Institutional Regimes in Transport: Case Studies of Rail and Road in Nsw and Queensland 1850 - 2000
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COPYRIGHT AND USE OF THIS THESIS This thesis must be used in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Reproduction of material protected by copyright may be an infringement of copyright and copyright owners may be entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. Section 51 (2) of the Copyright Act permits an authorized officer of a university library or archives to provide a copy (by communication or otherwise) of an unpublished thesis kept in the library or archives, to a person who satisfies the authorized officer that he or she requires the reproduction for the purposes of research or study. The Copyright Act grants the creator of a work a number of moral rights, specifically the right of attribution, the right against false attribution and the right of integrity. You may infringe the author’s moral rights if you: - fail to acknowledge the author of this thesis if you quote sections from the work - attribute this thesis to another author - subject this thesis to derogatory treatment which may prejudice the author’s reputation For further information contact the University’s Director of Copyright Services sydney.edu.au/copyright INSTITUTIONAL REGIMES IN TRANSPORT: CASE STUDIES OF RAIL AND ROAD IN NSW AND QUEENSLAND 1850 - 2000 Ann Turner A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sydney 2014 i Abstract This thesis is about institutions and their regimes. It seeks to extend our understanding of how institutional environments (systems of formal rules and regulations and informal norms, conventions, customs and social routines) and institutional arrangements (specific organisational forms and structures) mould local economic outcomes in different places at different scales. The basic stance of the thesis is that the analysis of institutional arrangements and their regimes provides an appropriate framework for understanding and explaining the trajectories of long historical processes of economic change. The thesis is situated within the ontological institutional turn in economic geography discourse. The institutional perspective is used to shed light on five key questions about land transport policy in NSW and Queensland from 1850 to 2000. What are the main themes of change in institutional arrangements in the management and delivery of land transport by government road and rail agencies? What were the drivers of key changes? How have the different politico-administrative settings of NSW and Queensland shaped similarities and difference? What factors contribute to an understanding of these differences? And, finally, what have been the outcomes for infrastructure governance, service delivery and spatial economic development in regions and cities? The interrogation of these questions through an institutional framework lent itself to exhaustive historical research coupled with in-depth qualitative interviews. Lengthy interviews were conducted with 37 senior policy makers and other key informants as a tool to understand the evolution of institutional regimes. Interviews were supplemented by less formally constituted discussions with industry ii informants. Two States were selected as case studies to enable the impact of different geographies to be considered. A lengthy, historically anchored institutional approach provides a framework to tease out and identify the similarities and differences between road and rail systems in the two states. The thesis finds that these similarities and differences are a result of the emergence of ideas that capture advocacy within policy networks which themselves are part of the institutional structure. The speed and extent of the implementation of these ideas depends on the relative strength of individual actors as agents of policy change. The actual nature of the implementation processes is modified by the relative strength of the policy arena and of the key institutions within it. Hence, institutional architectures, even if they come from the wellspring of global trends, can differ markedly as they are modified by the “local” through the advocacy of interest groups. The overwhelming evidence from the case studies is that geography in its historical context is the critical variable in explaining different responses and outcomes in the road and rail trajectories of NSW and Queensland. iii Acknowledgments I wish to express sincere appreciation to Associate Professor Bill Pritchard for his guidance and assistance in working towards the production of this thesis. In addition, special thanks to Professor John Connell who believed that I could complete a PhD and gave me encouragement at critical stages. Thanks also to the members of the faculty for their valuable input and support during the years. I owe a major debt to Desmond Dent (CEO of 10000 Friends of Greater Sydney) and Ken Dobinson (Director of 10000 Friends of Greater Sydney) who set up the interviews for this thesis in the manner prescribed by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University. I am especially grateful for the time given by all interviewees and hope that my treatment of their stories does justice to their experiences. Without them there would be no thesis. I also owe a big thank you to my daughter Holly who is always an inspiration. iv Preface This thesis began as a search for knowledge based on the need to understand what was happening in a particular section of the economy – transport infrastructure. In NSW, at the time (2004), many approaches to improving community outcomes from expenditure in transport had been tried and had been found wanting. This experience was similar to that of many other jurisdictions in the English speaking Western World. A number of these experiences had been documented (especially those in Great Britain). The focus of a large number of these studies was on the challenge of attempting to draw policy conclusions from the available empirical evidence. Over time the approach of these studies became increasingly preoccupied with relatively narrowly-constructed conceptions of governance.1 There was a general lack of an attempt to comprehensively interpret experienced reality in terms of broad theoretical approaches in the social sciences. There were two major exceptions to this captivation with empiricism. The first was a range of studies that related policy developments to the impact of a single philosophy - i.e. neo liberalism. The second was a number of studies by economists and geographers2 who attempted to explain policy development and outcomes in terms of the spatial allocation of development, the institutional governance of regions and industries, and the impact of networks. These limitations in the literature provided the context 1 See for example Henshaw, 1991; Wolmar, 1998, 2001, 2002; Murray, 2001; Watson, 2001. 2 Especially prolific were the British Geographers for example Charlton, Gibb and Lowndes, 1995; Charlton, Gibb and Shaw, 1997; Nash 1993, Bradshaw 1997; Docherty, 1999, 2000, 2000a, 2000b, 2003, 2004; Docherty, Shaw, Gather, 2004; Knowles, 1998, 2004; Haywood, 1999, 2003; Freeman and Shaw, 2000; Shaw, 2000a, 2001; Shaw, MacKinnon, Docherty, 2009; Shaw, Walton, Farrington, 2003; Cowie, 2002, 2009; Watson, 2001; Lodge, 2002, 2003; Shaoul, 2004, 2006; Tyrrall, 2003; Tyrrall and Parker, 2005; Smith 2006; Burnham, 2006. v and justification for the broadly conceived, institutional analysis of the evolution of NSW and Qld transport infrastructure undertaken in this thesis. In pursuit of this aspiration, the researcher was guided by a central belief that the employment of a geographical perspective was critical to the full inclusion and analysis of relevant variables. Economic and transport geographers have always been interested in the links between transport, the spatial allocation of activities and institutional governance. There is an established ability to explain outcomes in terms of a spatial analysis of the economic, environmental, social and political aspects of policy. This thesis found that large investments in transport infrastructure in both modes (road and rail) had significant implications for urban form, regional development and the performance of the economy more generally. Most important large transport investments locked in a range of related industries at all levels of scale (local, regional and global). This industrial lock-in included institutionalised path dependent processes which circumscribed and limited future investment, and urban and regional development decisions. The embedded nature of the path dependent processes also acted as significant inhibitors to change. The lock-in effect was most acute and lengthier for railway investments where the investments are more ‘lumpy’ and the life of the resulting asset can be extended for three generations. In the two jurisdictions (NSW and Qld) examined in this thesis, there was strong evidence of intergenerational learning and knowledge transfer within particular cultures (such as institutes of engineers) as described by North (1971, 1974, 1976, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991a, 1991b, 1994, 1995, 1997). vi These mechanisms further embedded the impact of prior significant decisions. Major change occurred only at times of punctuated equilibrium created by a significant event (for example, a major innovation, a serious railway accident, a major shift in the political and / or economic landscape). The change transmission mechanism was fuelled by ideas which took hold in policy communities and achieved