Better Bang for our bucks

Most people wouldn’t be against Australia hosting the Olympics if we felt that we were getting value for money and that the core functions of Government were delivering the way they should. When was the last time any major infrastructure was completed on time and/or on budget? And despite all the supposed advances in technology, why does it cost so much more to build something now than it did 100 years ago?

Let me start by comparing the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge to the proposed new Bribie Island Bridge to illustrate this point.

In 1932, 8 years after construction commenced, 1,400 workers built the Sydney Harbour Bridge and surrounding access. It cost 6.5 million pounds, which converted to today’s money is $1.5 billion. Nearly 100 years later, this is still one of the widest bridges in the world at 49m, it features 8 lanes of traffic (160,000 vehicles per day) plus 2 railway tracks (480 trains per day) and a footpath and bikeway. It’s 1,149m long, spanning 503m (still one of the widest spans in the world), and 134m from water to the top, it can fit many large modern ships underneath.

Fast forward to today, and the Qld Government is yet to complete a business case but has estimated that a new bridge to Bribie Island would cost $700 million. As it’ll be located 15 meters to the north of the existing bridge, it can be built with minimal disruption to services and continue to utilise most of the existing approaches etc. It would have 2 eastbound lanes plus a footpath/bikeway. The existing bridge (5 meter clearance at high tide) would be retained (can’t afford to remove it), and would become 2 westbound lanes. This new bridge would be just over 800m long, and only have a 9m clearance (can’t even fit a sail boat under) at the tallest point between the pylons.

Now let’s go with the flow and assume that for once a project would be done within budget. How come it costs half of what the Sydney Harbour Bridge cost? It is but a fraction of the capacity whatever way it’s sliced and diced. Brisbane just opened (yet another) footbridge in August, the 320 meter Neville Bonner Bridge, and it cost over $100 million (and took 3.5 years to build) and won’t even allow bikes, but could cope with up to 10,000 pedestrians per day. Sorry, but whoop de doo.

Qld has an infrastructure deficit of about 30 years, meaning we are about 30 years behind on building roads, dams, etc compared to what we need today (not even factoring in record immigration). Stuck in just normal traffic on the way home yesterday I did some quick mental arithmetic. Let’s assume every person in Qld (5 million people) spends just 15 mins per day in traffic delays. That’s 1.25 million hours per day wasted, unproductive, or more than 2 working weeks per person (man, woman and child) per year. If we put a value on that time of $30 per hour, that’s costing $37.5 million per day, or over $13.5 billion per year. No wonder transport companies are talking about adding congestion charges.

The Bruce highway is a disgrace, with three terrible major accidents closing the highway in less than a week. It has 3-5 times the fatality rate compared to the M1 on the NSW side of the border. The Gold Coast M1 duplication has been mooted for over 20 years. Deagon Deviation is gridlocked more often than flowing (despite an upgrade not long ago). The Ipswich Motorway had a section widened, but still reduces to just 2 lanes the closer it gets to the more congested city. We have level railway crossings on high traffic roads. The Bribie Island Bridge does need upgrading, as do several bridges and roadways in central and north Queensland. Wherever we look around the State, it’s the same issues.

So the question must be asked: with all the supposed advances in technology, machinery, construction techniques and materials, computerisation and now AI improving design work, why do any of these projects cost more than they used to? We can’t claim longer life, because the Sydney Harbour Bridge is nearly 100 years old and the Story Bridge was completed in 1940 – both have been able to cope with much higher traffic flows and weights than their original purpose. In fact, using Paradise Dam as an example, what’s built now is outlived by older designs.

In over 1,300 days since we “won” the Olympic Games (because no other country put in a final bid, and it could be argued neither did we…), the supposed people in charge are yet to put together a business case let alone a plan that stacks up. Since we were awarded the cost neutral games (Ha!?!), Qld has implemented policies and requirements (such as the Best Practice Industry Code, BPIC) which nobody seems to refute as adding 30% to the cost of construction of everything.

How can we possibly have any confidence that doing things the way they are currently done the infrastructure will ever be built within the less than 8 years until the opening ceremony? Or in terms of service delivery, just the Police presence for the French Olympics had 3 times the amount of people than the entire Qld Police force (plus they had their army) – how will Qld manage that, or will they do what they did for the Commonwealth Games and tell all the locals to stay away (which they did, the M1 had the least traffic on it in decades)?

It would be a global embarrassment to go ahead with the Olympics as it’s hard to have any faith that the venues would be completed on time. Further, a lot of the venues are temporary, leaving no lasting improvement other than a month or so of entertainment. Not to mention that the cost will be substantially higher than they predict and would all require borrowing money. Money that could be put to much better use elsewhere.

We need those spending our tax dollars to first work out how and then explain why we get such poor value for money. And then change how the system works. Imagine if they could build all these projects for half the cost (get closer to what our forefathers actually achieved 100 years ago), then we could build twice the infrastructure we currently get.