that’s something we should look at,” he said this week.

“(If) the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s to rely more on manufacturing onshore.”

It’s unrealistic to think that transport fleets built here would be problem-free. But at least if NSW workers made them, we could fix them ourselves: Spanish engineers have even flown into the country to supervise repair work on the 12 cracked inner west trams.

For now, the government is blaming the cracks on the Spanish manufacturer CAF. The manufacturer thinks the cracks could have been caused by poor track maintenance.

The buck-passing is an effort to avoid the blame — if the track was at fault, CAF could be off the hook.

Perrottet and his newly-minted Transport Minister Rob Stokes expect that the taxpayer won’t pay to repair the inner west trams, but they have failed to provide a cast-iron guarantee.

Even if the cost is covered by someone else, the Premier will end up paying the price.