SMH Transport articles

[ozbob]

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Blue Mountains snow: Blackheath Station overnight. Photo by Louise Rossiter. #SydneyStorm

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Sydney public transport: fewer complaints

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Blacktown makes bid for Gough Whitlam's name for suburb and station

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Higher fares, toll roads, to pay for better transport services: McKell Institute

[#Metro]

So often the people who are in the government are no smarter than the average joe about what they are actually managing. Think tanks are often the same. For example, much of BCC are motorists, the Lord Mayor is a motorist and that thinking pervades all the way down, which is why we see buses being operated like they were oversized public cars, because that's their implicit conception.

Firsty, whether an operation is profitable or not profitable tells us nothing about what direction to take.
Should the government buy McDonalds as it generates an ongoing return on investment, to fund other services?

The second issue is that the problem has been defined or assumed as lack of infrastructure. Is this really the case?
Sydney has one of the largest rail network in the world, with over 300 stations. Toronto has around 69. Perth also has fewer.

The elephant in the room is planning, not infrastructure, reform. Just spending more money on ever more expensive infrastructure is the lazy way to get results. A basic LRT project will easily set you back $2Billion.

My opinion is that there is absolutely enormous mind blowing levels of waste within the Sydney bus network due to not having a systemwide comprehensive bus review.

See ---> http://www.humantransit.org/2010/11/connections-vs-complexity.html

The other thing is ATP/DOO. Rollout of ATP/DOO will permit expansion of service as well as enhanced savings. Much of the cost of transit operation is just paying the drivers to drive.

Genuine network reform, bus and rail, will permit fares to be reformed, which in turn will attact large numbers of paying passengers which will reduce the subsidy while increasing service in a positive cycle.

[riccardo]

The number of rail stations is a funny way to measure the size of the network. If anything it is a liability. Do you really want a Casula or Telopea?

[riccardo]

And why shoudn't s rail operation aim for profitability? Won't always get there, but planning to lose billions will get you to that outcome every time.

[SurfRail]

Yes - unfortunately Geebung or Chelmer are never going to pull the weight of Spadina or Yonge, so I'm not sure why we keep pushing this line.

[#Metro]

If you want to reach the masses, whatever you're using needs to be cheap. Buses do that.
A great amount of money going in appears to  be locked up in inefficiencies and waste really.

The TTC manages to get cost recoveries of around 70% in urban settings that are not that different to say a city the size of Melbourne or Sydney.
They have an intensively worked core rail network which runs trains every 3-5 minutes all day. They have a bus network that then feeds into the rail network.

Perth has taken this model and adapted it for low density use, by altering station spacings. The reasoning is that if you have low density, you need to make the catchment larger, and you can do this by making the trains faster by alterin the station spacing and using buses to feed into key interchange points along the rail lines. We can see this effect by comparing it to a control city, Adelaide. Perth has around 5x the passengers on rail than Adelaide does, https://www.bitre.gov.au/events/2009/files/2009_Infrastructure_Colloquium_Peter_Martinovich.pdf

It is difficult to believe a city like Melbourne or Sydney, both with large population and high densities (particularly in the case of Sydney) still has problems reorganising things to be effective. At least in the Melbourne case, the penny has dropped and the move to trains every 10 minutes on as many lines as possible is working well.

If you look at the Sydney Rail operations to the Melbourne one, Sydney's trains cost 2x more to operate than Melbournes. I think the reason there is the staff costs are 2x due to DOO operating in Melbourne and not Sydney. Sydney is now rolling out ATP.



Image: Hale and Charles, http://www.worldtransitresearch.info/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5848&context=research

The Sydney bus network is also a complete mess, which also has the Brisbane disease.

Reform in the Brisbane case will see trains run express, all day, to Ipswich, stopping only at Darra and Indooroopilly, from first service to last service, all day and including weekends; 15 minutes trains to Springfield.

So the message is simple: Efficiency and abundance are two sides of the same coin.

[Old Northern Road]

Sydney has one of the largest rail network in the world, with over 300 stations. Toronto has around 69. Perth also has fewer.

You can't be serious. First of all Sydney has 176 heavy rail stations not 300. According to Wikipedia Tokyo has 2,210 stations (although some stations are counted more than once due to being served by more than one operator). There are almost as many lines in Tokyo as there are stations in Sydney. Berlin (a city whose population is 1 million less than Sydney's) has 339 heavy rail stations (again some stations would be counted twice due to being served by both the S-Bahn and U-Bahn).

That 69 figure for Toronto only includes the Subway. There's also Go Train network which has 63 stations. Both the Subway and Go Trains have massive expansion plans over the next decade. On top of that Toronto has the second most extensive tram networks outside Europe (after Melbourne).

[#Metro]

Happy to be corrected, Sydney CityRail is no longer I think I may have been thinking of the former whole CityRail network which includes places up to Newcastle etc; so it is around 200 for Mel and Sydney on the systems as defined by the limits of The METRO train and Sydney Trains (formerly CityRail).

http://www.sydneytrains.info/stations/pdf/suburban_map.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Melbourne_railway_stations

Go train is a regional commuter service, often off peak it runs buses, not trains IIRC. Services generally limited stops within the bounds of the City of Toronto.

My basic point is this: I don't think it is a case of lack of lines or lack of stations. There's heaps of lines and stations on existing rail networks already. Its the access to the assets from non-walk up areas that are lacking and the current organisation of the system. For example, in the Brisbane case, Yeronga, Centenary and Bulimba all have rail lines that are ca. 5km within range of a train station. The problem is the buses don't really go there frequently or directly because some politicians believe that running a bus to a train station is an inconvenience (as opposed to not being able to get there at all).

Is it really a 'lack of infrastructure' or just a lack of proper and efficient planning and political will??

[#Metro]

Former cityrail network (all on one map) --->
http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/b2b/releases/NSW%20and%20Sydney%20Trains%20MAP.pdf

PLENTY of infrastructure...

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Tony Abbott should change tune on public transport says industry group

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> It's official: Parramatta Road will get 60,000 new apartments by 2050

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Mike Baird's solution to Sydney's transport woes is so 1960s

[#Metro]

Sydney is chronically short of transport infrastructure. For too long both major parties have focused more on announcements than achievements.

This is the 'infrastructure' camp of problem solving. If there is a problem, it is because there isn't enough concrete in the system. In my opinion, it is a 'dumb' approach to solve a problem. Planning approaches can yield huge benefits at lower costs and faster.

Sydney has a massive rail network, one of the most extensive in the world. Same with Melbourne.

The infrastructure is not being worked to its full potential. Bus network reform would do huge benefits. Larger buses carrying 150+ passengers in one go would also help massively.

Concrete is expensive and it about to get supercharged in expense. A number of these projects would pass a critical threshold where they become so expensive that they are effectively priced out of existence. The $465 million spent on 1km of busway at Buranda was a sign of this. You could run the entire City of Brisbane bus network for a year and still have change left over from that figure!

There is no way the Victorian Gov't can afford East-Waste Link. Other rail plans about to suffer the same fate. Doncaster, Melbourne Aiport etc there is no way on Earth you can have even a fraction of these. You might be able to fund one and then that's it.

BaT tunnel looks on financially unstable ground.
NSW - light rail - its going to be a stub line

Network planning, using existing infrastructure more intensively, upgrading existing assets and the elephant in the room - BUS NETWORK REFORM will become infinetely more important as funding dries up.

This is no doubt also a reason why projects get pushed over the horizon into the never-never. No cash.

[techblitz]

Or iust decease urbanisation of the major cities...sydneyis a complete mess...especially property price wise due to many people bidding up so they can live closer to the cbd to save on commute times.......result of higher house prices?..a weaker economy as people prefer to generate wealth via capital gains...doesnt mean they will put that money into the economy....they will just gear up thier next property....
Brisbane has succeeded somowhat to a degree by buliding satelite cities springfield and north lakes and providing good PT infrastruture to those cities....business centres,colleges and costcos,westfields == no reason to work in the cbd.....brisbane is doing it way better than sydney imho......

[Gazza]

Re lack of infrastructure, yes Sydney has a large rail network, what they often lack is the trackage to support the number of service patterns required.

[Old Northern Road]

Sydney has a massive rail network, one of the most extensive in the world. Same with Melbourne.

The infrastructure is not being worked to its full potential. Bus network reform would do huge benefits. Larger buses carrying 150+ passengers in one go would also help massively.

Sydney does not have a extensive rail network by any standard. Melbourne has a decent sized network if you include the tram network and ignore the insane amount of level crossings, all the single track sections and all the sections where the all station trains have to share tracks with express trains and freight. And how is Sydney not using not using its infrastructure to its full potential? The lines through the city are at capacity. What are your solutions for reducing the overcrowding at Town Hall and Wynyard?

Sydney needs a metro. It's one of the largest cities in the developed world that doesn't have one. The only larger cities that don't are Dallas, Phoenix and Houston and those aren't exactly the cities you want to be in the same category as.

[Old Northern Road]

Go train is a regional commuter service, often off peak it runs buses, not trains IIRC. Services generally limited stops within the bounds of the City of Toronto.

Go Trains have plans to electrify their network and increase the frequency on most lines to 4tph. I guarantee they will have 4tph on most of their lines before Brisbane does. They even have plans for a rail tunnel under the CBD.

[Old Northern Road]

Or iust decease urbanisation of the major cities...sydneyis a complete mess...especially property price wise due to many people bidding up so they can live closer to the cbd to save on commute times.......result of higher house prices?..a weaker economy as people prefer to generate wealth via capital gains...doesnt mean they will put that money into the economy....they will just gear up thier next property....
Brisbane has succeeded somowhat to a degree by buliding satelite cities springfield and north lakes and providing good PT infrastruture to those cities....business centres,colleges and costcos,westfields == no reason to work in the cbd.....brisbane is doing it way better than sydney imho......

I really hope you are being sarcastic.

[#Metro]

Sydney does not have a extensive rail network by any standard. Melbourne has a decent sized network if you include the tram network and ignore the insane amount of level crossings, all the single track sections and all the sections where the all station trains have to share tracks with express trains and freight. And how is Sydney not using not using its infrastructure to its full potential? The lines through the city are at capacity. What are your solutions for reducing the overcrowding at Town Hall and Wynyard?

Sydney needs a metro. It's one of the largest cities in the developed world that doesn't have one. The only larger cities that don't are Dallas, Phoenix and Houston and those aren't exactly the cities you want to be in the same category as.

Good luck finding the cash. Anyone can come up with a visionary plan, funding it is the problem. PRojects are reaching  $10B $20B mark. That's crazy dollars. How realistic is it really to think that kind of cash is going to be available? Bus network needs major optimisation, bring in larger buses (150+ pax) and rationalise the network like in Europe and Canada. Something will have to give. Some unsexy decisions will have to be made like cutting seats, more all stops services etc.

http://www.infrastructure.nsw.gov.au/media/16985/sis_report_section8.0_print.pdf

You may be able to do one project in the core - that's going to be hugely expensive - and then that's all the funds gone.

•    Additional capacity will be required in the core
of the network, particularly the CBD, over the
next 20 years. Existing assets must be used as
intensively as possible before constructing new
major infrastructure in the long term.

Some interesting reading:

8.3.3 Capacity within the CBD
Rail services in the CBD use the Harbour Bridge Line
(linking Main West and North Shore services via Town
Hall and Wynyard) and the City Circle.
The Harbour Bridge Line experiences significant
congestion under the current service pattern. This arises
because it has heavy passenger flows in both directions,
including a large number of interchanging passengers,
and intervals between services can be irregular.

However in contrast the City Circle is relatively lightly
used. This situation has existed since the opening of the
Eastern Suburbs Line in 1980. At present the City Circle
carries 29 trains in the PM peak hour compared to 48
trains per hour in 1972

. The spare train paths in the City
Circle could carry around 25,000 extra passengers in the
peak hour.
The busiest CBD stations are Town Hall and Wynyard as
summarised in Table 8.4.

Waste not, want not.

http://www.humantransit.org/2010/03/sydney-grid-networks-for-gridless-cities.html

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> New Sydney ferries set to sail from 2016

[techblitz]

Or iust decease urbanisation of the major cities...sydneyis a complete mess...especially property price wise due to many people bidding up so they can live closer to the cbd to save on commute times.......result of higher house prices?..a weaker economy as people prefer to generate wealth via capital gains...doesnt mean they will put that money into the economy....they will just gear up thier next property....
Brisbane has succeeded somowhat to a degree by buliding satelite cities springfield and north lakes and providing good PT infrastruture to those cities....business centres,colleges and costcos,westfields == no reason to work in the cbd.....brisbane is doing it way better than sydney imho......

I really hope you are being sarcastic.

Pfft....

I will take the fact that brisbane got given the g20 over sydney because it was too challenging transportation wise for sydney....
Theres your entree

Apart from the bus network and a few other minor issues......springfield and north lakes sre working wonders....its how you de-centralise cbd reliance....next up...caboolture-west,flagstone

[SurfRail]

^ Brisbane got the G20 because the convention centre in Sydney is being refurbished.

[techblitz]

^ Brisbane got the G20 because the convention centre in Sydney is being refurbished.

easier access for leaders between the cbd & brisbane airport as well.....sydneysiders in all thier jealousy blamed julia gillard for trying to score QLD political points by giving brisbane the g20...

[SurfRail]

^ No, Brisbane was VERY much Plan B.  If Darling Harbor was open it would have been there.

[pandmaster]

Brisbane residents far less likely to get out and protest like they would in Sydney due to social factors and the smaller population(thus smaller potential number of protestors). Toronto-style unrest would produce so much negative publicity it would waste the $400 million spent to put it on.

45% (or whatever) of flights in Australia involve SYD: the national impact from hosting the G20 there would have been immense.

[techblitz]

Brisbane residents far less likely to get out and protest like they would in Sydney due to social factors and the smaller population(thus smaller potential number of protestors). Toronto-style unrest would produce so much negative publicity it would waste the $400 million spent to put it on.

45% (or whatever) of flights in Australia involve SYD: the national impact from hosting the G20 there would have been immense.

Yep much cheaper and much smarter to hold it in brisbane.....one of brisbanes advantages...

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Sydney CBD plan: More space for cars, less space for pedestrians

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> One of Australia's first bridges found within Parramatta's historic Lennox Bridge

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Damning report into WestConnex motorway released by NSW auditor-general

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Hiking Sydney rail fares would be a grave error

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Details matter in the battle to get transport right

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Government to start construction on two new Sydney bike lanes

[ozbob]

Sydney Morning Herald --> Green Square 'a ticking time bomb in the inner city'

[#Metro]

^ This is today. It is too expensive and takes far too long to roll out rail, light or heavy everywhere. Bus networks need to be rationalised and larger superbuses (150+ capacity) deployed on corridors while politicians work out how to extend LRT and fix up trains.

Both Melbourne and Sydney have messy old school bus networks like Brisbane's. Lots to be gained by making the necessary changes.

[SurfRail]

I don't think it's that fair to lump Melbourne in with Sydney.

They are both improving faster than things are up here regardless.

[#Metro]

Perfectly fair. Rotten apple, rotten banana, rotten watermelon. All rotten bus networks!!

[SurfRail]

Melbourne's doesn't suffer from the problems Brisbane and Sydney do with radial bus routes, which is a function of their tramways.  The tramways have their own problems of course, such as an idiotically high number of stops, poor signalling priority, poor levels of DDA compliance and inadequate preservation of dedicated right of way.

The Transdev Melbourne bus contract also involved a requirement to redesign their network - as opposed to the Sydney contracts for regions 1-3 and 15 which appear to simply involve taking over what was there before.  (Regions 4-5 and 10-14 all stayed with the incumbent operator and 6-9 are the STA regions which have to date not been tendered.)

The main advantage Melburnians have is that they are used to transferring.  They've also shown confidence in axing pointless routes like the 509 (although the new ALP government for some incredulous reason promised to reinstate it).

Sydney has the cultural issue of not transferring PLUS still imposing penalties on intermodal transfers, even if that won't be an issue for bus-bus, bus-tram or tram-tram once CSELR is up and running.