The report includes comments on financial audits of government agencies in the Transport and Ports sectors. The audit of corporations’ financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2011 resulted in unmodified audit opinions within the Independent Auditor’s Reports. A key recommendation from the report is that Sydney Ports Corporation should continue working with other government authorities and industry stakeholders to improve the effectiveness of program initiatives for increasing container freight movements by rail. The Corporation should review the underlying causes hindering growth in the rail mode and develop and implement strategies to address the unfavourable trend.

The audit concluded that the RTA’s licence testing and regulation has been generally effective in ensuring the safety of young drivers. There has been a significant reduction in crash and fatality rates involving young drivers over the last decade, more so than for drivers 26 years and older. This has coincided with the introduction by the RTA of an enhanced GLS. International and national research has demonstrated graduated licensing systems to be effective in reducing crashes and saving lives. Despite these improvements, young drivers are more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than other drivers.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #217 - released 19 October 2011

We found that fixed speed cameras were generally located in areas with high road safety risk. Likewise, safety cameras that enforced speed limits were initially placed at high risk sites. However as all safety cameras will now enforce speed, RTA no longer uses evidence of a speeding problem to select these sites. Overall, total crashes and injuries each fell 26 per cent, and fatalities fell by more than two-thirds, in the three years after the installation of fixed speed camera. Long term trends show that these reductions have been maintained, the average number of speeding fines per fixed and safety cameras declines over time and fixed and safety speed cameras were located in areas with high road safety risk.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #215 - released 27 July 2011

Barangaroo is an ambitious and significant development on Government-owned Sydney Harbour foreshore. Construction on the 22 hectare CBD site is expected to take 12 years to 2023. Developer contributions to Government of $1 billion are to provide for public domain and other Government development costs, including a six hectare Headland Park. When completed the precinct is to service an anticipated 26,000 workers and residents and up to 33,000 visitors a day. The Auditor-General concluded that while there was extensive transport planning and extensive documentation supporting Government financial forecasts, considerable risks remain for the implementation of the Barangaroo project. 

Parliamentary reference - Report number #214 - released 15 June 2011

This audit focuses on the M4 handback. It looks at whether the road will be in good condition when the State gets it back, and whether it will cope with the extra traffic after the toll is removed. These are critical issues for taxpayers and motorists. Taxpayers don’t want to be responsible for a large repair bill and motorists don’t want to be stuck in traffic jams.

To ensure that future private sector partnerships (PPP) deal adequately with handback, we recommend that the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA):

• ensure deeds spell out an appropriate inspection and testing program to determine repairs required to bring roads up to a satisfactory condition at handback (p.11)
• ensure deeds link condition standards and maintenance approaches to changing industry standards and approaches over the life of the PPP (p.11)
• consider including in deeds a requirement that operators provide a performance bond or similar security over the cost of handback repairs (p.11)
• review the lessons learnt from the M4 tollway handback and determine whether it should seek to negotiate changes to existing tollway deeds to better deal with handback, by June 2010 (p.11)

Parliamentary reference - Report number #193 - released 27 October 2009

The RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) approach to detecting and enforcing heavy vehicle safety has produced mixed results. There have been overall decreases in the number of crashes and people killed and injured in crashes involving heavy vehicles between 2002 and 2007. However, the number of crashes and the number of people injured have increased between 2006 and 2007.

We recognise that the RTA is unable to prevent all crashes. However, we consider that the RTA could do more to improve its ability to detect and respond to high risk heavy vehicles travelling on our roads.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #187 - released 13 May 2009

Between 2004 and 2006, the number of signalling failures, signalling downtime and the number of trains delayed as a result of signal failures all fell. RailCorp’s on-time running performance improved over the same period. The fall in failures is a clear indication of improved performance. Changes in the definition of on-time and to the timetable during 2005 and 2006 however make it difficult to determine whether improvements in response downtime and signalling delays are due to a true performance improvement. To build upon this strong base, RailCorp needs to determine with more confidence the number and duration of signalling failures the network can tolerate without impacting on service levels.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #170 - released 15 August 2007

We see considerable potential for the Ministry of Transport to plan and manage interchanges more effectively, so as to make better use of our public transport network. We believe that the Ministry now needs to focus more on multi-modal transport planning and interchange performance. It needs to assign responsibility for the coordination and oversight of inter-modal operations to an entity resourced for the purpose. Without this it will continue to be very difficult to identify and address unmet needs, seek and secure stakeholder funding, and monitor and evaluate system performance.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #168 - released 6 June 2007