James Limnios: It’s time to make good on ‘Metronet on the Swan’ promise

With the dust settling on the recent State election, it is timely to focus on one of the most important election promises made during the campaign that will totally transform our city in the years to come.

This election pledge by the Labor Party was to start construction on an expanded ferry service to be known as “Metronet on the Swan.”

The newly re-elected Labor State Government has been given a mandate and should make the Metronet on the Swan one of their first priorities for 2025 as it was a sleeper issue that proved to be a vote winner.

The strong support Labor received from riverside suburbs such as South Perth was due in part to their $107 million pledge to build five new electric ferries and two additional ferry stops at Applecross and Matilda Bay.

In contrast, the Liberal Party effectively finished their election campaign by deferring this key transport and light infrastructure project when they announced their costings.

Voters were given a clear choice, and they enthusiastically endorsed the ferry plan, which is the missing link in our public transport system.

Last year I urged the State Government to put in place the first stage of an expanded ferry service as a key platform of its public transport initiative to deal with Perth’s surging population.

I argued that this plan would alleviate road congestion around the inner-city area due to the pressure on our roads as a result of our massive population growth as well as stimulate much-needed new infill housing development in the inner-city area.

In addition, I supported the expansion of our ferry service as a catalyst to encourage higher density, architecturally tasteful living nodes around our inner-city river areas that will boost our housing supply for our spiralling population and support our much-needed downsizer population.

This push for an expanded ferry service has been quietly gaining momentum in recent years because more people saw it have key benefits that also included promoting tourism which would help to diversify our economy.

Expanding ferry services has been a tourism winner for other great cities throughout the world who now enjoy a world with a well-developed river ferry system.

Despite the fact that our city has been built around one of the most beautiful waterways in the world it has been a national embarrassment that we have still only one ferry service — the Mends Street ferry service — that was established nearly 130 years ago when the population of the city was only 190, 000 compared to more than 2 million people today.

We are now correcting this embarrassment with Metronet on the Swan.

However, I also strongly believe that the Labor State Government should take an even more ambitious approach to Metronet on the Swan and consider adding additional ferry stops such as at Burwood/Belmont and Maylands.

These additional stops are critical to making Metronet on the Swan an outstanding success and will open up even more areas around the inner city for infill housing.

The new stops will also give Metronet on the Swan sufficient scale to make the construction of additional ferries financially viable.

This in turn will be a boom for local manufacturing and job creation as the State Government has promised that the new electric ferries will be locally manufactured.

James Limnios, Managing Director of Limnios Property Group.