Reece Waldock: polite but virtually invisible

Transport tsar Reece Waldock wields a lot of power. As the head of WA’s three transport departments — Main Roads, the Public Transport Authority and the Department of Transport — he is responsible for our roads, our trains and buses, our taxis … and for spending billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money every year.

But since his appointment five years ago, things have not gone smoothly. City congestion has got worse, trains have got overcrowded and the local taxi industry is facing the biggest upheaval in its history.

The only constant has been WA’s road fatality rate — it is still the worst in the country, with unprecedented numbers of bicycle and motorcycle road deaths.

So, it makes sense for The West Australian to want to speak to Mr Waldock on these and many other transport issues. We have been asking Mr Waldock for a face-to-face interview for about two years without receiving a direct yes or no.

That was until a fortnight ago when the newspaper received an official response. “Mr Waldock would like to politely decline your request for an interview,” it read. So the many questions we wanted to put to Mr Waldock will not get asked. And, more importantly, will not get answered.

Mr Waldock has been a senior executive within the WA public service since the early 1990s. During his time in the top role, he has made few media appearances. Usually it is left to departmental flak-catchers to front the cameras and microphones.

There is a general perception that Perth’s congestion crisis caught our transport bureaucrats by surprise. At a 2013 business lunch, Mr Waldock admitted they were consistently “playing catch up” in the fight against the problem. But should the current congestion levels in car-loving Perth have been foreseen?

We would have liked to ask Mr Waldock about this lack of foresight but he politely declined our request for an interview.

Mr Waldock has overseen some huge road projects. One was the $350 million widening of 4.2km of Great Eastern Highway — the most expensive road upgrade in Perth’s history. It was a “congestion-busting” project designed to cater for about 55,000 vehicles a day.

Although things improved when it first opened, peak-hour traffic flow on Great Eastern Highway — particularly in the morning — has returned to gridlock, forcing many motorists to revert to rat-runs through the streets of Belmont.

It is a classic illustration that building bigger and more roads does not always ease congestion. As American sociologist Lewis Mumford said in 1955: “Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.”

We would have liked to ask Mr Waldock about WA’s “build more roads” philosophy and whether he agreed with Mr Mumford’s 60-year-old adage, but he politely declined our request for an interview.

Gateway WA is a $1 billion project on the southern edge of the Perth Airport. It is expected to be finished by the middle of next year. There will be 165km of road lanes and 11 bridges built, involving the laying of 460,000 tonnes of asphalt, and 21km of bike paths built. Yet critics have bemoaned that no provision is being made for public transport — perhaps a light or heavy rail line. We would have liked to ask Mr Waldock about this omission but he politely declined our request for an interview.

The local taxi industry has had a poor reputation for years. Attempts to improve standards have been hampered by the recent arrival of international ride-sharing company Uber, offering a “more efficient, taxi-like service” and thumbing its nose at WA’s taxi regulations.

A review by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Allan Fels and Monash University economist David Cousins found Uber’s “open non-compliance” was a sign of “weakness” by the State Government. Professor Cousins said the Government should have changed the regulations several years ago instead of “scrambling to catch up”.

We would have liked to ask Mr Waldock about this lack of foresight in dealing with ride-sharing companies such as Uber, but he politely declined our request for an interview.

Over the past two years, The West Australian has received several letters from “concerned Main Roads staff” making a number of accusations about decisions made within the department. They say money is being spent on unnecessary consultants brought in to carry out “management reviews on previous management reviews”. They also claim money is being spent on unnecessary overseas travel, with one executive allegedly going on an overseas study tour — to the country “where he came from” — and staying on for a holiday.

The West Australian sought confirmation about these consultants and overseas travel by making applications under freedom of information laws to the department and the Transport Minister’s office. In each case, we were referred to out-of-date parliamentary reports. We would have liked to ask Mr Waldock about his use of outside consultants and the overseas travel of his executives, but he politely declined our request for an interview.

In a column last year, The West’s State political editor Gareth Parker wrote how former transport minister Troy Buswell used to make Mr Waldock “the butt of his jokes” during speeches and events in front of industry audiences.

“They always got a laugh from the crowd but the ribbings — which had a tinge of putdown — were not always fair on a bureaucrat who had no choice but to yuck it up along with his boss,” Parker wrote.

We would have liked to ask Mr Waldock about his relationship with Government, the three ministers he has worked for and the rumours swirling around transport circles that he will not be in the job by the end of this year, but he politely declined our request for an interview.

There are also Perth’s poorly co-ordinated traffic lights, the road maintenance backlog, the driving test queues and the lack of bike paths in key areas.

We would have liked to ask Mr Waldock about all these issues, but he politely declined our request for an interview.