In response to Ross Elliott's article Public Transport’s Biggest Problem: The Public

Sorry Ross, but you've missed the mark on this one. The future of work, life and play are increasingly concentrated in higher density compact urban environments, and the infrastructure we need to support productivity and liveability in those environments is increasingly high capacity public transport networks.

The suburbanisation of people and jobs out of urban centres was only a brief epoch of structural change in cities. It was a brief period predicated on the invention of the motor car and the construction of suburban roadways. By any measure the trend in our cities is back towards more compact urban environments. Dubbed the 'great inversion' by Alan Ehrenhalt, the future of our cities is more compact, agglomerated, specialised, and fuelled by moving people, not cars, and creating environments for people to flourish, not places for cars to park.

You correctly note that the nature of work is indeed changing, and becoming more flexible. However, do not mistaken flexibility for suburbanisation, the forces at play are completely different. Since the invention of the telephone it has been claimed that we will no longer need to work or live in dense urban environments. At the turn of the 20th century the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright imagined that technology would allow us to move back to our rural past and live in broadacre cities of low density farm land. Yet the future delivered the complete opposite, what the economist Ed Glaser calls 'the paradox of our time' as the cost of transport has fallen, agglomerations have remained central to our productivity. You simply need to look at development in China and India to realise the 21st century model of productivity is concentrated in dense urban environments, not the 20th century American suburban business parks.

You suggest there has been a structural underinvestment in urban transport, both public and private, and I agree this is true. It is indeed this underinvestment that is congesting our inner cities and forcing jobs out of CBD agglomerations and into suburban business parks. This has undoubtedly not only decreased productivity as agglomeration is lost and production is scattered, but also created greater spatial inequalities within our cities as these jobs have move towards higher skilled labour markets. Congestion is made even worse as workers are increasingly forced to drive in complex criss-cross transport patterns to access isolated suburban locations. Larger cities like Sydney and Melbourne are becoming increasingly divided as employers seek more affordable rent outside our once highly accessible central business districts. This is a trend we should be fighting, not empowering.

You say our cities were design with concentrations of white collar jobs in the centre, however is completely false. Australian cities were never designed for white collar jobs, Australian cities were designed with road and rail infrastructure to service blue collar jobs in ports and warehousing. Our CBD's were the centres of trade when the country rode on the sheep’s back. Over time the range of services offered from these central locations has changed, becoming increasingly white collar, and our road and rail networks have been adapted to moving people rather than freight, yet the centres themselves have only ever been centres of service based economies.

The infrastructure we need for the 21st century is simple. We need high frequency metro rail and bus networks, the kind you deplore, to provide accessibility within our dense inner city urban environments. These places should be designed and built for people, not cars. Secondly we need express rail services between our major city centres and the suburban hinterland, allowing suburban residents to access more specialised, higher paying jobs in centres of agglomeration. And finally we need comprehensive orbital road networks that provide public and private transport within and between our lower density suburban locations.

You will never build your way out of congestion. These network should all be priced to reflect demand, not construction costs, to ensure they are efficiently allocated to the most productive uses. The age of unpriced roads and unearned property value from public transport must come to an end. It's time for motorists and land owners to pay for the benefits they receive from transport infrastructure, only then will we be able to reduce the burden of congestion and fund the transport infrastructure our cities need.