First NOP Workshop

The first workshop occurred in September 2011. It was attended by senior Council A staff (i.e. Planning Director), four Council A staff (i.e. project and junior managers), and three VicRoads staff (i.e. project and junior managers).

The objective of the first NOP workshop was for Council A staff to reiterate their concerns regarding their inability to pro-actively improve public transport infrastructure and services. The starting point for the NOP exercise stemmed from a letter written by the Council’s Director for Planning (Council letter, 17 June 2011). The June letter was a follow-up from a previous meeting between VicRoads and Council’s CEO and Director of Infrastructure. In that meeting, Council had discussed their concerns regarding a significant redevelopment projected to occur and identified in the council’s recently adopted Industrial Land Management Strategy. Several large redevelopment sites were slated to occur along one of Council’s two primary road corridors. Development would likely occur in short bursts over a relatively short-time frame. Council wanted to engage SmartRoads with the aim of strategically mitigating impacts from the redevelopment. The letter detailed the need to develop “traffic improvements and associated cost estimates” and ensure that Council’s “long term strategic planning”

could be “effectively undertaken and evaluated” (Council letter, 17 June 2011).

Experience had led Council staff to conclude that requiring developers to undertake detailed traffic studies when submitting development proposals for review, could help staff develop stronger business cases to help in legal fights that arose from developers challenging Council in VCAT. Thus, Council A staff sought assistance from VicRoads to pre-empt potential issues related to future development over the next decade, such as increased “rat-running” generated from new developments, which given existing public transport infrastructure, almost certainly would bring increased car traffic.²² 8.1.1 Governance and road space allocation

To place the first NOP workshop in context, we briefly trace aspects of governance of road space allocation. For example, Chapter 4 revealed how rules and politics impact road space allocation. These aspects provided fuel for Council A to participate in the NOP exercise. Yet, as we see later in this chapter, the strong and persistent role that state governments have in road space allocation, compounded by issues stemming from altered state-policy agendas and restructuring of state authorities generated from continual change of state governments, help create a professional setting where local governments question the utility of engaging with processes such as SmartRoads.

22 Rat running is a colloquial term. It refers to the practice of motorists driving through principally residential areas and on more quiet residential roads, in order to avoid more congested roads.

At the time of writing, SmartRoads had yet to be formally adopted by all 79 local councils within Victoria. Perhaps even more importantly, SmartRoads had yet to become accepted by all senior VicRoads decision makers. Evidence from interviews with transport planners in the key positions of creating, refining and engaging SmartRoads indicates that the process has yet to become formalised within VicRoads’

organisational conventions. Additionally, road measures identified from the process do not immediately result in such measures being automatically funded.

Measures identified from processes and decision-making frameworks like SmartRoads are confined by existing funding arrangements within VicRoads. As such, measures identified require a business to be developed and put forward based on existing Business Area Plans and Work Plans. As the Council A’s VicRoads liaison explained during interview, VicRoads Strategic Directions and Annual Business Plans were tied to the state’s policy strategies, as well as VicRoads Annual Business Plan. VicRoads currently did not have a “funding bucket for congestion projects… we get funding for road safety projects… and for freight… but congestion-related project were more difficult (Participant 52). The novelty of SmartRoads meant it had yet to be mainstreamed within existing business plans. Further, measures most often identified from engaging SmartRoads did not reflect traditional measures such as expanding road space, but instead are less obvious, like altering traffic signal operations. Low-cost measures such as altering traffic signal operations (which the VicRoads liaison referred to as a congestion-related project), therefore had to compete with larger, more costly and more traditional transport measures. Consequently, the process provided stakeholders the capacity to develop a set of measures, but remained constrained by established funding channels, premised on a traditional view of transport planning.

The issue of state funding was also raised during interviews with Council A’s Director of Planning and Director of Infrastructure. The Director of Infrastructure stated emphatically, “Is there extra money going to be put in to do certain things? No, I know that for a fact. So my view is what is the point of the exercise?” (Participant 59). The Director had been with Council for over 11 years, and therefore the comments reflect agitation in going through different state channels to resolve both simple and more complex road space allocation issues.

8.1.2 Governance and the NOP workshop

Returning back to the first NOP workshop, from an outsider’s perspective, it became apparent that as the NOP exercise unfolded the workshop’s scope (as detailed in the

June Council letter) would only partly reconcile two competing interests. This finding further supports understanding how constitutive elements intersect emerges from engaging various road space allocation tensions.

The aim of the NOP exercise was not to identify solutions but to obtain consensus between Council and VicRoads regarding the Road Use Hierarchy. The co-presence of senior decision makers helped ensure consensus was reached. The ability of senior decision makers (both within VicRoads and Council) to commit large blocks of time to the NOP exercise was, therefore, critical to ensuring the process succeeded. Yet, Council A staff, particularly senior staff, conveyed a feeling during interview of a need for local governments to be viewed by state authorities as participating in processes such as SmartRoads to ensure compliance; and therefore ensure eligibility for state funding. A theme common to interviews with local government transport planners was that not all processes lead to improvement, and instead often reflected more bureaucratic hurdles.