To the surprise of no-one who commutes into the Sydney CBD these days, Sydney’s transport system got tired and emotional and went to take a Bex and a lie down last night just as all the fireworks-trippers were trying to get themselves home.
Listening to ABC local radio this morning to frustrated travellers and various planning authority apologists:
Clover Moore is pointing smugly to the transport success of last weekend’s Chinese New Year celebration, planned and organised by the City of Sydney, as a shiny contrast to the multiple failure points of the Cunard Queens celebration, which seems to have been vaguely noted on a few State government and bureaucratic calendars and then improvised on the night.
Yes, there were extra trains and buses, just as there are for New Year’s Eve. However, as thousands of people decided to drive into town instead of catching public transport, quite probably because there had not been adequate publicity about extra public transport provisions, the buses got caught up in the gridlock and the extra train services were inadequate.
Routine maintenance of the Cross City tunnel went ahead instead of being rescheduled, blocking lanes at a crucial time. Train services around Central Station were disrupted and there appeared to be no extra staff on hand to provide directions, keep timetable boards updated or direct travellers to alternate transport.
Tourists blocked the ferry-wharves and rail-platforms at Circular Quay to get a good view of the QE2, making it impossible for regular commuters to reach their trains and ferries home. Buses changed routes to avoid gridlock around harbour vantage points, meaning that some passengers had to walk home along the normal route and that others waiting for buses to arrive waited in vain.
Many public gathering points around the harbour that are well-policed every New Year’s Eve to manage access, parking and safety had no police presence at all last night, resulting in parked cars blocking access roads and crowds pressing dangerously close to the waters edge in places. Too bad if an emergency vehicle had needed to get through.
In the current climate of fear, this certainly raises issues of how ready is the State and the City administration for any major incident that might require an urgent evacuation of the CBD when they can’t even manage it on a well publicised and allegedly long-planned event. Have all the other big event nights in Sydney only gone well because they weren’t on working days, and thus didn’t have to cope with the normal commuter peak hour as well?
Peak hour commuting in Sydney has been simmering as an issue for a while. Up until now the water issue has dominated as an election talking point, but for this week at least the candidates are going to be talking transport, and how commuting to the CBD is taking ever longer, whether one uses public transport or a private vehicle.
Public transport in Sydney has been in decline ever since the Greiner government introduced the idea that public transport had to “pay its own way” instead of being viewed as an essential infrastructure worth subsidising due to its carrying capacity minimising the expense, inefficiencies, congestion and pollution associated with road infrastructure. As ticket prices rose, fewer passengers therefore less revenue therefore less capital available for maintenance and expansion of the public transport system. Rinse, lather, repeat under successive State governments, the Labor party no better for public transport than the Liberals.
Despite nice shiny baubles like the Millennium trains, new buses, new tunnels etc the underlying system is creaking and leaking at the seams. We need fewer vehicles on our roads, but how is that going to happen when public transport can’t be relied upon due to decades now of cheeseparing funding from the State?
So how can it be fixed and who do we trust to do it?
crossposted at Hoyden About Town
There needs to be more attention paid to how new inner city developments impact on public transport. In my neighbourhood, there are now approx 10,000 more people than in 1999 (according to the ABS), thanks to projects like the conversion of the old Princess Alexandra Hospital into apartments. The number and scheduling of buses hasn’t changed in this time. What used to be a 20 minute door-to-door commute in 1999 is now more like an hour, because the first three or four buses that come along are full and don’t stop. It’s quicker and less stressful to walk; but if I had a car, I’d drive (and a lot of people do).
New housing developments in former industrial areas, such as Waterloo, have bus routes and timetables that are still running around what would have been factory and warehouse shifts (first bus arrives 7:30am, last one departs 5:15pm). If you work or live in Pyrmont, you have a choice on one bus, or the light rail to nowhere.
I’d like to know what happened to the Wran review of buses, which seems to have sunk without a trace. Many of the inner city bus routes replaced the old tram routes, and haven’t been adjusted since trams were phased out, meaning they haven’t responded to changes in where people live and where they need to get to.
Another issue is the number of poeple who work in the CBD. Every so often there are government initiatives to get companies to move to Olympic Park/Parramatta/Chatswood/St Leonards and it never happens. POssibly because the issue with getting transport to those places is even worse.
As for who I trust to fix it, the answer is neither Iemma nor Debnam!
There was also a major 4 car pile-up on the Bridge just after 8pm for which Alan Jones, Virginia Trioli and I all hold the government personally responsible.
Sydney usually does major events pretty well. Last night hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders spontaneously chose to travel into the CBD to look at the big boats and gridlock happened. This might have been because:
It was a week night and the lemming-like rush to the harbour coincided with a big metropolitan centre rush hour.
It was a beautiful balmy evening and there was nothing much on TV
Media had been rabbiting on feverishly all day about how amazing the whole thing was and encouraging people to go down to the harbour (the same media who were screeching this morning about how unspeakable the results of that were) .
Planners underestimated the number of people who would succumb given that it was a week night
People mistook Circular Quay station for a QE2 viewing platform thereby necessitating the closure of the station for a time on safety ground
People were taking photos out of cars and rubber-necking
The Botanic Gardens staff - presumably on direct instructions from the Premier - decided to lock the gates at dusk as normal.
It also mightn’t have been as horrific as people are making out.
Whatever, the hysterical beat-up around this today is extraordinary. My major reaction listening to radio this morning was :stop whinging, for God’s sake.
All that it proves is that we Sydneysiders, care of our shreiking media chorus are World-class whingers.
The beginnning and end of Sydney’s transport problems is car dependence.
The case for a swingeing congestion charge in Sydney is overwhelming now - I wonder who will have the guts to do it? No-one should be driving a car into the CBD unless they have a really urgent need to.
But the wider problems with Sydney’s transport infrastructure can be traced to poor planning and underinvestment over at least 5 decades; it will take many decades to fix if it can be fixed at all. It was the main reason I left Sydney 20 years ago.
Beside the fact that I can’t for the life of me see the attraction of two big boats, this is obviously yet another monumental beat-up designed to embarrass the eminently embarrassable NSW government. We all know that public transport in Sydney is less than great, but everybody simply underestimated the size of the crowd. Hell if I’d been in charge I’d have underestimated it too.
We’d expect the likes of Alan Jones to jump on this, but Ms Trioli’s shrill attention to the blemishes of NSW Labor, and her inability to do likewise with the Federal Govt is hard to take. While she feels the need to balance every anti-Howard statement made by guests with some sort of feeble qualification, she never feels likewise compelled when the criticism is directed at the other side of politics.
Why do I continue to expect better of the ABC?
The ships were marvellous, the twilight picnic delightful, the hundreds of thousands of onlookers all in fine mood.
And then Sydney’s transport happened.
We have got the transport system we deserve, after smugly and complacently all these decades looking down our noses at cities we used to consider “backwards” like KL & Bangkok which now have better transport systems than Sydney.
And it got that way because NSW voters have never sufficiently punished a government for transport failures. Carr/Iemma Labor deserve the boot, but they probably won’t get it because transport just doesn’t seem to be a vote-changer for Sydneysiders.
What’s doubly unfortunate about all this is that the alternative premier Peter Debnam, leading the pack-rabble otherwise known as the NSW Liberals, was shadow transport minister for a number of years and is quite astute in his estimations and approach to NSW transport issues, despite his tub-thumping approach to other social issues. Transport is an issue with which he was and is deeply engaged, and I know this for a fact based on the time he has personally taken to act on and respond to communications from me in recent years. Too bad the NSW Libs are so infested with weirdo religious fanatics and ill-disciplined dilettantes to be effective. Or that NSW Labor can’t recruit Debnam to be Transport Minister….too bad politics always gets in the way of appointing the best person for the job…
A couple of boats buggering up road transport in the city. Can it get any funnier. Bring on the congestion charges etc…………..
Public transport in Sydney got the way it has because most people don’t give a stuff since they’re so obsessed with their cars. And since our politicians lack a quality known as leadership we continue to tinker at the edges of the problem.
The irony is that most of the whingers would be whinging even more if something meaningful was done about Sydney’s transport problems that might inconvenience their precious car dependant lifestyles.
Guess what! Exactly the same thing happened in Auckland a few days ago when the Queen Mary was there. Except, it was a Saturday……I assume that Aucklanders were quick to blame the NSW government.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=0005EE6F-FCC7-15D6-84CF83027AF10106
Perhaps Aucklanders can blame past political infatuations with ideological economic “rationalism” as well, if their public transport infrastructure is screwed as Sydney’s.
Also, surely the Auckland experience should have made the various bureaucrats and Ministers more aware of the potential congestion problems with throngs of sightseers instead of trying the excuse “oh, we didn’t expect sooo many peeeeople”?
“Perhaps Aucklanders can blame past political infatuations with ideological economic “rationalismâ€? as well, if their public transport infrastructure is screwed as Sydney’s.”
It’s actually far worse. There’s virtually no public transport to speak of. Aucklanders are far more car reliant than Sydneysiders and the traffic snarls - in a city a quarter the size of Sydney - are far worse.
“Also, surely the Auckland experience should have made the various bureaucrats and Ministers more aware of the potential congestion problems with throngs of sightseers instead of trying the excuse “oh, we didn’t expect sooo many peeeeopleâ€??”
Take notice of a NZ precedent Tig? C’mon.
Anyway, why would you reasonably expect a few hundred thou people spontaneously deciding to all arrive at one small patch of the CBD, on a week night, at rush hour, to be problem free? The sheer hysteria this morning was out of all proportion to what actually occurred. The horror! The horror!
How “spontaneous” was it really? The Fireworks 2 Queens show was heavily advertised as an attraction in advance, certainly we’d already decided to go well before yesterday (although we didn’t stay for the fireworks as my son can’t stand the noise). But where were the accompanying “leave your car behind” ads al la NYE?
I agree the hysteria is overblown, but I think it’s fair enough to be concerned at the competence of the event planners specifically and the robustness of our transport system generally.
I agree Tig, that a lot of the problem was due to no public directives a la NYE about where to go for the best vantage point, how to get there by public transport and to leave your car at home. That anyone would even think of driving into the city for this event boggles my mind, especially as the traffic and bus chaos started yesterday morning and should have been all over the media, especially radio, by afternoon. Yet I know people who did drive in and then were caught in gridlock getting out until very late. I also know people who were on buses for literally hours getting out at 11pm.
I agree - bring on the congestion charge, it’s done wonders in London.
And open the cross-city tunnel to cyclists.
Lived in Sydney for a year. Hated it. Happily fled back to Canberra.
One of the things that vexed me most about Sydney was the traffic. And I say that as a wholly public transport dependent, dedicated non car owner. I had a relatively short commute but it was not uncommon for me to wait 30 minutes in the morning for a bus which, at peak times, was supposed to run every 10 minutes. Known bottlenecks meant that after your 30 minute wait you’d see three buses, all full.
It was worse coming home in the afternoon, since the bus home left from Circular Quay and had to make its way up George St in the city. They travelled in packs, for safety.
It wasn’t much better on the weekend.
But from where I was living if I wanted to get in to the city itself, the best option - at any time - was the light rail. The folks who run that service have been lobbying for years to have it extend up through the city as far as the Quay, and none of the arguments I’ve ever heard against the idea made a damn bit of sense.
I remain convinced this would be a good idea. It could be helped by turning some of the main north-south thoroughfares in the city proper into one-way streets - say, George St running north to the Quay, and Castereigh St running south to Central. This is an approach which has been adopted in the CBD of just about every other major city in Australia, and it seems to help.
But an idea - as well as, or instead of this approach - would be to ban private vehicles from the CBD. Bugger a congestion charge, let’s get them off the road altogether.
Actually guise, the idea of a light rail loop in the Sydney CBD is probably the worst of all public transport options. It’s the totally insane development solution.
Here are a few arguments against it you’ve obviously not heard:
1. It wouldn’t leave the CBD and go into the suburbs where people actually live, as the cityrail trains and buses do. Passengers would have to break trips with another change, at Central or Wynyard.
2. It’d depend on removing car/truck traffic from the track streets. Sydney isn’t Melbourne, the city streets are half as wide at the widest. I’m not against that solution, or congestion, I’m just saying what’d need to be done. As for Canberra, do you even *have* peak hour?
3. The rail cars would inevitably be slower than the buses. It’s not high level maths; trams can’t overtake each other, you can’t have express trams without multiple tracks in each direction, and one slow tram plugs up the flow all the way back. If one single tram breaks down, the whole loop stops.
4. Light rail can’t be rerouted around construction work, or put on special routes for events (like the NRL grand final, NYE, Mardi Gras, or a big fucking boat)
4. The light rail cars as used in the metro light rail carry about three times as many passengers as a full bus; for many dozens of times the cost per carriage. Hey, it’s up to you.
5. What’s the problem with getting from Circular Quay to Central anyway? Takes me under half an hour on foot during peak hour. Carrying all of my work gear.
I’m with Geoff, what a load of whingeing all this stuff is. Harden the fuck up, Sydney.
The inner-Sydney light rail “debate” seems opaque to me.
Firstly, why do people want a different way of getting around the CBD or inner city? Probably because the heavy rail is a suburban mass train system and not that conducive to getting people around the inner city and the bus system is subject to delays as it uses the same system as cars and other vehicles do (the roads).
So what is wanted - a faster more efficient way of moving people around the CBD at least and maybe the inner city as well (which I’d prefer). Light rail seems to be the favourite catchcry. But light rail isn’t the only way of doing this, what’s wanted is just some transport system that works.
Let’s look at light rail for the moment. Assume that the light rail tracks are put on top of a couple of roads in the CBD. The roads are currently very narrow and there’s not much scope to make new lanes for the light rail, so let’s assume that the tracks are put on top of an existing lane of traffic (which might sometimes be a lane of parking).
If cars can drive on this lane along with the light rail trams, then the trams will be subject to being caught up in traffic just as buses are at the moment. If only trams are allowed to drive on these lanes then they won’t be caught up in traffic as much (they’ll only be caught up at traffic lights and other trams), but they will take up an entire existing lane of the road (unless the lanes are squeezed aside for the light rail). In either of these situations, the positives of introducing light rail are accompanied by negatives - either the trams are still caught up in traffic like buses are at the moment, or the non-tram capacity of the road is decreased significantly.
Of course, perhaps parts of footpaths could be reclaimed so that an extra lane for trams could be created.
If you just wanted a lane dedicated to light rail, you might as well just have lanes dedicated to buses and not allow any other vehicles on them.
The more substantive issue is whether the light-rail system is separate from the existing road and rail system, and so not subject to delays in either. This seems to me to be the starting point. I’d like a “light rail” system (or whatever it is) to be separate from the road and rail systems (although with possible interlinks of course) so that delays in one don’t mean delays in another.
You could have an underground/overground light rail/monorail/other system going north-south and east-west through the CBD and through to north sydney & st leonards, and south to redfern/waterloo/alexandria, and east to edgecliff/bondi/SE suburbs and west to balmain/newton/stanmore/marrickville, or wherever you wanted it go. Of course, it would cost a lot but many cities have created these systems.
The solution is to go back in time and shoot the retard who decided to get rid of light rail and allow cars in there in the first place.
Sorry Sydneysiders, the horse (-less carriage) has bolted.
I personally the main problem when talking about public transport is that it is focused about getting to the Sydney CBD. Not everyone and a growing proportion of people won’t be working in the CBD or regularly going there. We need to deal with that especially as there has been a policy of encouraging decentralisation in Sydney under the Labor Government and the development of other CBDs in places like Parramatta, Liverpool etc.
“or put on special routes for events (like the NRL grand final, NYE, Mardi Gras, or a big fucking boat)”
And Mardi Gras is on tomorrow week. Given the febrile, whiny-assed Sydney zetgeist, stand by for the Trioli/Jones Whinge Generator to fire up on the post-parade Monday morning airwaves with stories of entire extended families trapped in a vast traffic jam horror as a bunch of drag queens, leather-persons and local body politicians just meandered up Oxford St - “they didn’t seem to care, Virginia, that we were going to be an hour and seventeen minutes later than usual in getting home and where was the Premier, Virginia, where was the Premier?”
Senhor da Gama, Canberra does indeed have a peak hour. It used to be a peak quarter hour but as the Public Service has grown more fat and bloated the morning rush has become gradually worse. Not major metropolis worse, but worse.
Fortunately, Canberra is blessed with a pretty good bus system, which includes strategically placed bus lanes. Unlike Sydney, these are not rendered completely useless by on-street parking. So to paraphrase Cap’n Jack Sparrow, I love peak hour; I love tearing my gaze away from the newspaper to look down on all the single-occupant cars as my bus goes whizzing by.
And just like a pirate, he pinched the line (from Douglas Adams, on deadlines).
Geoff: I’ll await the presser from Rev. Nile’s office. Homosexuality Causes Traffic Chaos? Dykes On Bikes Clog Streets? God Hates Traffic Jams?
what, you mean like introducing the anti-hoon laws?
You have got to be kidding. Solving your problems, or even merely addressing them, does not mean he knows how to solve a state or city transport problem.
Debnam knows sfa about transport. Do the liberals even have a transport policy?
girlgenius is spot on with her comment regarding the distributions of the population and the shifting demands on the transport infrastructure. Where is the fuinded research into suburban demographics and capacity of public transport?
There was a traffic jam the other night because they are all right wing libertarians who follow the idiotic transport policy of the LDP. lol
No doubt you’re joking to make a point - but yes, if you were taking private transport that night, you may have had to deal with the collective consequences of you and a lot of other people taking private transport.
Maybe next time people might act differently after this experience.
I’ve been much encouraged by the innate good sense of Sydneysiders in SMH letters columns and the like as they’ve laughed off the big boat beatup.
“Get over it” has been the clear and penetrating message. And may it penetrate as far as Trioli and Jones whose foam flecked, hair sticking to sweaty-faced rants on the morning after were absurdly overblown.
If only the ministers concerned had the good sense to tell them both to get stuffed.
aah La manolo blahnik Trioli - overwrought inner city princess
best move we ever made exporting her
upped the average intelligence of both cities