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

Action for Public Transport (NSW) Inc. is a transport advocacy group which has been active in Sydney since 1974. We promote the interests of beneficiaries of public transport - passengers and the wider community alike.

We make this submission on Direction 5 (a city for walking, cycling and public transport) and Target 8 (By 2050 people will use public transport, walk or cycle to travel to and from work).

We suggest that Council is well-placed to put pressure on the NSW government to develop the city's public transport system in a way that maximises its benefits. Council has its own planners, its own view of how the city should be run and its own channels for communication with the State; all of these will be needed if Council is to have an impact.

All the following comments are made on the assumption that the depressing effects of COVID-19 are eventually overcome.

We refer Council to the current Legislative Council inquiry into bus privatisation. The inquiry's web page holds over 200 submissions on the topic. Very many of these submissions are along the lines of "My bus trip to work takes at least x minutes longer and is less reliable since bus route [...] was adjusted recently"

Slow and unpredictable bus services are not attractive to passengers. Council should take every opportunity to press for quality bus services in the city and suburbs.

Many bus stops have been removed in the name of efficiency. This is puzzling - removing a stop that is less heavily used cannot be expected to make anything more efficient simply because the bus won't stop if no passenger needs it to. Removing a popular stop will force passengers to walk further; some passengers may be lost because of this. Council should press for an adequate number of bus stops to hold their spacing below 400 metres in well-patronised areas. Also, council should ensure that recent mistakes in which Decaux bus shelters were removed well before their replacements were installed do not recur.

Council should ensure that maximum benefit is received from the State's investment in light rail.

• The L1 service could be sped-up at very little cost by giving trams priority at traffic signals in Hay St. In the case of the Darling Drive intersection, cross traffic is so light that there would be no cost in giving trams absolute priority over Darling Drive traffic.

  The L1 service would benefit from having a second CBD terminus at Railway Square. Central railway station is so large that many people do not realise how long it takes to walk around, especially walking to or from Broadway. Restoring tracks to the Goods Line would permit a tram terminus to be built below and behind 847 George St, shortening many walking trips and easing a capacity constraint inherent in the current layout.

• Similarly, passenger-carrying capacity in the L2/L3 routes is heavily constrained by having a single CBD terminus reachable only via George St. Building a second terminus in the CBD, bypassing George St, would enable more trams per hour to run. St James railway station was built with four platforms of which two have never been used. These platforms face into tunnels running under Hyde Park to about Bathurst St. Using these platforms and extending the existing tunnels under Liverpool St to connect with L1/L2 tracks in Surry Hills, capacity of the network could be increased. Passengers could thereby make much faster CBD trips and more trams could be run carrying more passengers.

Existing and planned metro rail services show little evidence of vision to a future in which metro is available for the majority of trips between (say) 1km and 10km in length. Sydney compares very unfavourably with large systems overseas such as London, NYC or Tokyo. Our metro lines have a minimal number of stations, few if any interchange points, and suffer from a fixed notion that all railways must pass through Central.

It is pleasing to see in Sustainable Sydney that the western metro should be continued from Hunter St southwards, turning towards Maroubra [Vision, draft 1, page 78]. Yes, but why does it have to go through Central when the Paddinghurst area is crying out for underground transport? And why doesn't the metro between Central and Sydenham have more stops?

Unfortunately, the metro platforms under construction at Central can only be reached from the northern end. Passengers for Railway Square and Broadway cannot conveniently use the Devonshire St pedestrian tunnel and hence must walk hundreds of metres further. This appears to be because the tunnel is regarded as fully-loaded at peak times. Council should press for expansion of pedestrian capacity along that route - perhaps the tunnel could be duplicated or an elevated walkway could be build above the tracks.

Conclusion

There are many aspects of Sydney's public transport network which should be improved in order to attract and carry more passengers.

Recommendations

The information above should be added to Direction 5 and Target 8.