Crispin Hull's opinion piece, ''Seek new route with bus and rail'' (Forum, July 18, p15) was valuable but could have more clearly identified the elephant in the room it is not possible to marry an effective and economical public transport system to low density housing, like we have in Canberra! Any bus or train system that would be large enough to provide good levels of service could only do about two runs in each peak period and spend the other 22 hours of the day doing nothing or running empty and going broke! In general terms there is only one workable solution within present constraints a move back to the original multi hub solution that Crispin mentioned.
Good public transport in and between those hubs could work for the same reason it does in London and Hong Kong the presence of high passenger/urban density.
Those who like the life associated with low density suburban or country living will always have to provide their own private transport free/cheap parking would mainly be available at the outer hubs with the government obliged to provide this in lieu of larger more expensive public transport.
In the future, small autonomous electric vehicles might allow additional options, but for now our incongruent government could start by not collecting thousands of dollars in stamp duty from those who are merely relocating to be near their work or a transport node.
Trevor McPherson, Aranda
Who knows best?
In opposing Majura Parkway, Crispin Hull pushed the social engineers' line (Seek a new route with bus and rail rather than increasing roads, Forum, July 18, p15).
He acknowledges Canberrans much prefer to drive and park. But he knows best.
Give them what they don't want: that way they won't want more.
We avoid public transport because it's inconvenient, inflexible and insecure.
Wife happy lugging groceries the kilometre up from the bus-stop, in freezing, wind-whipped, increasingly-violent, post-work darkness?
He lists perhaps $1 billion being invested in freeways.
Using our bus subsidy, now approaching $100 million a year with more, massive, peak-hour-use-only buses, we'd have that paid off in a decade!
Laughably, Hull points to transport problems in Sydney and Los Angeles: cities 10 to 20 times Canberra's size.
Missing wrestling with London's transport problems; stuck in the tiny Bush Capital, he can only pretend.
Peak oil and global warming change fuel choice: not transport mode.
The issue is our modest congestion.
Thankfully, in tiny, lucky Canberra, that remains a trivial engineering problem for generations.
Tom Waring, Ainslie
Don't be fooled
Do not be fooled by the eloquence of Australian authors. They have been repeatedly arguing that Australian authors deserve a fair profit and that Australian literature has great cultural benefits for many of us.
That's difficult (and slippery) to dispute, but it's an attempt to reframe the argument over book import laws in a way that stirs emotions. Unfortunately, such emotions rarely lead to good public policy. The territorial copyright restrictions in place are a market distortion, a barrier to trade and the cause of over-inflated book prices paid by consumers. If an author (or their publisher) wants to boost their profits by printing different editions abroad and pricing them differently, why should Australian law permit them to prevent imports of the foreign-market version? If authors and publishers are too scared that cut-price books from abroad will threaten their royalties and profits in the Australian market, they should stop publishing in or supplying to foreign markets. They will continue to have control over this, and retain the copyright to their own work, regardless of any changes in book importation laws. Despite what they may say, the integrity of copyright itself is not at stake.
By restricting imports in such a way, laws against parallel imports cause the price of all books to be much higher than they otherwise would be. This seems to be mostly for the sake of supporting a few Australian authors who, judging by the shrillness of their recent complaints, would otherwise be unable to remain viable.
I am sick of having to pay through the nose for books in Australia, or pay high freight costs to buy them online from America.
If consumers valued the work of Australian novelists more than that of other authors, they would be willing to pay more for their books.
Brad Ruting, Castle Hill, NSW
Email a friend