CBD & South East Light Rail

[Frosty]

If they knew the costs were going to blow out they should've just done B-Line of Eastern Suburbs. Upgrades to Moore Park Busway, minor changes along Anzac Parade and new bus lanes along Allison Road into Randwick with some bus improvements in Coogee area. Convert George St into bus only north of Town Hall.

Longer term Metro would have been a more ideal solution out to Maroubra & Kingsford via Zetland or Moore Park.

[tonyp]

B Line has microscopic capacity, about 1,200 people per hour per direction, maybe possible to tweak it up to 1,500. Then there's the pile-up of buses into the CBD. CSELR's design capacity is over 13,000 and starts off at 6,700. Metro is unsuitable because this corridor needs closer stops over shorter distances plus the split into two corridors.

They just need to get it finished and into service, then the pain will be forgotten. In the end, what's an extra billon in the wider setting of all the waste on various ineffective or f.. Up government projects. Take it out of the RMS budget, it would actually be a benefit cutting out some insane road project.

[gascoyne]

I disagree. Even if light rail services started in Dec 2018, the pain would be severe and worsening. Far better would have been extending ESR from Bondi Jn to UNSW/PoWH and Kingsford with possible extension to Maroubra. The light rail pain will persist until underground heavy rail reaches the Randwick area. Only then will light rail be able to do what it does best.

[tonyp]

The ESR BJ to Kingsford is a closed book and the station sites are sold off. Even if it was possible, it misses much of the target market or doesn't serve it well. It misses the Moore Park and racecourse venues and has too long a journey to UNSW from Central and even then would only have served the upper campus. It would be even too long a journey to realise an effective bus interchange system at Kingsford. There would also need to be rezonings at Charing Cross and Clovelly Junction as there is not enough there to justify underground railway stations.

[Frosty]

They just need to get it finished and into service, then the pain will be forgotten. In the end, what's an extra billon in the wider setting of all the waste on various ineffective or f.. Up government projects. Take it out of the RMS budget, it would actually be a benefit cutting out some insane road project.

I could easily see this not be done in the next two years particularly with the overhanging legal battle. If you want to take it out of the RMS budget I have some quick suggestions cancel the Alexandria 2 Moore Park road upgrade and toll the Airport Gateway connection. Though raising fares significantly could help recoup some of the costs & value capture.

[swtt]

If they knew the costs were going to blow out they should've just done B-Line of Eastern Suburbs. Upgrades to Moore Park Busway, minor changes along Anzac Parade and new bus lanes along Allison Road into Randwick with some bus improvements in Coogee area. Convert George St into bus only north of Town Hall.

Longer term Metro would have been a more ideal solution out to Maroubra & Kingsford via Zetland or Moore Park.

Or just build a vastly long pedestrian travelator that operates 24x7. Stand all the way Kingsford - City, or walk at three times the speed. Bye bye Light Rail and buses and goodbye health issues

Mind you, no need to wait for a vehicle to turn up either.

[tonyp]

Or just build a vastly long pedestrian travelator that operates 24x7. Stand all the way Kingsford - City, or walk at three times the speed. Bye bye Light Rail and buses and goodbye health issues

Mind you, no need to wait for a vehicle to turn up either.

The trams along the north-south CBD streets, particularly along George and Elizabeth with their average headways of 18-19 seconds, were described as a "moving footway" at the time. I guess the George St buses in modern times tried to replicate that with a variant known as a "stationary footway"! Considering that CSELR has a design capacity of a tram every two minutes along the main line, it can come close to a description of a pedestrian travelator.

[tonyp]

The 2016 project review:

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdoc ... %20web.pdf

[Swift]

They just need to get it finished and into service, then the pain will be forgotten. In the end, what's an extra billon in the wider setting of all the waste on various ineffective or f.. Up government projects. Take it out of the RMS budget, it would actually be a benefit cutting out some insane road project.

That's what I have felt all along. At least it's blinkin happening instead of the endless think-wanks by faceless committees which have in themselves wasted millions, if not billions, paying their undeserved salaries for no result!

[mandonov]

I could easily see this not be done in the next two years particularly with the overhanging legal battle. If you want to take it out of the RMS budget I have some quick suggestions cancel the Alexandria 2 Moore Park road upgrade and toll the Airport Gateway connection. Though raising fares significantly could help recoup some of the costs & value capture.

Parts of A2MP are really essential, the rationalisation of the Lachlan and McEvoy intersection for instance. Airport Gateway is essentially tolled as the only way to access it will be via Westconnex.

[tonyp]

Here is the transcript from the final(?) day yesterday of the Parliamentary Inquiry, with Acciona and TfNSW questioned:

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdoc ... RECTED.pdf

[hornetfig]

Parts of A2MP are really essential, the rationalisation of the Lachlan and McEvoy intersection for instance.

The widening of Lachlan Ave. Eastbound it's impossible 6am - 10pm. Even if the rest of the intersection reconstruction was abandoned, this part is way overdue.

[boronia]

Parts of A2MP are really essential, the rationalisation of the Lachlan and McEvoy intersection for instance.

The widening of Lachlan Ave. Eastbound it's impossible 6am - 10pm. Even if the rest of the intersection reconstruction was abandoned, this part is way overdue.

This might be slightly helpful for Bourke St traffic, but will do little for east-west flows which will just continue to congest at the next set of traffic lights.

[Swift]

Upgrading roads is ultimately futile. Building tram ways is the opposite.

[In Transit]

B Line has microscopic capacity, about 1,200 people per hour per direction, maybe possible to tweak it up to 1,500...

I haven't run my eye over the numbers for B Line, but the 333 has a peak capacity of 2,300 passengers per hour (with no real bus priority between North Bondi and BJI) with 100% artics, and even the 379 between Seven Ways and BJI has a capacity of 1,495 in an hour with a mixture of artics and rigids.

Whilst these don't match light rail's capacity, there is still scope to significantly increase capacity on these routes.

[Frosty]

B Line has microscopic capacity, about 1,200 people per hour per direction, maybe possible to tweak it up to 1,500...

I haven't run my eye over the numbers for B Line, but the 333 has a peak capacity of 2,300 passengers per hour (with no real bus priority between North Bondi and BJI) with 100% artics, and even the 379 between Seven Ways and BJI has a capacity of 1,495 in an hour with a mixture of artics and rigids.

Whilst these don't match light rail's capacity, there is still scope to significantly increase capacity on these routes.

Well an interesting comparison I calculated is the 343 between Rosebery & Central from 2 December will have peak capacity of 1380 passengers that is running 12.5m buses exclusively. So increasing bus capacity is possible. Albeit the 343 has headways 2-5 mins from personal observation once you get to 2 minutes very quickly bus bunching occurs particularly with no bus priority at all and having to share Elizabeth St with express buses X93 & 310X.

I had initially had a thought Ausgrid could pick up the tab for additional LR overrunning costs but that ultimately places high electricity charges onto general consumers which is a big no no with sky high electricity prices currently. Could landscaping & repaving of LR be moved onto RMS budget instead or maybe reduce the scope of landscaping & repaving.

[matthewg]

I had initially had a thought Ausgrid could pick up the tab for additional LR overrunning costs but that ultimately places high electricity charges onto general consumers which is a big no no with sky-high electricity prices currently. .

You could probably place a safe bet on if Ausgrid were responsible for utility relocation out of their own budget, say due to the utilities that were in the way were not installed according to standard - the standard and scope of works would be significantly less onerous than those put on the Ligh Rail's budget for utility relocation.

Ausgrid knew they had the upper hand here, they could set any standard they liked - it wasn't their budget. You can afford to take the super conservative safety approach when someone else is paying.

Acconia probably has the upper hand too - the government is desperate to get this thing finished now - if Acconia cut and run now, writing off what they claim they are owed, the project would be stalled for a year or more while tenders were called to find a new civils contractor and the government will look really bad. (and the incoming tender responses would have built in massive risk premiums) It's probably actually cheaper just to pay out Acconia's demands and have them finish.

And the way the cilvils have been done piecemeal means we still have nothing operable. Many little bits STILL don't join up. Running UNSW to Central while re-tending to complete the rest would at least get something useful happening but they can't even do that currently, too many bits of track still missing.

[tonyp]

I haven't run my eye over the numbers for B Line, but the 333 has a peak capacity of 2,300 passengers per hour (with no real bus priority between North Bondi and BJI) with 100% artics, and even the 379 between Seven Ways and BJI has a capacity of 1,495 in an hour with a mixture of artics and rigids.

Whilst these don't match light rail's capacity, there is still scope to significantly increase capacity on these routes.

It's good, but a long way off the c 7,000 per hour that the trams used to deliver along the Bondi Rd corridor!

Upgrading roads is ultimately futile. Building tram ways is the opposite.

It's tough medicine, but the most effective thing to do with the road system is actually leave it as it is, so that it becomes so gridlocked and so awful an experience for motorists that it will finally push them over to public transport (which would have to be prioritised to get through the gridlock of course!). Increasing road capacity only induces demand. The more road space you provide, the more people will drive on it, onwards and upwards into rats ally. It's something that you can never win.

In those few brave cities around the world that bite the bullet and reduce road capacity (e.g. by removing a motorway etc), there is actually no crisis as a result. The city doesn't come to a halt nor do riots break out. All those motorists just drift away to another alternative, whether driving a different way or changing to public transport. It's a solution for the politically brave and those are few and far between unfortunately. The hardest thing to weather is the sense of entitlement and the dummy spits by motorists who have no vision of the common good beyond the front of their car bonnets. The way some of them go on in the feedbacks, if they were my kids I'd send them to bed without dinner!

As the saying goes, you're not stuck in a traffic jam, you ARE the traffic jam.

[Swift]

It's tough medicine, but the most effective thing to do with the road system is actually leave it as it is, so that it becomes so gridlocked and so awful an experience for motorists that it will finally push them over to public transport (which would have to be prioritised to get through the gridlock of course!).

It's been happening in Sydney in the last few years. People have turned to trains and buses on weekends because the roads have become worse than weekdays for most of the day. You would think it was a workday on the trains and buses during the day. It never used to be like that.

[boronia]

Light rail excavation caused gas leak that forced closure of Central Station entrance

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/gas ... 50k32.html

[tonyp]

The widening of Lachlan Ave. Eastbound it's impossible 6am - 10pm. Even if the rest of the intersection reconstruction was abandoned, this part is way overdue.

Hornetfig, you say on SCF that buses will be stopping at UNSW High St eastbound platform. That was not the original plan, partly I imagine because they're too inflexible to rise to the challenge of stopping buses at high tram platforms without damaging them (the platforms are not built with Kassel kerbs). So have they changed their mind?

[hornetfig]

Hornetfig, you say on SCF that buses will be stopping at UNSW High St eastbound platform. That was not the original plan, partly I imagine because they're too inflexible to rise to the challenge of stopping buses at high tram platforms without damaging them (the platforms are not built with Kassel kerbs). So have they changed their mind?

It's my understanding that it's to be a bus stop eastbound for 400/370/348/whatever. For example, in the Urban Design Plan for that section, the westbound bus stop location is identified, but the eastbound is conspicuously not.

[tonyp]

I guess we'll find out soon enough what they're going to do. It's not unknown for buses to stop at 300 mm high tram platforms without any special design provisions. It's done in Melbourne. The more skilled drivers can pull in close, the less skilled stand off a bit, leaving passengers a bit of a gap of course, but at the same time they can't intrude on the clearance of the next lane. I recall seeing a photo once of one Melbourne bus whose driver managed to mount the platform with two wheels. Hopefully we won't see too much of that!

[moa999]

Although presumably wouldn't be too hard to add some form of a Kessel kerb to it

[boronia]

The hardest part might be getting someone in TfNSW to think its a good idea