PARLIAMENT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Innovating Transport across Australia Inquiry into automated mass transit House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport and Cities March 2019 CANBERRA © Commonwealth of Australia ISBN 978-1-76092-003-6 (Printed Version) ISBN 978-1-76092-004-3 (HTML Version) This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License. The details of this licence are available on the Creative Commons website: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/. Contents Foreword .......................................................................................................................................... vii Members ............................................................................................................................................ xi Terms of Reference ......................................................................................................................... xiii Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................... xv List of Recommendations .............................................................................................................. xix Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... xxv The Report 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 Conduct of the inquiry ............................................................................................. 2 Structure of the Report ............................................................................................. 3 2 Automation ............................................................................................................... 5 Context—planning ................................................................................................... 5 Context—automation .............................................................................................. 7 Benefits of automation ............................................................................................. 9 Automated rail mass transit .................................................................................. 17 Rail v. Road .............................................................................................................. 24 Light rail ................................................................................................................... 26 Automated road mass transit ................................................................................ 26 Mobility as a Service ............................................................................................... 29 The First & Last Mile .............................................................................................. 33 iii iv Integrated transport ................................................................................................ 37 Freight ...................................................................................................................... 42 The transition to automation ................................................................................. 43 Committee conclusions .......................................................................................... 47 3 New energy sources .............................................................................................. 51 Electric vehicles ....................................................................................................... 51 Charging infrastructure ............................................................................. 54 Battery Electric Buses ................................................................................. 54 Electric vehicles and the electricity network........................................... 55 Hydrogen power ..................................................................................................... 58 Hydrogen fuel cell technology ................................................................. 59 Hydrogen and mass transit ....................................................................... 61 Hydrogen infrastructure ........................................................................... 62 Hydrogen production ................................................................................ 64 Transporting hydrogen .............................................................................. 65 Hyperloop ................................................................................................................ 66 Committee Conclusions ......................................................................................... 68 4 Role of government ............................................................................................... 73 The role of government .......................................................................................... 73 Current Australian Government Activity ........................................................... 80 COAG ........................................................................................................... 82 National Transport Commission .............................................................. 83 Austroads .................................................................................................... 87 Other government action........................................................................... 87 Policy priorities ....................................................................................................... 88 Vision and planning ................................................................................... 88 Standards ..................................................................................................... 91 Promoting new technology—incentives and emission standards ....... 96 Communications technology, data and cyber security ....................... 101 v Infrastructure ................................................................................ 101 Data ................................................................................................ 105 Cybersecurity ................................................................................ 107 Managing change ..................................................................................... 109 Road funding ............................................................................................ 113 Chief Engineer .......................................................................................... 114 Office of Future Transport Technologies .............................................. 115 Committee conclusions ........................................................................................ 116 Appendix A. List of submissions ................................................................................ 123 Appendix B. List of public hearings and witnesses ................................................. 127 Foreword The automation and electrification of mass transit is a potentially revolutionary development in transport. Done well, it has the potential to make our cities and regions cleaner, greener, more accessible and more liveable. It also has the potential to make our cities and regions more productive and sustainable. Achieving this outcome will demand vision and leadership from government. The Committee’s previous report, Building Up & Moving Out, set out a blueprint for the planning of our cities and regions at a national, regional and local scale. It identified opportunities for transforming connectivity and accessibility through integrated, multi-modal, transport networks. This current report is an extension of that previous work. Mass transit is the key to creating better connectivity and mobility. Automation and electrification will make mass transit safer, more efficient, cleaner and quieter. But they will also demand changes in the regulatory environment and the physical and communications infrastructure of our transport networks. This will require careful planning and substantial investment, with policy responses framed around the different requirements of cities and regions, greenfield and brownfield sites. Ideally, our transport networks will consist of integrated multi-modal networks— seamless transport systems operating across a variety of transport modes, connected by information exchanges (such as mobile apps) between users and network owners and managers, with seamless ticketing—creating Mobility as a Service (MaaS). These networks will serve cities and regions that are characterised by densification and decentralisation. Mass transit has an important role to play, providing high-volume trunk routes as the arteries of the transport network, with shared mobility and active transport providing the capillaries of the system. It is important to recognise that while automation can contribute to the connectivity of less densely populated areas, it should not be allowed to contribute to urban sprawl. The goal should be the creation of a new transport ecosystem. vii viii Consideration should be given to policies which promote the development of this ecosystem. Rail in its various forms, including trackless trams, has an essential role to play in this vision. Road mass transit—buses—also