35 minute read
Electric vehicles and road funding model failure | panel discussion
L–R, Adrian Dwyer, Fiona Orton, Dr Allison Stewart, Peter Colacino
Electric vehicles and road funding model failure
Key points:
• EVs are here, and every prediction suggests that they will soon dominate the vehicle fleet, • governments and industry need to start the conversation with the community to prepare for the changes that are needed in the transport and energy sectors in terms of regulation, taxation, behaviour and demand management, and • EVs offer a controllable and flexible source of demand that can be used to maximise utilisation of the existing energy asset base and potentially generate energy to be deployed by networks.
Panellists:
► Peter Colacino, Executive Director – Policy and Research, Infrastructure Australia ► Fiona Orton, Future Grid Manager, TransGrid ► Dr Allison Stewart, Project Director, Infrastructure Victoria
Moderator:
► Adrian Dwyer, Chief Executive Officer, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia
Pre-panel address
Nick Hudson, Director, Economics and Policy, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia
Electric vehicles (EVs) are an example of where technology disruption is accelerating convergence across sectors – in this instance, transport and energy. This will lead to a new set of challenges for policymakers and industry, but it will also provide opportunities to do things differently.
Currently, EVs represent a very minor part of the vehicle fleet. According to the Electric Vehicle Council and ClimateWorks, in 2017 there were 2,284 electric vehicles sold in Australia. While this represents a 67 per cent increase on last year (2016), EVs only make up 0.2 per cent of the total vehicle fleet.
Despite the current low figures, modelling undertaken for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) forecasts that EV uptake in Australia will surge over the coming decades.
Under the current moderate and accelerated policy intervention scenarios, EV uptake will reach 50 per cent of the total vehicle fleet during the second half of the 2030s, and will potentially reach 100 per cent uptake by 2050. In terms of real numbers, under the moderate intervention scenario, ARENA and the CEFC predict that over the next five years, EV sales will grow to 70,700 per year and this will potentially reach up to 1.9 million in 2040. EVs will become a mainstay on showroom floors. It’s a question of ‘to what degree’ and ‘when’, rather than ‘if’.
When thinking about ‘to what degree’, the development
Nick Hudson
and uptake of telecommunications technology is a suitable analogy to draw. The first possible scenario could follow smartphones, which were once a disruptive technology in the mobile phone market. Their growth from zero to 100 per cent now sees smartphones dominant in the overall mobile phone market. While smartphones have their own price points, their proliferation has transformed and standardised the way we connect.
The second possible scenario could follow smart watches. This disruptive technology has seen strong growth in sales. Despite their powerful capability, smart watches have remained a significant but minor part of the watch market.
As an emerging technology, EVs will likely follow one of these scenarios – either partial or total market penetration. If the first scenario occurs, there will be changes and opportunities for the transport and energy sectors over the decades to come.
Adrian Dwyer (AD): Are EVs going to be a mass-market but niche technology like smart watches, or are they going to dominate the market like smartphones?
Peter Colacino (PC): Infrastructure Australia sees EVs becoming the dominant technology within the vehicle fleet. We’re using work done by Energeia for CEFC and ARENA as the basis for most of our thinking on this. Looking out to 2040, it is forecast that there will be close to 100 per cent adoption of the technology. There’s no way that 100 per cent is a smart watch. EVs will be the dominant part of our vehicle fleet, and it will come quicker than people expect.
Dr Allison Stewart (AS): Infrastructure Victoria has a similar view. We think that the potential for EVs is huge. In terms of the timing for uptake, it will be when price parity is reached with other vehicles – some time in the late 2020s. Once that happens, we will see much more rapid uptake.
Fiona Orton (FO): From TransGrid’s perspective, we see that EVs are coming, and that they’re going to be an important part of the transport mix and energy system. Some key global drivers are pushing EVs along. For instance, in some countries and cities, policies have been introduced that will ban the use of internal combustion engines, beginning between 2025 and 2040–2050, depending on the jurisdiction.
Vehicle manufacturers are also pushing this along. There’s been a huge ramp-up in the number and type of vehicles they’re offering. Volvo has a target of every vehicle it produces being electric or a hybrid by 2019. We certainly see these drivers happening at a global scale, and because Australia tends to be a technology-taker, all trends are pointing towards Australia having high uptake of EVs.
AD: There are discrepancies in when people think the uptake or parity point will be. Pete, you seem to think it will happen faster?
Fiona Orton Peter Colacino
PC: We are bullish, and the two inflection points are really important. The first is model choice. Over the next 18 months, vehicle choice will expand. The Prius perhaps wasn’t the sexiest car on the market, but Tesla has disrupted – or at least given the perception of disrupting – the market. However, over the next 12 months, another 10 different EV models will arrive in Australia. Five of them will cost under $60,000 to purchase new. In New Zealand, changes to parallel export laws have led to more EVs being available, and therefore higher levels of adoption. As model choice expands, you will see changes over the next 12 months.
Secondly, on price parity: people are expecting that to be around 2025, which is an important year for automation, which presents other challenges. The forecasters at Energeia say that it could happen soon, as people start to understand that the operation and maintenance costs of their vehicles will reduce, and they’ll get savings from not paying for fuel.
If you talk to the automobile clubs, fuel price is an issue people often talk about. Like housing prices, everyone whinges about the cost of fuel. As fuel prices vary, based on a whole range of factors outside of Australia’s control, you’ll see greater uptake of EVs.
AD: I’m interested by the idea of price parity. We’re not just talking about sticker price – we’re talking about whole-of-life costs. 45 per cent of cars purchased in Australia are bought by people with spreadsheets, rather than emotions. Will that drive uptake or will it be government intervention? Will it just be sticker price?
AS: In terms of what we’ve seen overseas, uptake has largely been driven by sticker price – that’s what people see. Some people factor in life-cycle costs, and we would recommend that people do that, but we know that people don’t make decisions on that basis. People just look at sticker price when they go to the car dealership and decide which vehicle they’ll buy. Fleet purchasers will make a significant difference.
Of course, actions that governments might take could change that. Government action will be a big teller of how
Source – TransGrid
much closer that timeframe will move. Where governments overseas have introduced subsidies without good long-term planning, it has led to some negative implications as people take up the subsidies and then they are removed. This creates significant change in the marketplace. No matter what happens in the future in Australia, long-term planning for the transition of consumers will be critical.
AD: On the subsidy question, if it is inevitable that 100 per cent of the market becomes electric – or at least zeroemissions at the point of use – doesn’t that mean that the case for subsidies just diminishes?
PC: Nick Hudson was spot-on in his opening remarks about the rate of uptake, and ensuring that it is at a desirable pace. While we have a low level of EV penetration, our global competitiveness suffers, and so do household budgets. The savings from an EV are real today. Drivers and households can already be saving money in a climate where fuel prices and electricity prices are politically topical.
In the short term, higher levels of EV uptake are potentially desirable. I say potentially because, longer term, the impacts on the electricity grid will be significant. Some estimates forecast that peak electricity demand will increase by up to 450 per cent. Much thought will need to go into the impact on peak and total demand in powering EVs.
AD: Fiona, what are the implications for energy demand? What impacts will there be on the network and the engineering that’s required to support that?
FO: The Energeia work that’s been referenced is one of numerous forecasts for EV uptake that TransGrid looks at. As part of our system planning, we already think about what’s going to happen with demand across different metrics, such as population growth and economic growth. These metrics are the main drivers of electricity demand growth in New South Wales today. New energy technologies, such as EVs, and household solar and batteries, will also drive changes in electricity demand.
Across the different uptake forecast scenarios, we could have one million or three million or more EVs in Australia by 2030. That could increase to 13 million by 2040, making up 40to 60 per cent of the vehicle fleet. That’s a significant change.
AD: What happens if everybody gets home at 6 o’clock and plugs their car in?
FO: That could have a negative impact on peak demand. As a comparison, consider air conditioning uptake. When every household installed an air conditioner, peak demand markedly increased across the system. Now, the way that the electricity system works today is that the whole system’s infrastructure is built to meet that peak demand, which may just be a few hours per year. At most times, there’s underutilised capacity in the system.
Even with 10 per cent or more growth in total electricity demand by 2040, that doesn’t necessarily mean we need to build a lot of extra infrastructure. That is because electric vehicles offer the potential for smart use of energy.
Dr Allison Stewart
Personally, I am enthusiastic about EVs because there are numerous benefits to be gained across the whole economy. They could lead to cheaper transport costs, decreased importation of fuel, growth in jobs, improvement in terms of trade, and a reduction in greenhouse gas and other emissions from the transport sector. From a network planning perspective, however, there are three benefits or opportunities I can see from EVs.
First, we can increase the utilisation of the existing asset base. That means we can put more electrons through the same infrastructure, driving down the unit cost of electricity for all users. That can occur for consumers regardless of whether they have an EV. That will place downwards pressure on prices, which is important.
The second benefit is that EVs offer a controllable and flexible source of demand, which helps when integrating variable renewable energy into the system. Currently, the supply mix is changing from producing energy all the time to something that’s more weather-driven. Having flexibility on the demand side can help by using energy and capacity when it’s available, and ensuring that we’re not curtailing wind or solar when they produce surplus energy.
Third, EVs will represent large amounts of battery storage driving around in our electricity market. This offers the potential for a new source of energy that can be supplied to grid operators, like TransGrid. For example, we have a project in New South Wales called Powering Sydney’s Future. For the project, we’re using demand management to delay more investment to ensure that consumers save money.
If Bloomberg’s forecasts are correct, by 2040 EVs could provide 350 gigawatt hours of storage that’s driving around in our energy system. To put that in context, that’s the equivalent of Snowy 2.0. This offers an enormous amount of potential for services to be provided back to the grid. That’s good for consumers because their vehicles will be a source of revenue, and it’s also great for us because it means we can provide our services more cheaply in the future.
AD: Allison, this is an area that Infrastructure Victoria has looked at, as well as the nexus between transport and energy.
AS: Yes, it is an area we have looked at. The thing I can add to Fiona’s helpful explanation is on the study we recently completed, which looked at several factors regarding the uptake of electric and autonomous vehicles. What we found is that if we have an entirely electric fleet in the year 2046, we
think that could require 50 per cent more energy than the base demand than would otherwise exist in 2046. That’s a significant requirement for additional energy generation, alongside the transmission and distribution capacity that would be needed to support it.
We also found that significant change can come about from demand management. We need to try to understand what we can do to enable and support demand management for individuals, to understand more about what impacts consumers have when they plug in their EVs and turn their air conditioners on when they get home at 6 o’clock. The impact on the overall infrastructure investment needed to support that is important. We need to manage and think about the additional investment, because it’s in the billions.
Over the coming years, more focus needs to be on educating people and preparing the system correctly. This could help us avoid unnecessary infrastructure spending.
AD: If, in the future, people have solar on the roof, a battery in the basement and an EV in the garage, that could have profound impacts on energy networks. It will also have an impact on our road networks with the decline of fuel excise. Is that something that features in your thinking about this disruptive change we’re seeing?
PC: There’s no doubt that fuel excise revenue will decline into the future. It will decline under an existing internal combustion engine environment, just through fuel efficiency. The introduction of EVs will see it decline more rapidly. However, we need to remember that we don’t have a system where fuel excise is hypothecated specifically to be spent on roads. It hasn’t been hypothecated to roads since 1959. Currently, the level of revenue generated by the transport industry is greater than what’s spent on roads.
There are different levels of revenue and expenditure, and infrastructure needs will continue to increase in the future. That will require more general government revenue, and the decline in fuel excise may leave a gap that needs to be filled. However, as a sector, we need to think holistically about a sustainable transport network in the future, not just about the impact of EVs.
AD: Allison, is this something you’ve looked at, as well?
AS: Absolutely. We need to consider fuel excise within the broader context of how much is being collected, how we’re funding roads and how they will be funded in the future – from a fairness and financial perspective.
Focusing too heavily on declining fuel excise revenues as the problem could lead to solutions that may not be optimal overall. Currently, fuel excise isn’t an efficient way of sending price signals to consumers, and it presents an opportunity to revisit the ways we’re collecting those taxes.
There are numerous opportunities and changes that the uptake of EVs will bring. For instance, it will result in changes to things such as payroll tax as potential industries expand. At Infrastructure Victoria, we see that EVs and autonomous vehicles are likely to merge in parallel. As that happens, there’s a big opportunity to rethink and reset a model that isn’t necessarily working efficiently. There’s an opportunity to have an open dialogue about how we can reform for the better as we go forward.
AD: Have we all just been distracted by the hype around autonomous vehicles and is the real disruption EVs?
AS: Yes. There’s no doubt that EVs are already on the roads and will come sooner than autonomous vehicles. However, some of the work we’ve done considered how autonomous vehicles could come much sooner. One of the big unknowns about autonomous vehicles is whether people will buy their own, or whether they’ll be an on-demand service, like Uber. Which of those models prevails, or the degree to which they combine, will make a big difference to how autonomous vehicles will exist on our roads. We will also need to discuss what social licence will come around autonomous vehicles.
EVs are here, and people are familiar with them. The question for EVs is ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, whereas the ‘if’ question still surrounds autonomous vehicles. In terms of focus, it’s important that our eyes are on the here and now, while keeping an eye on how these two future technologies could change our applications and our understanding about what’s happening in the future.
PC: I will highlight some significant changes affecting the transport industry at the same time.
The first is sharing. Uber has disrupted the transport sector. When considering that, we can’t forget about congestion, which is an absolute show stopper for the transport sector. Sharing is the biggest step change for the sector, and if we can get more people in each car, that’ll have a positive impact on congestion.
The second is connectivity. Historically, Australia hasn’t been great at responding to change. For example, we implemented integrated ticketing five or six years after it was adopted in Europe, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and other places. We were also slow to accept things like autonomous emergency braking for heavy vehicles. The Inquiry into the National Road Safety Strategy found that we are about five to 10 years behind our international competitors in adopting connectivity. Now, those technologies already exist and are commercially available. There’s no reason that Australia isn’t better at sharing and that we don’t have a more connected transport sector.
Now, EVs are already here and will arrive in a bigger way over the next five years. Autonomous vehicles may start to emerge in a more significant way in around five years’ time. However, our regulatory environment in Australia is behind when it comes to automation. For instance, there’s technology like the AI traffic jam pilot in the Audi A8. This is a vehicle that is available on the market – the first with Level 3 autonomy technology. In Australia, this car will have that technology turned off because we don’t have a regulatory environment that supports it.
AD: Questions from the floor? Maybe an EV owner in the crowd has a view?
Lance Glare (LG): Is there any thought going into what’s going to happen to the batteries at the end of their life?
AD: Lance is from Western Australia, so they’ll be providing lithium for the batteries.
LG: We’re very interested in making all the batteries.
AD: Views on where the lithium goes once you’ve used it?
AS: Infrastructure Victoria has done some work looking into the waste implications in moving to an entirely EV fleet. There’s a need to start looking at what the waste streams will be as we transition to an EV fleet. There will be significant changes to how we need to approach battery recycling.
For most EVs, you can only use the batteries in the vehicles until they are at about 80 per cent of their manufactured capacity, leaving potential capacity once their useful life in the vehicle has ended. Thinking holistically about how we change our current assumptions around waste, how we recycle and reuse is an important consideration. Thinking about how we might contribute more to distributed energy is critical in terms of the broader ecosystem resulting from EVs.
FO: There is a real opportunity to re-use batteries after they’ve had their first life in vehicles to provide services either for households, businesses or grid operators.
AD: Is the knowledge about what these batteries will do after a few years in the car an impediment to consumer uptake? Not range anxiety, but battery anxiety?
PC: There are two main concerns that I have heard from industry.
The first is model availability. We’ve spoken mostly about electric cars, but there’s the implication for electric trucks, too. Although there are new models that are planned, and there are companies – like BYD out of China – that, interestingly, are focusing more on electric than autonomous. I think you’ll see a lot of Chinese companies leading in this space.
Number two is the long-term value of the vehicles and the pace at which they’ll need to be replaced. Thinking about what happens to a battery is really critical, especially for governments. The Western Australians are an obvious example, because of the local lithium industry that already exists – including the largest lithium facility in the world. There is an opportunity for Australia – because of the volume of batteries – for a new industry to be created. Reprocessing and repurposing could be an industry that may develop and provide new technology jobs.
AD: Further questions from the floor?
Scott Charlton: Thanks Adrian. As an EV owner, in most other countries, states offer incentives for all of the benefits that EVs provide. In Australia, you’re penalised through a luxury car tax because the capital cost is higher than the equivalent. How do we incentivise EVs and deal with the road funding issue? There is no leadership from the Federal Government currently, which should be going out and trying a pilot programme or doing something. We have seen very little leadership in this space.
PC: There are incentives in place, but it’s patchwork. If you’re in South Australia, you get more incentives relative to other Australian jurisdictions. The Australian Capital Territory is progressive in the incentive space too. In Queensland, they have started building charging stations on the ‘electric superhighway’. But there’s no doubt that financial incentives are the most significant factor in driving behavioural change when people are purchasing vehicles.
When Scott Morrison was Treasurer, he observed that the Government was ‘eyes wide open’ to the idea that EVs not paying fuel excise was an implicit incentive.
Investment in EV-charging infrastructure is also important. Non-financial incentives like prioritised parking, or access to bus lanes or transit lanes for EVs, are measures that some other jurisdictions have found effective. We need to be conscious of our broader policy objectives – whether we want to increase EV uptake and reduce congestion in parallel. Some incentives might not help with other problems we face.
AS: I think it’s important that governments start thinking about how they approach EVs and manage the transition effectively. The transition is not in dispute like it was a few years ago. Thinking through what that process will be (alongside what subsidies or incentives will be in place) is worthy of open and honest conversation. However, there are numerous other things that need to slot into place to ensure that it is going to deliver the best benefits for Victoria and Australia.
We need to ensure that the energy network is prepared to address the potential uptake when it comes. There could be a scenario where you have a significant incentive, and everyone is moving to EVs, causing issues for the energy network. Decarbonisation is another thing we need to consider. We need to ensure that the environmental aspects of encouraging uptake aren’t just moving emissions from the city to the Latrobe Valley, for example.
There needs to be a broader conversation about what we are trying to incentivise over what time frame, and how we do it fairly without disincentivising early uptake.
PC: Ultimately, the cross-sector relationship is a key area to consider.
The electricity sector is vital, but so are other sectors such as health. It’s a little-known fact that more than or equal amounts of people die each year in Australia from noxious emissions associated with vehicle use compared to those who die from road accidents.
If you consider the attention on national road safety, it is always at the front of people’s minds. However, making the transition to EVs will deliver other health benefits. We need to ensure that those benefits are considered when making decisions around incentives and optimal uptake – a lot of that work hasn’t been done yet. That type of thinking could be done through a national plan for EV adoption.
AS: Infrastructure Victoria has just completed some work on the health benefits of moving to an electric vehicle fleet. If we move from our current fleet to an entirely zero-emissions fleet by 2046, the health dividend would be about $700 million a year in terms of ‘disability adjusted life years’ – the avoided health impacts of emissions-related problems. That’s just the economic benefit of people being healthier, and it doesn’t consider savings from avoided hospitalisations.
AD: Fiona, did you want to add to that?
FO: There are some important regulatory reforms that can happen in the electricity system to prepare us for the uptake of EVs – types of reforms that would make the energy sector more resilient to uptake scenarios that are faster than, slower than, or different to what is currently forecast.
For instance, ensuring that the right incentives are in place to encourage charging at off-peak times will be the biggest challenge in ensuring that the energy system can withstand the uptake of EVs at any pace.
Secondly, creating markets for owners of EVs, or distributed generation, to provide services back into the grid or system operators is critical, too. That could help EV owners understand that there may be other ways to monetise their investment.
AD: Any other questions from the floor?
Tony Hayward: I was just reflecting on the fact that we’re now going to have cars that don’t have drivers in them, and we’re going to change the fuel source. Is the construct of the vehicle itself going to be different in 30 years? What is the average car going to look like in 2050? What does that look like?
AD: Paint us a picture.
AS: There are many opinions on that question in terms of what kind of service there may be when moving ourselves and goods from point A to point B. We will see a very different mix of vehicle types and types of transport on our roads in the future – we might even have aerial vehicles by that point.
In terms of the next wave, there will be variability in terms of the size of vehicle. For example, there may be smaller vehicles and smaller buses if there are more on-demand services although, large buses will stay on main trunk routes. There will be a variety of changes.
A recently released concept vehicle was basically a hotel room on wheels. When we start thinking about how services will be delivered, it could take many forms. Will you have an on-demand gym that will pick you up, that has a shower in it so you’re ready for work? Will EVs start to compete with rail freight? Will they compete with airline industries, if you could take an overnight automated hotel room from point A to point B rather than flying? Would that be a more comfortable way to travel, or more cost-effective?
Over the coming years, the ways in which goods and services get to us will change.
AD: Pete, Tesla’s vehicles look like any other car to me from the outside...
PC: Yes, they do look just like any other car from the outside. That makes it clear that it’s less about the steel box moving around, and more about the door-to-door journeys that people have and their expectations about the type of service they’ll receive. That touches on the social licence theme.
As people become more time-poor and connected, they will value their time differently. As a sector, we need to ensure that people are using the most efficient modes of transport to minimise their impact on the community and congestion.
Infrastructure Australia has recently done some work looking at outer-urban public transport, and thinking about ways to provide public transport in low-density areas. We’re looking at things like on-demand transport and making better use of some active transport modes. This work also acknowledges that there will be an ongoing role for private transport.
So, what will the future vehicle look like? The old adage is that no-one wanted a car – they wanted a faster horse. Look how that ended up. Thinking about that and where we are today, perhaps it’s not a new car that we want. We may want something that makes better use of our road and rail networks, which are fundamentally just real estate.
Peter Colacino – Executive Director, Policy and Research, Infrastructure Australia
Peter Colacino leads Infrastructure Australia’s Policy and Research team, and is tasked with identifying the greatest challenges and opportunities facing the delivery of infrastructure for Australia’s growing cities and regions. He brings his experience working in positions across both the public and private sectors on some of Australia’s largest infrastructure projects, including NorthConnex, Transport for Newcastle and Gold Coast Light Rail.
More recently, as a member of the NRMA executive, Mr Colacino was at the forefront of a generational change in transport services, championing the adoption of connected and autonomous vehicle technology, electric vehicle adoption and new models of transport service provision.
Fiona Orton – Future Grid Manager, TransGrid
Fiona Orton has more than 12 years’ experience working in Australia’s electricity, gas, climate change and sustainability sectors, focusing on the evolution of Australia’s energy markets.
As Future Grid Manager at TransGrid, she is responsible for electricity transmission system planning for New South Wales over a 50-year time horizon. She considers how technology, regulation and consumer preferences are likely to influence the development and operation of power systems into the future.
Prior to joining TransGrid, Ms Orton held several positions at AGL Energy, managing energy policy, scenario planning, strategy and carbon compliance. She has also worked as a climate change and sustainability consultant.
Ms Orton has published several articles on the need for energy policy, market design, and business models to respond to the changing energy system and consumer requirements. Ms Orton has an Honours degree in Chemical Engineering from The University of Sydney, specialising in energy and the environment, and a Diploma of Management from the Australian Institute of Management.
Dr Allison Stewart – Project Director, Infrastructure Victoria
Dr Allison Stewart is the Project Director for Infrastructure Victoria’s Automated and Zero Emissions Vehicles Infrastructure Advice.
Dr Stewart is an experienced capital projects leader, strategist and academic. She is a recognised expert in the theory of mega-events, and her work has been cited by The Economist, the BBC, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among others.
She completed her doctorate in mega-project management at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and has experience working in the infrastructure, energy, defence and mega-events industries.
Adrian Dwyer – Chief Executive Officer, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia
Adrian Dwyer is the Chief Executive Officer of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia – the nation’s leading public and private sector infrastructure think tank.
Mr Dwyer served as Infrastructure Partnerships Australia’s Head of Policy from 2011 until 2015, where he led major studies on road pricing reform, contracting and financing models, among others.
In 2015, Mr Dwyer left Infrastructure Partnerships Australia to serve as the Executive Director of Policy and Research at Infrastructure Australia – the Commonwealth Government’s statutory infrastructure body.
He was appointed as Infrastructure Partnerships Australia’s Chief Executive Officer in March 2018.
A Monash University research group is taking the lead in providing transit solutions to the challenges of soaring urban populations.
Monash University is solving public transport problems for governments and industry through its worldrenowned Public Transport Research Group (PTRG).
PTRG is Australia’s leading research group on public transport, and ranks in the world’s top three of its type, according to the Journal of Public Transportation. Group Founder and Director Professor Graham Currie is the world’s most published researcher in this field.
‘PTRG is having a significant impact in public transport,’ says Professor Currie. ‘Our researchers are developing innovative transport solutions as urban populations grow, and our teaching programs are developing the next generation of public transport leaders.’
PTRG’s global focus is one of its three key strengths. Through PTRG and its earlier incarnations, the group has undertaken hundreds of applied research projects worldwide. Clients include London’s Olympic Delivery Authority, the US Federal Transit Administration, the Center of Research Excellence in Hajj and Umrah in Saudi Arabia, and the Land Transport Authority in Singapore.
PTRG’s work on fare evasion is a highlight. Research on the psychology of fare evaders has saved Melbourne and Sydney transit authorities approximately $105 million annually since 2015, estimates PTRG. Several overseas cities have embraced the group’s award-winning research and have achieved similar savings.
International teaching is another focus. Transportation Systems, a flagship engineering discipline at Monash, is taught in China through the Southeast University–Monash Joint Graduate School. Most of the program’s 48 master’s students are based in China.
Monash’s teaching extends to Europe. PTRG has partnered with the Delft University of Technology on a one-week Planning Public Transport Services Industry course in Amsterdam. Professor Currie co-delivers the course, which attracts transport planners from across Europe.
Professor Currie, who is also Chair of the Standing Committee on Light Rail Transit at the US Transportation Research Board, hopes to expand PTRG’s teaching into the United States and other countries.
‘Governments and industry need people with state-of-the-art transportation skills and an ability to apply them to complex problems,’ he says. ‘And they know that Monash is the world’s leading provider of these skills.’
PTRG’s World Transit Research (WTR) clearing house service enhances its global capability and audience. Launched in 2010, WTR has collated almost 7000 journal papers from Australian and overseas researchers. More than 250,000 people across 170 countries have used the site.
‘WTR has helped PTRG to become a global hub for researchers, industry practitioners, policy advisers and other public transit stakeholders,’ says Professor Currie.
Collaborative model
Extensive industry engagement is PTRG’s second strength. Professor Currie, a prominent former management consultant in public transit systems, is known for his ability to link industry, government and academia through applied research.
‘PTRG is a funnel for industry and governments to work with Monash,’ says Professor Currie, who, in 2005, recommended the $11-billion Metro Tunnel underground rail project in Melbourne.
PTRG has attracted significant industry support. Partners include Transport for Victoria, Public Transport Victoria (PTV), the Department of Economic Development, Jobs Australia, Transport and Resources, Metro Trains Melbourne, VicRoads, Yarra Trams, Transdev and BusVic.
PTV provided half of the $5 million in funding for PTRG when the research group formed in March 2015, and became the world’s first joint public transport authority/university research and teaching initiative. PTRG has a proud history at Monash, having operated in different formats since 2003, when Professor Currie joined the university.
PTV and the group’s other partners co-fund and collaborate with PTRG through the Sustainable and Effective Public Transport – Graduate Research Industry Partnerships (SEPT-GRIP) initiative – an advanced, industry-based, professional development program.
PTRG currently has 18 PhD students – the world’s largest PhD cohort in this field – involved in SEPTGRIP. Monash’s GRIP program is designed to help researchers to develop industry-ready, interdisciplinary skills and to work with external partners on globally significant problems.
‘SEPT-GRIP is delivering exceptional results,’ says Professor Currie. ‘It enables emerging Monash researchers to work with industry and governments on real problems in public transit systems. Their work continues to have an impact on industry and on the community.’
SEPT-GRIP projects have explored passenger falls in trams; rail carriage interiors for Melbourne trains; multipurpose buses; place making and streetscaping design, and its transport impact; urban rail design and vandalism; gender diversity in public transport workforces; and big-data mining and visualisation, among a range of issues.
Multidisciplinary approach
PTRG’s third strength is its ability to draw researchers from across Monash disciplines on public transport projects. Through SEPT-GRIP, the group has experts in engineering, psychology, design, healthcare, policy and other fields working on transport problems.
In addition to SEPT-GRIP, PTRG has 56 research associates across Monash, international universities and external groups.
‘PTRG is the place where Monash and academics engage in research on public transport systems – including users, planning and policy – and they collaborate,’ says Professor Currie. ‘I don’t know of any university in Australia or overseas with such an interdisciplinary approach to public transport.’
He says that a single-discipline or ‘hard engineering’ approach will not solve public transport problems alone. ‘Complex transport problems require a multidisciplinary approach. We need to understand the changing needs of public transport users, and better connect cities and people through innovative planning, policy, technology, design and vehicles.’
Professor Currie is excited about public transport’s future. He believes that autonomous vehicles, such as self-driving trains and buses, will transform public transit systems in time. ‘Self-driving trains are already used extensively in parts of Asia, and self-driving buses have much to offer. Public transport has more to gain from automation than private passenger cars.’
He sees a transport future of ‘ondemand services’ integrated with mobile technology and consumed like a public utility. ‘We have to think differently about the notion of “public transport”. How can we have smarter transport systems when cities are much larger? How can we redefine the transport experience for millennials, as well as an ageing population? How can we get more people sharing transport rather than having cars with one person in them?’
Professor Currie is buoyed by Victoria’s public transport approach. ‘Melbourne will become the size of London, so we must think bigger than ever with transport projects, and adopt a multi-decade planning approach. The Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop project (announced in August 2018) is the type of grand transport thinking needed for great international megacities.’ ♦
To learn more about the Public Transport Research Group, visit www.ptrg.info.
Data and technology disrupting public transport
The future of public transport will be more efficient, sustainable and autonomous. Customers will be in control, booking multimodal journeys to suit their needs by determining when and how they want to travel. Technology will integrate all parts of a city’s transport system for a seamless commuter experience.
These are some of the key findings from Transdev, operator and global integrator of mobility, in its latest MultiCountry Barometer, a survey of key transport decision-makers from five countries – the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden – about the trends, challenges and opportunities shaping the sector.
For Australasia, the 2018 Barometer identified growing demand for public transport in our increasingly populous and congested cities as the primary challenge. When asked about the most important goal for improving the system, 87 per cent of respondents cited better customer experience as the priority. The majority (77 per cent) believe that using data science to understand preferences and usage patterns will deliver more efficient and reliable transport solutions, and increase patronage.
Modal integration also emerged as a priority, with 87 per cent of respondents committed to improving modal integration in the next three years, and implementing alternative modes, such as rideshare and bike share, to create seamless end-to-end journeys for commuters. The majority of Australasia’s public transport leaders (65 per cent) are also interested in on-demand transport services to create better connections and close what’s known in the industry as the ‘first and last mile’ gap. Research shows that needing to walk more than 0.8 kilometres to a public transport stop reduces patronage by 90 per cent. This first and last mile gap can be addressed by integrating carpools, ridesharing, bike sharing and shuttle services.
One day, on-demand services might be provided by autonomous vehicle and shuttle systems. The state of autonomous vehicle technology right now means that it is ideal for short trips and closed communities, such as university campuses, hospitals and business parks, or to transport people to and from transport hubs. Sixty-one per cent of 2018 Barometer respondents expressed interest in testing autonomous vehicles in specific locales as a first and last mile solution, and a further 53 per cent would like to see autonomous vehicles operating in closed communities.
Technology will play a critical role in these integrated networks of the future. Transdev sees mobility as a service (MaaS) promoting both a better customer experience and modal integration by delivering a genuinely customer-focused means of using public transport. MaaS technology enables commuters to plan and pay for their journeys, seamlessly connecting them with the different modes they need to get where they want, when they want and at the cost they want. While interest in MaaS among decisionmakers is comparatively low in Australia right now (at 48 per cent), Transdev expects this to change over the next few years, given the enthusiastic uptake of MaaS overseas.
At Transdev, we’re excited to be at the forefront of the revolution in public transportation. As our 2018 MultiCountry Barometer Survey shows, data and technology are reshaping the way we operate transport systems, and delivering more reliable and costeffective services, and a better customer experience. Investing in innovation means more timely, personalised journeys for our customers, and enhanced livability and sustainable development in our cities. ♦
Transdev autonomous vehicle
