Parramatta City Council has advocated development of a series of radial light rail routes for Parramatta, and the NSW Government has supported the proposal by committing to undertake a detailed feasibility study and reserving $400 million for future works. List and critically assess the benefits attributed to the project by Council. To accompany your answer, draw a diagram (a hand drawn sketch is acceptable), illustrating what you think the key relationships might be between the proposed light rail routes, key land-uses and activity centers in the area. To support your assessment, describe what changes to patterns of land-use you think might occur in response to this new mode of transport. Information regarding the Western Sydney Light Rail proposal can be found here: The Independent Pricing & Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) is the independent regulatory body that determines maximum prices for retail energy, water and transport services in NSW including the maximum fares for public transport services like trains, buses and ferries. Historically, fares paid by public transport users cover only a small portion of the total cost of providing public transport services (about 30% for trains, 40% for buses and 65% for ferries). The NSW Government pays the remainder and so subsidises public transport. The justification for doing this is that external benefits to society generally, including lower road congestion, lower air pollution and lower greenhouse gas emissions are valuable to the economy as a whole and so it is appropriate they be subsidised. For this reason, IPART estimates the external benefits of public transport to help set maximum public transport fares. IPART is currently asking for public comment on how it estimates the external benefits of public transport services including whether or not productivity gains — or economic agglomeration effects — should also be included as an external benefit of public transport (see pp. 36–39 of the IPART report). What are your views on this question? What do you think would happen if economic agglomeration effects were included in IPART's estimates of external benefits from public transport? What do you think the eventual consequences would be for public transport fares and user demand if IPART did include them? In recent years, many governments have advocated a 'customer service' approach to public transport service provision, while shifting away from the old 'command & control' approach. This new approach is embodied in the European standard for public transport (EN13816). A key concept in the standard is the Service Quality Loop (see p. 6). Describe the Service Quality Loop (SQL) and explain why it emphasises the difference between the service provider view and the customer view. What might transport professionals do differently if thinking about and operating services using the SQL? Give an example of an improvement to a public transport service that you think would improve customer perception and experience but would not necessarily make any difference to the performance measures that service providers see as important goal/s.