COMMUNITY BRIEFING NOTE 03
What happened to good government?
A 2004 PTA-funded study of the Mandurah Line shows how much more rigorous and transparent public transport analysis once was — and asks why we now accept less.
Damien Smith · 5 September 2026
I’ve attached a 2004 report, Perth’s South West Metropolitan Railway — Balancing benefits and costs, prepared by PATREC for the Public Transport Authority while what we now call the Mandurah Line was being built.
Compared with the Ferry Business Case Summary, it is on another level.
It starts with numbers: Census data, population growth, car ownership, household transport costs, travel behaviour and the results of earlier rail investment. The Northern Suburbs Railway was carrying about 28,000 passengers a day within six months of opening, ahead of forecast.
Looking south, the report talks about the suburban “fringe” literally — including Golden Bay, Port Kennedy and Secret Harbour. Twenty-two years later, the proposed Karnup Station is still only in planning. During the Secret Harbour by-election campaign the Government committed $10 million to final planning, design and approvals, with works expected to start in 2028.
That seems worth remembering.
This is what I mean by sophistication. It doesn’t start with “rail is awesome, therefore rail”. It asks: where are people living, how are they travelling, what happens if we do nothing, and what evidence says this intervention might work?
It also has a real base case: without rail, Perth would still need roads, buses and other infrastructure. At a 7 per cent discount rate it gives a BCR of 3.3, an NPV of about $1.43 billion and an IRR of 16.5 per cent.
And, rather relevant to today’s discussion, page 14 sets out standard cost-benefit practice: put dollar values into real terms, then discount future costs and benefits to present values.
The Ferry Business Case Summary says a 7 per cent discount rate was applied, but its published table is headed “undiscounted CBA results”. Those undiscounted totals themselves produce the headline BCR of 1.7.
On the published figures, that overstates the properly discounted BCR. My reconstruction at 7 per cent gives about 1.16 — and even that still accepts PTA’s impractical patronage assumptions.
The problem is not simply that the forecasts are optimistic. At the claimed trip numbers, the passengers do not fit on the 100-seat ferries at realistic utilisation. As I set out in Community Briefing Note 02, replacing those assumptions with realistic vessel-capacity and utilisation assumptions takes my indicative BCR to about 0.3.
So there are two separate problems. Applying standard discounting takes the published 1.7 to about 1.16. Applying realistic capacity assumptions takes it much lower again.
Then I found perhaps my favourite sentence:
“We have not used any form of ‘multi-criteria analysis’, as it requires complex and controversial weighting of benefits and costs.”
The endnote is blunter: weighting and scoring can remain highly arbitrary and subjective.
That is particularly relevant to JoJo’s. The Government’s five-site MCA gave JoJo’s the “lowest pedestrian connectivity” to UWA and an “unacceptable safety risk” to windsurfers and kiteboarders. Central Matilda Bay got the “best pedestrian connectivity”, “manageable” waterways safety and the conclusion that all water activities could continue “with adjustments”.
Many of us watched that assessment being developed. I watched project officers seek additional information for the MCA, particularly around windsurfers and kiteboarders at Pelican Point. I can only speak to what I observed, but I did not see an equivalent exercise seeking out constraints at Central Matilda Bay.
From where I sat, it increasingly looked like shopping for reasons to mark JoJo’s down.
That 2004 warning matters. What gets included, how it is described and how it is weighted can determine the answer, while the spreadsheet makes the result look objective.
Perhaps the success of Perth’s rail system has produced a little hubris: that success wasn’t magic. They did the work.
An earlier 1999 assessment of the Kenwick-route railway had a negative NPV of about $65 million and a BCR of roughly 0.9. The numbers didn’t stack up. They changed the project. By 2004 the redesigned railway had a BCR of 3.29 at the same 7 per cent rate — more than three-and-a-half times better.
That is the lesson for the ferries: interrogate the project, change it and make it better. Don’t assume the first answer is right.
Collect the data. Define the problem. Test the alternatives. Do the economics properly. Expose the assumptions. And listen.
We are talking about committing more than $500 million and fundamentally changing how parts of the Swan River are used.
There is a broader issue here than ferries. I think we are watching a material degradation in the standard of public debate and analysis around major transport infrastructure.
So when our friends from the ALP or PTA turn up in this forums, ask them about it. When you write to your local member, a Minister or the newspaper, point it out. Twenty years ago a PTA-funded report put the numbers, assumptions, alternatives, discounting and uncertainties into the public domain.
Why are we now expected to accept so much less?
I want ambitious government and good public transport. But ambition needs discipline.
Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom.
Hiring a consultant is not consultation. Filing a report is not listening. Issuing a press release is not social licence.
Source document
PATREC (2004), Perth’s South West Metropolitan Railway — Balancing benefits and costs
Report for the Public Transport Authority of Western Australia.
Download the 2004 PATREC report [PDF]
About the author
Prepared by Damien Smith, Perth naval architect and Director of Damien Smith Design Pty Ltd.
Disclosures: Damien Smith Design was a tenderer for the Swan River ferry project. Damien is also on the Mounts Bay Sailing Club Management Committee and is an Australian Labor Party member. The views expressed are his own.