Innovative or expensive? Light rail or improved bus system? Now or later?
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Capital Metro has divided Canberra's public transport experts who can't agree on whether it's a necessary infrastructure project or a poorly-designed waste of money.
Australian National University public transport expert David Bissell said Canberra's public transport system needed to be fixed and the light rail was an innovative solution.
He said while he agreed it was expensive, light rail had long-term benefits which hadn't even been discussed yet.
"What you have to remember is transport projects have incredibly long lifetimes relative to electoral cycles... those kinds of contradictory time scales, election cycles and infrastructure provision, is one of the biggest problems for projects like this," Dr Bissell said.
He said the benefits of a popular, efficient method of transport like the light rail couldn't be measured in dollars.
"What I've been seeing during my research in Sydney has proved exactly that... you put new coaches and new trains on and ridership goes up because you feel better cared for.
"The tram solution in Canberra is kind of part of that."
But University of Canberra associate professor of economics, Cameron Gordon, said light rail was too expensive to build, too expensive to operate and could lead to reduced funding for buses.
He said he'd rather see a cheaper, beefed-up ACTION bus service to fix public transport system woes.
"I'm concerned what might happen is we build this thing, it will be very expensive to operate and we might end up cutting bus services to keep it going.
"That's a real concern because you can make your system worse if you just have this corridor serviced but cut your bus services to pay for it."
Professor Gordon said since government spending was finite, better outcomes could be achieved for less money with a rapid bus service.
"The amount of money you're spending on that capital project and the amount you'd need to operate it – I imagine what sort of bus service we could get if we invested in that service. My view is you'd get a lot more benefit, wider across Canberra," he said.
