April, 2010
A Metropolitan Strategy Review (Sydney Towards 2036) and a new Metropolitan Transport Plan (Connecting the City of Cities) have recently been released by the NSW Government for public comment, along with the claim that land use and transport planning are being properly integrated for the first time.
While it is certainly clear that past integration has been poor, due in part to funding availability and transport agencies being more focused on their own catch-up activities, key aspects of the new Transport Plan still appear to be inconsistent with the intent of the Strategy Review. Particular concerns include the continuing large amount of road expenditure, and the substantial provision for future rail capacity growth from Western Sydney into the Sydney CBD that is an inherent part of the CBD Relief Line project. This response is based on complete, with one qualification, support for the Metropolitan Strategy Review, and therefore is addressed at the transport planning side of the perceived inconsistency. The prime focus is on developing a more appropriate assignment of transport resources that is drawn partly from a previous CBD Metro EA Submission.
Managing Sydney’s future will certainly be challenging, with population growth, various ecological footprints, liveability and funding all being major issues to be addressed.
Sydney’s population is set to grow by 40% from 2006 to 2036, to 5.56 million excluding the Central Coast and just short of 6.0 million with it included. The current ecological footprint of 7.21 hectares per capita has been growing steadily with community affluence, and this needs to be contained, or even reversed, along with substantial progress towards the 2050 target of a 60% reduction in greenhouse emissions, for Sydney to become more sustainable.
Sydney’s enviable liveability ranking is reportedly slipping a little, with less than adequate transport performance seemingly a key issue. The sheer size and geographical spread of Sydney, and the consequent low average density, in turn has made funding of better public transport infrastructure more difficult. It is reasonable to expect that, with the need for ongoing dept repair to recover from the current Global Financial Crisis, that funding difficulties will continue and perhaps even be exacerbated.
Many of the implications from the above challenges have been recognised, and quantified targets set, in the Strategy Review, starting with the need for the regional cities of Parramatta, Liverpool, Penrith and Gosford, and supplemented by other major and specialised strategic centres.
Quoting from the Strategy Review, the Government’s priority is to increase the number of jobs closer to home by increasing the percentage of the population living within 30 minutes by public transport of a city or major centre in Metropolitan Sydney. Further, the Strategy Review will reinforce job growth in Western Sydney and ensure it keeps pace with labour force growth over next 30 years.
Although the specific employment target for the three western subregions is 384,480 by 2036, a higher figure may actually be desirable to truly keep pace. This is because it includes only 0.32 additional jobs per additional resident for the South West and West Central subregions, compared with 0.42 for the North West, a figure that is closer to the 0.45 average for the Sydney basin, and because some correction to the present imbalance could be beneficial. This suggests that 70,000 or more additional jobs for the two subregions may be appropriate, with particular emphasis on Liverpool in the South West.
A larger role for public transport is also indicated in the Transport Plan, with rail trips on a typical weekday increasing from 850,000 to over 2.0 million, and bus trips reaching 1.6 million, by 2036. Additionally, a future transport topology has been outlined in the Strategic Review in the form of a city of cities rail network supplemented by a grid network in inner areas, but with only partial implementation by 2036. This topology would replicate the multi-directional commuter rail accessibility of the Sydney CBD for the regional cities, and would provide two-dimensional all-day coverage in inner areas, through a mixture of heavy rail and (one or more) lighter trunk modes. This network topology is similar to, and perhaps has been influenced by, public transport network proposals made by this author in previous submissions.
Despite the larger public transport role, road vehicle trips continue to increase, but at a rate just below population growth, assuming that the number of daily car trips for 2036 should read 13.5 million and not the 3.5 million shown in the Transport Plan. Although this growth suggests that high levels of road investment will still be needed, a closer consideration indicates that this may not need to be so. This is because road capacity requirements are strongly influenced by peak period VKTs, and the average road trip length during this time would be expected to fall. This fall would be due to the regionalisation process, the modal shift to rail tending to attract longer peak period trips, and the time at which future road pricing may be most severe. The Transport Plan and the Strategy Review are silent on quantifying any such fall, and how it would contribute to the various ecological footprints mentioned, but any assumption made from information in these documents seems unlikely to be enough. A further improvement could be achieved by a bring-forward of parts of the future transport topology such that while localised road use in outer areas continues to increase, inner areas may experience no growth or even a small decline. The removal of all remaining transfer penalties for public transport would, of course, be necessary.
Another reason to bring forward parts of the multi-centred/inner-grid public transport network is to more fully encourage the growth of the three western regional cities. The argument here is that while land value increases to make redevelopment worthwhile are conditional on zoning prescription, the provision of better access is also necessary
There are also specific implications for transport in the CBD that are not mentioned. If western employment growth does keep pace with the labour force, then much of the non-western employment growth could be served more locally than today, and journey times would be shorter. This implies that, apart from addressing immediate and near term capacity problems, providing for metro-style trains (see Annex A for more details) should probably be the main focus for expanding CBD rail capacity in the future. Further, a new cross-harbour rail link to relieve the existing lower North Shore route may also need to be metro-style due to grade and alignment considerations. The route for such a link would also need to provide separate interchange with the Eastern Suburbs Railway, to relieve pressure on Town Hall, and therefore most probably use a Pitt Street alignment. It is not clear whether use of the Bridge eastern lanes for rail is even possible under these conditions, making a tunnel more likely.
The most prominent feature of the new Transport Plan is the Western Express proposal, coupled with a CBD Relief Line capable of accommodating 12-car double-deck trains. This expands rail capacity from the west by providing additional pathways (capacity up 30%) and subsequently for longer trains (capacity up 50%) for an ultimate 90% being possible.
The proposal works by unlocking spare rail capacity. The existing three rail lines (track pairs) between Strathfield and Illawarra Junction (Eveleigh) are currently running at about two thirds of their combined capacity. This is due to the mixture of all stations and limited stop services on the Local Line, and the lack of pathways into the Sydney CBD from the two express lines. The proposal provides a new connection from the Main Line at a point west of Eveleigh into the Sydney CBD, and seems to be the least cost method of unlocking otherwise unusable capacity from the outer west to relieve existing crowding problems, to improve sectorisation, and to provide for substantial future growth.
However, as mentioned above, much of this last benefit seems to conflict with the intent of the Strategy Review. In particular, the stated goal of western subregion employment keeping pace with labour force growth and the implied aim for an average 30 minute commute for everyone look inconsistent with the provision for a very large increase in future rail capacity to the Sydney CBD from west of Blacktown and the fact that such trips would all exceed 30 minutes.
Further, with a likely need for a cross-harbour link well within the 30 year window of the Strategy Review, and the matching provision of a north-south metro-style link on a Pitt Street alignment through the Sydney CBD seemingly necessary, the Plan’s CBD Relief proposal with a double-deck profile looks like a dead end, both literally and financially. It is scarcely credible that sufficient resources for two new north-south rail links through the Sydney CBD within the 30 year window would be available, considering the transport infrastructure needs of the whole of metropolitan Sydney under guidance from the Strategy Review.
To some extent, the now abandoned CBD and West Metro proposals were progressive, being based on the concept of making a step-change in rail technology for services to inner and middle distance subregions. Unfortunately, the desire for complete construction and operational separation from CityRail meant that synergies between the two networks could not be realised, leading to a substantial initial capital, or vision premium, being required. The land use priorities implied by the Metro proposals were also not made clear, but seemed to be somewhat different from those articulated by the Strategy Review.
More positively, there is some middle ground whereby both metro-style benefits and CityRail synergies can be realised simultaneously, and this comes from a different way of unlocking the spare rail capacity between Strathfield and Eveleigh. Instead of a new link from the Main Line to the Sydney CBD using double-deck standards, the Local Line can be diverted to a new Sydney CBD link on a Pitt Street alignment using a metro-style profile instead. A new link from the Main Line would still be necessary, but only by means of a grade separated junction west of Eveleigh to provide a link between the Main Line and City Circle capacity vacated by diverting the Local Line.
This alternative still provides for additional services from the western subregions, and the improved sectorisation, as per the Western Express, but would divert these services into the City Circle. This would, of course, limit the train length to eight cars, however some additional services (around 20%) may be possible by exploiting bifurcation with Central Coast trains between Strathfield and Eveleigh. The Local Line, cleared of Liverpool services, would be converted to metro-style operation to use the new CBD link, which would also have spare capacity to accommodate both growth and conversion of other inner and middle distance services in line with the implications of the Strategy Review. The new link would also be extendable across the harbour and, by freeing up pathways on the existing system, should make a separate CBD Relief line to double-deck standards unnecessary, at least within the 30 year window.
This author proposed such an alternative in his CBD Metro EA Submission (a companion document to this response). It was based on integrated planning and construction to realise synergies with CityRail, but retaining operational separation to facilitate the introduction of a new operator. As such, there was still a significant vision premium to be paid, but less than for the CBD and West Metro as proposed. This premium for metro-style operation can be reduced further by making CityRail the initial operator, while retaining the option for operational separation and possible automation at some future date. For example, the previously proposed first stage from Silverwater to Martin Place could be truncated, as the Strathfield to Silverwater section, complete with a new depot, would be unnecessary initially if the project was under CityRail control.
The investment premium over the CBD Relief proposal in the Transport Plan could thus be limited to the order of $1.0 to $2.0 billion, with the higher end allowing for a Sydney CBD extension from Martin Place to Barangaroo. Additional costs would also be required for any bring-forward of other parts of the envisaged multi-centred/inner-grid trunk network, as discussed previously, to be within the 10 year horizon. Additional funds, or some diversion from the roads budget, seem the only possibilities for meeting the additional costs. Some discussion on road investment realities follows.
The push for urban freeways has no doubt been influenced by post WW2 engineering and lifestyle expectations that were shared by much of the community, and supported by convenient economic analysis that claimed time saving benefits while ignoring more difficult to quantify adverse impacts such as induced traffic. The difficulty in meeting these expectations, due to rationed public funding under the Loan Council regime, led to the tollway model of private funding being developed.
Key benefits of freeways included the provision of routes for commercial vehicles and the ability to draw growing through car traffic off local roads. To accomplish these tasks while charging tolls to users, the freeways needed to be of a high standard to provide sufficient time savings. In response, some car use was drawn from public transport (or possible future public transport) and development became more dispersed. Correspondingly, there was little interest, or utility, in expanding subsidised public transport, where the main management focus was on cost, rather than value.
In effect, the benefit to commercial vehicles from the tollway model was being subsidised by the whole community through increased car dependency and urban sprawl. This subsidy in turn has contributed to an expectation, by most stakeholders in the logistics industry, of unhindered and underpriced use of commercial vehicles within the Sydney basin.
The model has more recently run into difficulties, with higher costs due to increasing lengths of tunnel being included in projects, and with external benefits of trunk public transport now being formally recognised. The current situation seems to be that, although induced traffic is starting to be acknowledged, more freeways are still necessary because projections for future commercial vehicle use are non-negotiable. A more realistic position, from an economic and ecological perspective, would be that there are three potential alternatives that could, separately or in combination, reduce the need for new urban freeway construction and possibly also allow for some closure. These are in addition to the obvious one of increasing the amount of freight on rail to freight terminals and/or to destinations outside the Greater Metropolitan Region.
There are two potential sources for inconsistency between the 30 year vision of the Metropolitan Strategy Review and the 10 year window of guaranteed funding within the Metropolitan Transport Plan. The first is inconsistency between the two within the 10 year period, and the second is inconsistency between the 10 year Plan and a 30 year plan implied to be needed by the Strategy Review.
This response, being based on complete support for the Strategy Review, apart from the suggested need to allow for more employment in the South West subregion, finds that expenditures on providing for high growth in double-deck rail capacity into the Sydney CBD, and potentially some of the road expenditure in the Transport Plan, exhibit both kinds of inconsistency. The implications from the second kind are that at least some parts of these expenditures would not be necessary in a more visionary transport plan over a longer window. This observation highlights the need for a 30 year transport plan, even if guaranteed funding is only available for the first 10 years.
Of course, an alternative, but more worrying possibility is that implementing the present Transport Plan will instead provide an opportunity to back-slide on the development of the regional cities and their environs, and leave Sydney even more centralised, inefficient, less resilient and with greater ecological impacts, than today.
Accordingly, it may not be too hyperbolic to suggest that Sydney needs to embrace this “Bradfield moment” to more fully regionalise, or be resigned to a slow relative decline compared with the world’s best.
CBD Metro EA Submission. This covers a specific metro-style alternative that can be adapted to CityRail operation, and thus truncated, to form an alternative to the CBD Relief Line at a reduced cost premium. Initial Cityrail operation would also ease the transition issues discussed in this document.
Corporate Plans for Rail. This identifies the need for integrated planning of all trunk modes, and provides more of a world view on how the CityRail network can be expanded to provide multi-centred coverage and be partially converted to metro-style operation, and supplemented by an inner-grid network using (one or more) lighter trunk modes.
There was much credible evidence presented in the Herald’s draft Transport Inquiry Report to suggest that the existing double-deck train design is optimal for the Sydney metropolitan area. However, this is a broad average based on maximising capacity, while providing seating needs for the average distance travelled and a uniform train design for all services. This approach tends to hide the existence of particular disadvantages for particular services, where metro-style trains would be more suitable.
The most significant disadvantage is speed, and Sydney may well have one of the slowest metropolitan railway systems in the world. While infrastructure and management issues are network wide, others such as dwell time, acceleration and braking tend to be more significant for shorter distance services. Other disadvantages include more difficult tunnelling for new underground routes, higher train operating costs, and lower than possible track capacity on services where less seating would be adequate. Some discussion on these issues follows.
The most significant issue for double-deck trains is dwell time, both its magnitude and its variability. Here the limited number of doorways consequent to high seat numbers, and internal circulation constraints due to the stairs, can result in lengthy periods for alighting and boarding. Dwell times can also be affected by the lack of clear space on platforms, at interchange points where there is simultaneous unloading and loading, and where service patterns require passengers to wait well beyond the first train available.
Dwell times for double deck trains are also highly variable. Although the crush load of a double deck train is around 2000, the practical limit is around 1200 before dwell times start to extend excessively, trains are delayed, and the track capacity of 20 trains per hour falls away. At the other end of the scale, dwell times for lightly loaded services can be quite brief, but current practice is to hold trains at key timing points to “compensate” for this. CityRail’s complex timetable, with no facility for flexible scheduling currently, requires train running times to adhere to an assumption of peak period dwell times all day.
The time taken to serve a station is made up of the dwell time and the time “lost” (compared with free running) due to braking and acceleration. This traction performance is quite mediocre in Sydney’s double- deck trains, with acceleration being 0.8m/sec² up to about 30km/h from where it becomes power limited and falls away in an inverse relationship with speed. Service braking is rated at 1.0m/sec², however this too would be less at higher speeds and drivers also need a reasonable margin to avoid overshooting at stations and signals, as well as an allowance for variable skills, train performance and weather conditions.
Factors limiting the initial acceleration include the number of axles powered, passenger safety on the internal stairs, the avoidance of jerk and practical adhesion limitations. Sydney’s double deck trains have 50% of axles powered, and presently about the same percentage of weight under traction so that the adhesion required is about 16%. This figure has risen from about 14% in earlier generation trains due to air conditioning that requires more equipment to be placed in the “trailer” car. The new Waratah sets can be set to 1.0m/sec², implying that around 20% adhesion is required, but would then top out at a lower speed.
Acceleration at higher speeds is limited by the traction power available. However, there is simply not enough space available to provide larger and/or more motors to achieve this. This lack of space also limits the ability to provide on-board energy storage to increase the reliability of regenerative braking and to provide for energy recovery when the overhead line is not receptive.
Outside of the train, there are many other factors that can impact on average speeds, including track curvature, low speed turnouts, turnouts at stations and waits at flat junctions. However these impacts are only moderately worse, if at all, for double-deck trains.
April, 2010