Parts of Sydney’s monorail, which was taken down late last year, have been used in the construction of the North West Rail Link (NWRL). 60 beams from the monorail have been converted into 29 girders, each 32m long, used to build a bridge at the location of the future NWRL Norwest Station so that cars can continue to travel through the area during the station’s construction.
Tuesday: Budget includes $30bn on land transport, 91% of it on roads
Budget forward estimates for road and rail spending. Click to enlarge. (Source:Budget 2014-15.)
The budget included:
A return to fuel excise indexation, raising an additional $2.2bn over 4 years.
The creation of an asset recycling fund for states that privatise state assets to pay for new infrastructure, worth $5bn over 5 years.
The previously committed funding for WestConnex, worth $1.5bn, as well as a $2bn low interest loan to the NSW Government.
The previously committed funding for NorthConnex, worth $405m.
A roads package to support a future airport at Badgerys Creek, worth $2.9bn over 10 years.
Thursday: 3,500 more public transport services for Vivid
More than 3,500 additional public transport services will be provided during the two and a half week long Vivid Festival. 800,000 visitors came to see Vivid last year, and overwhelmed the transport system. The additional services include 3,200 more bus services, 350 more train services, and 132 more ferry services. Together, these will add capacity for over 660,000 passengers over the period of the festival. As a comparison, Sydney’s rail network has a maximum capacity of around 150,000 passengers during the busiest hour of the morning peak.
Saturday: Growing CBD bike path network may not be completed in time
Planned bike paths through the CBD may remain uncompleted until the end of the decade if not finished by next year. The final plan for the CBD bike network was only completed in December 2013, with bike path construction put in limbo in the 2 1/2 years since the 2011 NSW election in order for the network to be planned out. However, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the NSW Government is hesitant to have 2 major construction projects in the CBD running at the same time, so any bike path construction will be put on hold while light rail is built through George St in Sydney’s CBD in order to minimise traffic disruption. This could begin as early as April 2015, with the line scheduled to open in 2019 or 2020.
Sydney Strategic Cycle network, much of which is currently being planned or under construction. Click to enlarge. (Source: Transport for NSW, Sydney City Access Strategy, p. 45.)
Once completed, a network of separated bike paths will create a loop around the central CBD, linking up the existing Harbour Bridge to Pyrmont Bridge connection to a number of other streets to the South, East, and West of the CBD.
This is post number 150 for this blog, which has now been running for almost 2 years since it began in August of 2011, the month after the author of this blog visited every station in the Cityrail suburban network in one 24 hour period using only the rail network to get around (video below).
In recent months, a typical week will see this blog get 1 or 2 new posts, receive about 1,000 hits, representing 500 unique visitors, generating 3 comments, and being shared 3 times on social media. About 100 of those visitors are regular readers (RSS feeds, email subscriptions, etc) or referrals from social media, while the remaining 400 are split fairly evenly between web searches and image searches. Last month, this site passed the 50,000 hits milestone.
It’s worth re-visiting some of the posts which were read and commented on a lot during that time.
The most viewed post was one which was not really covered by the TV, radio, or online media, other than ones falling for the initial hoax. The lack of any competing source covering this story led to this particular post going viral, with 85 tweets and 178 shares on Facebook, including by the University of New South Wales, resulting in 3,270 hits on 31 July 2012 alone.
The second most viewed post, written in the first few weeks after this blog was started, is about different ways in which fares can be calculated. It is likely to remain an item of interest as Opal is rolled out and the possibility of integrating fares in Sydney is considered.
It is interesting to note that none of the 5 posts in the first list (most viewed) are repeated in the second list (most commented). As a general rule, people are more likely to comment on a post when they disagree with it, while they share it on social media when they agree with it (leading to more views). That probably explains the difference in each list.
The posts about the Northwest Rail Link and Sydney Airport in particular were great examples of commenters who disagreed with the contents of the post. Both the articles, along with the comments and follow-up responses, are a fantastic read for anyone looking to get a more in-depth discussion of those particular issues (but doesn’t who want to dip their feet into the world of online transport discussion forums).
It didn’t take long after the closure of the monorail was announced for someone to suggest that it be converted into an elevated walkway, using New York’s High Line as an example. While this initially sounds like a good idea on paper, it soon becomes clear that it would not be workable, and the 1m wide beam should definitely not be compared to the 6m wide High Line in New York. (Alan Davies explains why in more detail over at The Urbanist.)
A more recent proposal which received government approval last month, but seemingly less media coverage or public interest, was the conversion of a portion of the former Goods Line at Ultimo into a public space. It too has been dubbed as Sydney’s version of the High Line. Importantly, this proposal represents both a destination as well as a means of getting from one place to another (New York’s High Line is mainly the former, while the monorail proposal was entirely the latter). It is this combination of factors that Jesse Adams Stein, blogging as Penultimo, argues will make The Goods Line superior to the High Line, and I think that hits the nail on the head.
Artists impression of The Goods Line. (Source: ASPECT Studios.)
I was in New York earlier this year and visited the High Line on two occasions. It’s a great piece of public space, a former elevated rail line converted into a public park and walkway. But it doesn’t take you anywhere you want to go, it’s just a destination. So by the time you finish walking to one end, it’s time to turn around and go back the way you came. The Goods Line, on the other hand, will connect up to the Devonshire St Tunnel, allowing a pedestrian to walk North from Central Station at Chalmers St all the way to the Powerhouse Museum unimpeded.
The New York High Line. Click on image for higher resolution. (Source: Author.)
The New York High Line. Click on image for higher resolution. (Source: Author.)
Sydney’s CBD actually has a fairly good collection of pedestrian links at the moment, and is adding to them. A collection of major ones that currently exist or are planned are shown in the map below (blue are underground tunnels, green are pedestrianised surface spaces).
Pedestrian spaces in the Sydney CBD. Blue are underground tunnels, green are surface spaces. Click on image for higher resolution. (Source: Author created on Google Earth.)
Right now, a pedestrian across the road from the George St Cinemas can take an underground passage to Town Hall Station, through the QVB, across to Myer and come out the other end at Pitt St Mall. All of this without having to worry about vehicle traffic or the elements up on the surface. Continuing North for two blocks past the pedestrianised Martin Place is the Eastern entrance to Hunter Connection, which will take you to Wynyard Station, where another underground tunnel (soon to be the upgraded Wynyard Walk) takes you through to Barangaroo. By the end of this decade, a large chunk of George St will also be pedestrianised, and one of the features of the redeveloped Darling Harbour will be a pedestrian boulevard running North to South.
When it comes to transport, we are all pedestrians at the most basic level. So it’s good to see a bigger emphasis being placed on creating good quality public spaces that prioritise people above vehicles.
As with any good media mistake, the recent UNSW monorail hoax that was picked up by the ABC, MX and 2UE ended up on the ABC’s Media Watch program, mostly mocking David Oldfield from 2UE. Worth a watch.
The UNSW monorail proposal was about as realistic and believeable as this monocoaster
A bit short for time this week, so that’s all for now. Will hopefully have something more substantial next week.
“Almost nothing builds confidence more than seeing cranes over our cities and almost nothing signifies progress more than new roads.” – Tony Abbott (30 June 2012), Leader of the Opposition
This decision was clearly made on political criteria, rather than planning and transport criteria. It funds the projects where the benefit flows primarily to the marginal electorates, rather than where the the benefit is greatest. And unfortunately, it’s a bipartisan pattern that is emerging in Commonwealth-State infrastructure funding, with the Gillard Government making a similar mistake when it declared that it would provide $2.1bn of funding towards the Parramatta to Epping Rail Link (PERL) prior to the 2010 election.
The proposed M4 East and Parramatta to Epping Rail Link are seen highlighted in red, along with the F3-M2 Link. Click on image for higher resolution. (Source: NSW Transport Department submission to Infrastructure Australia, August 2010)
The NSW Government’s priority road and rail projects are the M5 East and Northwest Rail Link, both seen highlighted in red. Click on image for higher resolution. (Source: NSW Transport Department submission to Infrastructure Australia, August 2010.)
The other problem with Mr Abbott’s offer is that it represents only a fraction of the total cost. While the majority of the cost of the PERL ($2.6bn at first, though later blowing out to $4.5bn) would be borne by the Commonwealth, the M4 East has a price tag of between $5bn (for a short route between Strathfield and Ashfield) and $10bn (for the long route that also links it to the airport at Mascot). This leaves the state government out of pocket by $3.5bn-$8.5bn, compared to $0.5bn-$1.9bn for the PERL.
Mr Abbott’s proposal in particular is concerning in that it reverts to the view that transport funding should favour road over rail, private transport over public transport. It fits in with the liberal view of individual liberty and freedom – and the private motor car provides this much better than a centrally planned public transport system designed “for the people”. In his book, he dismisses the need for any vehicle larger than a car:
“…there just aren’t enough people wanting to go from a particular place to a particular destination at a particular time to justify any vehicle larger than a car, and cars need roads.” – Tony Abbott (Battlelines, p. 174), Leader of the Opposition
The NSW Liberal Government takes a different perspective on the role of public transport, having not only made the NWRL its centrepiece but also buying the monorail and light rail, reverting them from private to public ownership (albeit still privately operated). They’ve done this presumably out of a realisation that roads do not have the capacity of public transport, and that congestion is costing the economy in potential output.
The Federal Coalition also supports completing the construction of the Pacific Highway. The completion of this project is currently uncertain as the NSW government insists that funding continue to follow the 80%-20% split where the federal government contributes the majority of the funds, while the federal government is insisting that past 2014 all federal funding would only match state dollars. Mr Truss has mentioned he would consider the suggestion by NSW to transfer the $2.1bn earmarked for the the PERL towards the Pacific Highway, which would cover the shortfall. This again suggests an anti-rail bias by the federal Coalition.
The story was picked up by MX, ABC News Radio, and 2UE. The only problem was, the whole thing was a big hoax, all part of UNSW’s annual Foundation Day prank.
MX went so far as to quote the transport minister:
Minister for Transport Gladys Berejiklian said she welcomed any interest in the purchase of the monorail.
“Transport for NSW intends to issue an Expression of Interest in the coming months to gague interest in the coming months to gague interest from other parties regarding possible future users of the monorail infrastructure and rolling stock.” she said. – MX (25 July, 2012)
The next week, on Monday 30 July, David Oldfield on 2UE even devoted a 25 minute portion of his radio show to the issue. He took it quite seriously, and didn’t notice that the first two callers he spoke to were having him on.
Google has added bike paths to its Google Maps service. You can now plan your trip to take bike paths into account. They are separated into off-street, on-street and “bike friendly streets”.
Some quick browsing through it reveals that it is still a work in progress, with some bike paths missing or inconsistent (i.e. in some places a shared pedestrian/bike path is classified as off-street and sometimes as on-street). Still, this is a big improvement, along with the addition of traffic that was added recently.
What Google Maps is still missing in Australia is good Google Transit functionality. It’s almost non-existent in Australia, with Sydney having only the light rail and monorail built in. Sydneysiders can use something like 131500 or the TripView app to get directions, but I found neither of them to be as user friendly as Google Transit was when I used it while travelling in the US.
A couple of smaller updates that probably wouldn’t warrant a dedicated post, so I’m doing them all together
Freight rail upgrade progressing
The first stage of works on Sydney’s freight rail lines has been completed, with an upgrade and reconfiguration of the rail yard at Port Botany now finished. This forms part of a greater overall freight rail network, that will both take trucks off the road and segregate freight trains from commuter trains. It will link up to the existing freight rail network around Chullora/Enfield and eventually be linked to the Southern Sydney Freight Line and Northern Sydney Freight Line, which will connect freight from Sydney through to Melbourne and Brisbane.
Outdated map of freight rail lines, current and proposed, in Sydney. This map is a few years old, but gives you a good idea of what the network looks like. (Source: http://www.metrostrategy.nsw.gov.au/)
Opal rollout starts in CBD stations
New Opal card readers are being installed in rail stations in the CBD (photos at Central and Wynyard) aswell as ferry stops. The Opal card is set to begin on ferries later this year before eventually rolling out to trains, buses and light rail.
Hobart and Canberra show interest in Sydney’s monorail.
Both Hobart and Canberra have mentioned potential interest in purchasing the Sydney monorail when it is finally dismantled by the NSW government following its purchase of the company that owns the monorail. The Canberra bid seems a bit dire, and almost seems like a light rail proposal with “light rail” crossed out and replaced with “monorail”. Hobart, on the other hand, with its compact CBD and lack of major public transport infrastructure, might possibly have a case. Why they would want to go with a 25 year old piece of technology that needs significant upgrade and repairs is beyond me, but if they want to buy it then they are more than entitled to.
On the topic of the monorail, a great Sydney based parody of the classic Simpons monorail song has emerged. I can’t embed it here, so check out the Sydney Morning Herald website to see it for yourself.
In announcing the deal, Premier Barry O’Farrell said that:
The monorail is not integrated with Sydney’s wider public transport network and has never been truly embraced by the community… the NSW government cannot justify costly upgrades like the purchase of new vehicles required to keep it running. This decision paves the way for the development of a world class Sydney International Convention, Exhibition and Entertainment Precinct. – Barry O’Farrell (23 March 2012)
Mr O’Farrell points out that the problem with the monorail is that it doesn’t go anywhere people want to go. There was actually one time in my 20 years living in Sydney when I was in Pitt Street Mall and wanted to go to the Convention Centre side of Darling Harbour in which I realised the monorail would take me from where I was to where I wanted to go. Though for $4.90, it was quite an expensive trip and I may have been better off walking. So I think the Premier is right on the money with his analysis.
The monorail over Pyrmont Bridge. (Source: Mark Yashinsky)
Public ownership of the light rail will make it easier to integrate it into the greater transport network, including a better alignment of its fares, which are currently much higher than those of other transport modes (albeit with light rail now included in the myMulti ticketing system). The headlines have all been about the monorail, but this is the real long term impact of the decision to purchase MTS, particularly considering the potential size of the light rail network the government is considering. Transport minister Gladys Berejiklian explained it as follows:
There were provisions in the contract that would have meant we would have had to negotiate any potential links in the future, in fact I think even the contract stated any extensions could not touch the existing light rail line. This means we have that option now to extend the light rail network and to make it completely integrated, not have a stop start system. – Gladys Berejiklian (23 March 2012)
Potential future light rail network. Click on image for higher resolution. (Source: NSW Long Term Transport Masterplan Discussion Paper, page. 50)
The curious thing about this move is that the Liberal Party is generally known as the party that favours the market and privatisation over government control, yet it has chosen to take back ownership of a private company. Veolia is being retained as the operator of the light rail, though I expect that once this contract expires the operation of the light rail will be put out to tender rather than handed over to a government department or agency. This is the model the government is seeking for ferries, with public ownership but a private operator, and the model that has been rumoured it is seeking for any future metro rail network.
I’ve included links to all the major media coverage below. Many are quite similar, so if you’re after something with more depth, I recommend listening to the 2 interviews under the radio section, particularly the Frank Sartor one as he tends to be more opinionated and speculates a lot more.
I recently got back from a 3 week holiday from all over the USA (which also explains the lack of activity here of late – my apologies for the lull, but I’ve had a bunch of things to catch up on and this hasn’t been high on my priorities). As it’s my first post since I getting back, I thought I’d write a bit about my encounters with public transport during my travels.
Monorails are quite common. I saw them at a number of airports (Orlando, Atlanta, JFK and San Francisco) as well as both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. I took a video in the Orlando Airport one and included it below. In all these cases (with maybe the exception of Disneyland) they were used as a form of mass transportation, rather than a glorified tourist trap like the Sydney monorail
Wheaton Station on the Washington D.C. Metro has the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere. I went there to check it out for myself, and took two and a half minutes to get to the top of it. See video below.
Los Angeles really is designed for cars, rather than public transport. The city actually has a good network of cris-crossing lines that can get you from just about anywhere to just about anywhere else, but because the city is so spread out this can take a very long time. Only the poor people who cannot afford their own car use public transport. I drove there for one day, and the freeways seemed quite well designed, operating at full capacity, but with the use of traffic lights on the on ramps to keep them from going over the maximum capacity and leading to traffic jams on the freeway. This leads to localised traffic jams around the city, but keeps them from spreading through to the rest of the city via the freeways.
New York (Manhattan in particular) is very easy to get around on trains, buses and on foot. I wrote a post about it on my travel blog while I was away which I will repost below, and which you can read here.
San Francisco has more modes of transport than I have seen anywhere else: heavy rail, light rail, trams, cable cars, trolley buses, buses and ferries. I also wrote about it on my travel blog (here and here), and have again reproduced the relevant portions below.
Above: Wheaton Station escalator.
Above: Orlando Airport monorail.
New York Transport
There’s a lot of transport options in New York, so much so that only something like 25% of Manhattan’s 1.5 million residents own a car. There’s long distance Amtrak trains which will take you to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC or pretty much anywhere else in the Northeast United States. Ten there’s commuter rail, like Long Island Rail if you’re going to Long Island (past Queens and Brooklyn) or PATH if you’re going to New Jersey, but I’ve also seen trains that go to nearby Connecticut. All these trains tend to go either to Grand Central Terminal (if the come in from the North) or Penn Station (if the come in from Long Island), with PATH trains just terminating on the Western edge of Manhattan.
On top of that there are also ferries to take you to one of the many islands around here. It’s easy to forget that of New York City’s 5 boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Statten Island – only The Bronx is on mainland America.
Buses are either local or express. Local buses fit in to the subway system, so I’ll talk about them later. Express buses cost $5, which is expensive when compared to a local bus or subway trip at about $2, and I don’t know much more about them than that.
The subway is quite a complicated tangle of lines, but for the most part follows Manhattan’s street grid system. Most lines go North/South along the Avenues. At their Northern ends, the lines either terminate in uptown Manhattan, continue North into The Bronx, or turn East into Queens. On their Southern end, the lines either terminate in downtown Manhattan, or turn East into Brooklyn. All the trains therefore indicate their direction by saying uptown/Queens or downtown/Brooklyn. This is important as some entrances/exits are for only one direction, and if you get it wrong then you must exit and pay to enter on the other end. Here’s one example, you can see which lines serve this station and also the direction in which they go (some entrances will let you enter to either platform, as this one indicates).
There are also a couple of East/West lines, though only 2 of these are East/West the whole way in Manhattan, with the rest spending part of their time in Manhattan traveling North/South. Not only do most subway lines travel along the Avenues, but they have stops on the same Streets. I’ll use my experience as an example.
I’ve spent most of my time in midtown Manhattan, which you can see below.
My hostel is on the corner of 23rd Street and 11th Avenue (middle on the left), which means I have to walk along 23rd Street until I reach 8th Avenue, where I can get on the subway station there. Or, if I want to get on another line, I just keep walking East along 23rd Street until I get to 7th Avenue, 6th Avenue, 5th Avenue or Park Avenue, where there are other stations. And this is where the local buses come into play. Each of these streets with subway stations along it has a bus line running in each direction. So if you want to get anywhere, you catch a bus East/West, then get a train North/South and get to where you’re hoping to get to. It’s that simple.
If you’re going further, then the lines start to deviate, but criss cross in order to allow you to change from one train to another in order to get to where you need to go. The first few times you use it, it’s easy to get lost or disorientated (such as going in the wrong direction or taking an express train instead of a local – all stops – train), but pretty soon it becomes second nature.
Since I’m here for 8 days, I just paid for a 7 day unlimited pass. It cost me $29 and let’s me travel on the subway and local buses as much as I want for a week. Considering I spent $46 for a little over 4 days in Washington DC for transport on the metro, and even then I was restricted to travel only after 9:30AM on weekdays, it’s a really great way to get around. And even then, because the city is so compact and dense, it’s massively walkable. Many times I don’t even bother getting a train or a bus, I just walk. Sure beats having to hire a car in LA, that’s for sure!
San Francisco Transport (part 1)
Much like New York, San Francisco is misunderstood. People, myself included, assume that San Francisco is a large city, but it is only one city in a larger metropolitan area known as the “Bay Area” that includes cities like Berkley, Oakland, San Jose, etc. This is much like how Greater New York City is a huge metropolitan area, but when people think of New York, they are actually thinking of Manhattan island.
This confused me a little with transport, because both San Francisco and the Bay Area each have their own public transport (MUNI and BART respectively). BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is a rail system that goes around the entire Bay Area and would transport me between the airport, San Francisco and Lafayette. MUNI (Municipal Railway) is only for San Francisco itself, and is the transit agency that runs the cable cars, trams, light rail and trolley buses that San Francisco is famous for.
It took me a little while to work this out, and to then work out how to pay (New York, and it’s unlimited weekly ticket, had spoiled me a little) but I was soon off on a BART train to San Francisco. I had a few hours to do some sightseeing before getting back on the BART to Lafayette, so I headed off to the iconic Castro area of the city.
…
It was around here that I also saw my first San Francisco tram! The trams in San Fran are either the old street cars, which run entirely above ground along Market Street into the city and then down to Fisherman’s Wharf, or they are light rail which run above ground in the suburbs but underground underneath Market Street next to BART until they reach the city. The tram I saw was one of the light rail trams.
After the Castro I got on one of the above ground street cars and headed down Market Street into the city. These street cars are all PCC model street cars, and are the North American equivalent of the W Class trams you see in Melbourne on the City Circle route. Each of these trams has a sign on the side telling you which city they were originally from, as many American cities had streets lined with trams in the first half of the 20th century which were often sold to San Francisco when these lines were decommissioned (since San Francisco kept its trams, just as Melbourne did). I even saw a tram from Italy! Each of these trams has information on the inside about its history and where it is from. It was very fascinating to take in these little details.
San Francisco also has trolley buses (which use overhead wires for power, rather than petrol) and cable cars (which are the street cars going up and down the steep San Francisco hills which people often associate with the city). But I didn’t go on either on the Saturday, so that’s all I’ll say about them for now.
San Francisco Transport (part 2)
I took the F-Line tram around to Fisherman’s Wharf. This is the same tram line that I caught [earlier] that runs on the surface of Market Street and uses heritage trams. Fisherman’s Wharf seemed very touristy, based on how crowded it was. From there you can get a view of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. I walked over to a pier so that I could get a better sight of both.
Then it was time to get the cable car back to market street. The cable cars don’t use electricity, instead they are powered by a cable running underground that the cable car grabs on to in order to move. This allows it to climb San Francisco’s steep hills. The line is quite long (I waited 40 minutes), the journey isn’t quick (roughly half an hour) and the fare is relatively expensive ($6, compared to $2 for MUNI), so few commuters use the cable cars. It’s mainly tourists who use it.
There are 3 cable car lines. I took the Hyde-Powell line, which goes from Fisherman’s Wharf back to Market Street. The cable car is quite crowded, so I didn’t get to see as much as I wanted to, but I still got to see plenty from the hills of San Francisco. We also went past Lomard Street, the famous windy road in San Francisco. But as my view was partially blocked, I didn’t really get a good look at it.
At the end of the cable car ride it was back on BART and off towards the airport. The wait for the cable car had been longer than I had expected, so much like my transport to the airport at the start of my journey, I was cutting it a bit fine and arrived with only an hour before take off. But I made it, and am now writing this somewhere over the Pacific near New Zealand.
The history of the monorail dates back to the 80s, when redevelopment of Darling Harbour (along with neighbouring Pyrmont and Ultimo) was a major urban renewal project designed to co-incide with bicentenary celebrations planned for 1988. Part of this urban renewal included plans for a new transport link into the area. The choice came down to light rail or a monorail. The decision to ultimately go with the monorail appears to have been a political one, motivated by the minister responsible Laurie Brereton, who took responsibility for the project out of the committee and into his own hands. A detailed SMH article explaining the behind the scenes events that led up to this was published in 1988 notes that the light rail option was described as the “best long-term solution” but that the monorail was chosen because Mr Brereton personally supported it, as did Premier Neville Wran.
Pitt Street is currently a one way street with 2 traffic lanes and 2 parking lanes (one on each side). The monorail pylons prevent the lane on the left from being turned back into a traffic lane. Click on image for higher resolution. (Source: Google Maps)
I had previously supported the idea of keeping the monorail, it’s already been built and runs at no expense to tax payers. But if removing it in order to replace it with a more effective and more efficient light rail system would improve transport options, then I think it’s a good move.
Transport Sydney 