In the Woden town centre construction workers are already on site getting ready to tear down the 50-year-old bus interchange but no passengers conveyed on rails from the city centre will arrive for years.

The National Capital Authority this week said a works approval was well in the distance, let alone a completed project.

The Canberra Liberals, confined to the territory's political wilderness since 2001, made their first major policy announcement for the 2024 election on Monday: they would halt light rail to Woden, which the party reckoned would avoid a $3 billion price tag.

Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee promised, at some unspecified date in the future, the party would release a comprehensive transport plan.

"Based on the information that we do have to date, we cannot see how this stacks up and we cannot in all good conscience support it," Ms Lee said. Confirmation of her party's reversed position on light rail came shortly after Ms Lee called it a "Labor-Greens white elephant".

It's a clear point of difference with Labor and the Greens, whose progressive coalition has been re-endorsed at repeated elections with unwavering support for light rail.

The Liberals have drawn the election's first battle line: another bout over a project that was endorsed by the public - despite its complexity and despite its expense - at two elections. What chance do they have?

Nostalgia is a potent political force, even in a young capital city with an ever-changing population. A generation of Canberrans is prone to reminiscing about the good old days: world-class roads, congestion-free running into the city, acres of open-air car parks, long lost to high-rise buildings. These were the halcyon days before self-government brought a reality check and forced the capital's population to pay for its own for infrastructure, transport and housing.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr's own frustration with this reminiscing is well known. Almost five years ago, he had a go at the "small-town, backwards, 1940s mindset" of a "certain generation of Canberrans" opposed to height restrictions in the town centres.

Indeed, the government has no intention of using light rail to service sprawling, low-density suburbs of three-bedroom brick-veneer govies. Its vision for travel by rail is one of medium- to high-density housing in corridors that offer easy access to rapid public transport for work and recreation, fitting the growing number of residents of one of Australia's fastest growing cities into its finite territorial border and moving them about more efficiently.

The Canberra Liberals talk repeatedly about their desire to deliver "housing choice" and more blocks for detached housing. Consultants have told the government this costs more than urban infill sites, but the opposition has insisted its greenfield expansion vision will help address housing affordability.

The debate over light rail is really a battle for the soul of the city, fought between the past and a particular, dominant vision for the future.

Light rail has never been the cheapest option to improve public transport in Canberra. Bus rapid transit would be a cheaper way to improve the public transport link between the city and Woden, which the Productivity Commission pointed out in a submission to a 2018 federal parliamentary inquiry into the project.

Trackless trams, a technology pioneered in China which is said to deliver the ride quality of light rail with rubber tyres on vehicles reminiscent of a light rail system, would cost a tenth of a light rail system, advocates say. But the ACT government argues most of the cost of a light rail system is not actually the rails: moving underground services and installing a reinforced alignment is a significant cost of the project.

While work has already begun to move underground services on London Circuit, it is unclear what the expense of this process would be along the alignment between the parliamentary triangle and Woden.

The Brisbane Metro system, which will use battery-electric tram-like vehicles, will cost $1.244 billion for a 21-kilometre service. It was announced in 2016 and will not be fully operational until late 2024. The vehicles need dedicated right of ways, like Brisbane's existing busways, of which Canberra does not have an equivalent.

The trackless tram system in Zhuzhou, China - frequently held up as proof of the system's potential - has also not run without issue: road deformation at the stations under the weight of the vehicles suggests further reinforcement is required than just putting rubber-tyre tram-style vehicles on existing roads.

The City of Sterling in Perth switched to a trackless tram proposal for a 7-kilometre route in March 2020 and completed a business case in June 2022. That business case has not been published but it is thought the network would have less capacity than Canberra's existing light rail system. The City of Sterling system has been advertised as having capacity for 2000 people an hour, less than the ACT's 3100 people-an-hour capacity on light rail.

The ACT government also wants to deliver a continuous route from Gungahlin to Woden, and eventually beyond. Public transport passengers often report the most annoying thing in a journey is having to change unnecessarily between transport modes.

Forcing people to change at the city onto a trackless tram, or a rapid electric bus of some other kind, would defeat the purpose and ultimately reduce the usefulness of the first light rail stage.

Non-rail technology for routes that intersect the north-south line where passengers would need to change to make a connection anyway would be a different consideration.

The number of young people - those aged between 18 and 26 - with a driver licence of any type in the ACT has fallen almost 6 per cent since January 2019 from 49,055 to 46,244, data from the territory government shows. By itself, it isn't a huge drop, but the population has also grown in that time.

Is a cohort of younger people less inclined to drive, and shown nationally to be far less likely to vote for conservative parties than past generations at the same age, going to back a Canberra Liberals vision for a city without an expanding light rail network?

And it's not just the young. Property developers and investors have made significant decisions based on the intended light rail route to Woden. (The increase in land value is a key component for the government, despite concerns in the way it is accounted for raised by the Auditor-General: unimproved values of blocks within the first-stage light rail corridor grew by 35.2 per cent between 2011 and 2018, higher than the average growth of 21.7 per cent across the ACT.)

A 2021 uComms poll commissioned by the Australia Institute, a progressive think tank, found 63 per cent of Canberrans supported extending the light rail to Woden, while 32.9 per cent opposed the project. The poll of 1057 Canberrans found overall 41.2 per cent of respondents "strongly supported" the project, while 53.7 per cent of self-identified Liberal voters opposed the project. More than a quarter of Liberal voters said they strongly supported light rail to Woden.

Support for the Canberra Liberals has fallen at the last two ACT elections, but some of the party faithful hope a change in federal government and a willingness to argue an alternative policy case will help their chances in 2024.

But it was curious the Canberra Liberals, having ditched light rail due to the complexity and expense and the vague timeline, were quick to say a new Civic stadium proposal taken to the ACT and federal governments was "firmly on the table". That proposal for a 30,000 seat venue suggests one of the next steps must be a "a critical review of district-wide parking strategies and minimums should be undertaken, given the future of light rail in the area".

"Stadia should always be located near public transport to encourage attendance at events and provide a sustainable and cost-effective means of travel for patrons," the 36-page proposal says.

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The Canberra Liberals' forthcoming transport plan would need to address how to move 30,000 sports fans in and out of the city without rows and rows of open-air car parking if they are to credibly support the proposal.

Opposing light rail seems at this stage to be a pitch directed at people who don't catch public transport or want to live without a car rather than putting forward a proper public transport alternative.

The government has been put on notice, two years out from the next election, that it really ought to come to the community with a ball-park figure on the cost of light rail to Woden and when the first service might arrive.

The capital's voters have shown their willingness to write cheques for the project, but it is a tall order to request a completely blank one in 2024.

The government is already committed to expanding the light rail depot and fitting its vehicles with batteries in readiness for wire-free travel in the parliamentary triangle.

There have always been reasonably held arguments against light rail - about its complexity and about its expense - but they have lost every time they have been put to Canberrans at an election.

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