Bondi corridor study

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
Transtopic
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by Transtopic »

neilrex wrote:Easily fixed. Illawarra lines to city circle. Eastern suburbs metro to Bankstown line metro. Northwest metro to Maroubra. That's what they should have done in the first place.
Unlikely to happen at this late stage. What about South West services via the Airport Line and Sydenham? Where do they go? There isn't enough room on the City Circle for all of them. Planning and construction on the CBD to Sydenham metro is too far advanced to change things now. I think you and many others on here underestimate the backlash from the closure of the ECRL and Bankstown Lines for conversion to metro operation. We'll get the first taste of it next week. Happy to eat my words if all runs smoothly.

If I may be so bold to remind bloggers of the analogy with Infrastructure NSW's original proposal for WestConnex, which involved closing down Parramatta Rd and sinking it into a trench along its existing alignment and virtually demolishing adjoining properties along the route for redevelopment. It was a dumb idea from the start. It eventually dawned on them that it would be cheaper to construct the motorway in tunnel and avoid all of the disruption to existing traffic and cost of relocation of utilities on the surface.

The same principle applies to closing down existing rail lines for conversion to metro and indeed, dare I say it, constructing light rail along narrow inner city road corridors. It's a pity they didn't apply it in the case of the C&SELR, which should have been an underground metro in the first place, complemented by bus feeder services. That's another disaster waiting to happen, if it hasn't already. Hence my preference for underground metro expansion in the inner city regions rather than surface light rail. I may be a lone voice, but sooner or later, it's going to twig with someone in authority.
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by tonyp »

I forgot that you're not a lone voice Transtopic. You have Simonl as an ally ;)

But no, there's not going to be any sudden realisation, it has all been worked out and it'll be fine.

I once had an idea that if the ESR was completed via Kingsford and across to Sydenham to rejoin itself in a loop, it could be converted to metro, but I now favour the diagonal metro system being worked up today. There are no longer enough good patronage generators to justify the ESR being extended in any direction, considering POWH and UNSW are now being connected directly and quickly to Central by CSELR. The cost-benefit of an extended ESR would be quite poor and nobody is seriously going to want to waste lots of time traipsing around via BJ to get to the university or hospital.
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by Swift »

tonyp wrote:The cost-benefit of an extended ESR would be quite poor and nobody is seriously going to want to waste lots of time traipsing around via BJ to get to the university or hospital.
I believe the train would not take much longer from Central to UNSW if they resurrected the original plans to run the ESR to Kingsford. It would certainly have a capacity advantage.
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rogf24
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by rogf24 »

Swift wrote: I believe the train would not take much longer from Central to UNSW if they resurrected the original plans to run the ESR to Kingsford. It would certainly have a capacity advantage.
Yes, if it was the original one that would depart from the current line at Woollahra. I can't imagine a line to UNSW via Bondi Junction, that would not be competitive in terms of travel time.
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by tonyp »

rogf24 wrote: Yes, if it was the original one that would depart from the current line at Woollahra. I can't imagine a line to UNSW via Bondi Junction, that would not be competitive in terms of travel time.
By "original" that would mean Bradfield I think, before it was even remotely conceived that BJ might be a major regional centre!

I would estimate that on the original ESR line to the proposed station at UNSW upper campus, the journey time from Central would be about 25 mins or so, compared with something in the range of 10 to 20 mins on the tram, depending on what they swing in terms of traffic light priority. UNSW is the major source of demand in this sector and the vast majority of public transport demand is through Central Station. Apart from a concentration of students living in and around the area of the university itself, the largest regions of origin of staff and students are from the NW and SW suburbs of Sydney. These people travel through Central, something over 16,000 per day of them. By comparison, those using routes such as the 400 and 370, 394 etc are piddling - the 400 under 2,000 a day, the rest under 1,000. The most popular points of arrival and departure at the university are the lower (Anzac Pde) and upper (High St) campus entries. These are served both by the present buses and the future trams. ESR would have only served the upper campus, an Anzac Pde metro only the lower. Heavy rail in either form is pretty inflexible.

It should be mentioned to those not familiar with the planning process that these matters are studied in great detail, including the potentials and cost-effectiveness of all the modes, heavy rail, metro, tram and bus and in this case trams came out on top on all criteria - including capacity - as the best mode for the requirements of this corridor (or corridors, including the split up to upper campus/POWH). It's not that the government says "lets have trams" that's the end of it. Hopefully we're now past that old silo thinking and mode blindness that has hamstrung transport planning in NSW for the past several decades.
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by boronia »

With regards to the ESR servicing the upper campus, and then having the terminus at nearby Kingsford, just how deep would a UNSW station have to be to to keep the line within reasonable grades.

Even having the station in the centre of the campus, this could be a problem?
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by tonyp »

boronia wrote:With regards to the ESR servicing the upper campus, and then having the terminus at nearby Kingsford, just how deep would a UNSW station have to be to to keep the line within reasonable grades.

Even having the station in the centre of the campus, this could be a problem?
Considering that Kingsford was planned to be underground too, it would have been pretty deep. For years UNSW kept an area of land open in the SE corner of the campus for a major surface excavation for a station, but in later years the building needs of the university would have overwhelmed this (presumably plus advice from government that the railway wouldn't be built) and the area has now all been built over. As the NW metro demonstrates, there is now a preference to minimise the cost of building underground stations by having them as near to the surface as possible and by opening up the surface to construct them. The ESR extension would have involved massive resumption and destruction of property through an intensely-developed region, considering that there were also stations at Charing Cross, Clovelly Junction and Randwick (all only about 1 km apart). There would be no political stomach (not to mention the poor cost-benefit) to tackle such a task nowadays.

This showed also in the attitude of the private developer of the Bondi Beach rail line proposal who, in order to keep the cost down, was reluctant to even have an intermediate station - and then on top of that they wanted no buses running in competition either, which meant everyone living at points between Bondi Junction and Bondi Beach would have had to walk. Railways are a very costly business and require the biggest market possible for the smallest possible investment.
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rogf24
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by rogf24 »

The station at UNSW would have been 80 feet below ground or around 25 metres, about the same as the ECRL stations. Although considerably deeper than Kingsford and Randwick which were proposed to be about 40 feet below ground.
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by gld59 »

tonyp wrote:The ESR extension would have involved massive resumption and destruction of property
They did acquire some property, including at the corner of Alison Rd and Church St (now a boarding house, I think - previously community housing after transfer from State Rail in about 1986/87). I heard that one was for something like access or ventilation.
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Re: Bondi corridor study

Post by boronia »

IIRC, most of the land for the extension and station sites was acquired years before, but most of it was sold off in the 1980s.

I think the land at Kingsford, now used as storage for rail, was a survivor and was intended to be a station entrance.
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