The obvious questions include:

What do the Greens estimate the costs are for these infrastructure proposals over the next five to ten years?

How do these infrastructure proposals fit with the issues raised in the Eslake report?

What is the Greens overall budget strategy for the ACT Government over the next five to ten years with these infrastructure proposals included?

How do the Greens see these proposals being paid for while reducing the ACT Government deficit and debt?

The ACT Greens need to have some good answers to these questions.

It seems to be in the Green’s nature that planning takes place without regard to the financial cost and, surprisingly, even the CO2 produced. If that had not happened in 2012 (and then was accepted without question by Labor) when the 2012 URS “City to Gungahlin Transit Corridor Concept Design Report” clearly showed that Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) had roughly twice the benefit-cost-ratio of Light Rail Transit (LRT), would cost less than half and produce the same development along the line, we would be laughing with regard to finance and the level of CO2 pollution. For two years earlier the Chinese automobile company BYD had rolled out its BYD K9 electric bus, so popular in the US that it was soon produced there.

Did the Greens not realize that now the situation was reversed? On top of the cost, LRT incurs a large amount of CO2 to produce and install tracks and overhead wires while the establishment of Bus Only Lanes for BRT results in very little. Moreover, e-buses would have been in use much earlier than the first tram. By now we would have a fleet of all e-buses and without the additional pollution from road works, production and installation of new tracks and wires for the present extension would not have the problem of keeping the ACT’s output of Greenhouse Gases below the expected levels.

As to the argument that LRT was (and still is) required to move Canberra’s large number of passengers, the URS report countered already in 2012: “BRT systems around the world often use bespoke higher capacity vehicles that are designed to look and feel more like trams, and this could be considered in future.” Indeed, the Brisbane Metro is successfully using these “bespoke higher capacity vehicles” for transporting a population 6 times that of Canberra.

Isn’t it time that the Greens woke up from living in a Trumpian alternate reality where money and pollution does not matter?