Action for Public Transport (N.S.W.) Inc.

Action for Public Transport (NSW) is a transport advocacy group active in Sydney since 1974. We promote the interests of beneficiaries of public transport; both passengers, and the wider community.

It is surprising that this change is being managed by the road-focused RMS instead of by a public transport department. After all, the changes are supposed to be bus priority, presumably intended to benefit bus passengers rather than other road traffic. It is also surprising that the March 2016 leaflet describing the changes does not mention a bus route number, in this case route 389, to help passengers understand which buses are affected.

The leaflet presents most of the changes as alterations to on-street car parking. It would help the public assess the nett value of each change if there was also some indication of the number of passengers benefited or inconvenienced by each change and the effect on bus travel times. We are of course concerned that removing stops will impose extra walking distance on some passengers.

We are concerned that not enough seems to have been done to alert bus passengers to the proposed changes. Has there been a half-page display advertisement in the Wentworth Courier? Have copies of the leaflet been distributed to bus passengers? How many times has the leaflet been downloaded from your website?

We would suggest that something should be done to help outbound 389 buses turn right out of Queen Street into Ocean Street. Could the traffic signals be modified to have a right-turn arrow, perhaps under the control of PTIPS?

We would point out that crossing Old South Head road on foot is dangerous. Accordingly, stops there should be in pairs with convenient safe crossing. Therefore, we would suggest that the stops between Bondi Junction and O'Brien Street should be at signal-controlled intersections or pedestrian-actuated signals.

We are perplexed by the change(s) suggested for Mitchell Street. Replacing stops 13 and 15 with 12 and 14 moves stops away from some blocks of medium-density walk-up flats towards a part of Mitchell Street which is substantially comprised of separate houses. We would expect more bus patrons to be found in the flats than in the houses, simply because of the higher density in flats.