A merry Christmas to all the readers. Here’s hoping Santa was kind to you this year. This blog’s author, historically a Westie – though residing in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs these days, received a Western Sydney Wanderer’s jersey.
Western Sydney also received some good news right before Christmas in the form of support for an airport at Badgery’s Creek from Liverpool Council, which includes the Badgery’s Creek area. It’s clear that the debate over an airport has moved on from whether one should be built, and is now over how best to build one so that Western Sydney receives the maximum benefit.
Today’s post is about engineering solutions for efficient movement of people in the form of 2 videos.
The first is in Spanish with English subtitles from Santiago, Chile (taken from the great transport blog Human Transit). It explains how a gate in the middle of a platform ensures that passengers enter the train carriage at the right spot, rather than trying to jockey for a good position when leaving the carriage onto the platform. While this gate appears irrational from the perspective of the individual, it makes the movement of people more efficient overall, even to the benefit of those who might appear to be worse off as a result.
In Sydney, the marshal’s trialled at Town Hall appear to mimic this sort of idea. While the North West Rail Link could initially see overcrowding at Chatswood as large numbers of passengers transfer from one train to another until such a time as a second Harbour Crossing is completed. Both scenarios could learn something from this low-tech engineering solution.
The second video looks at how intersections in the Netherlands are designed to allow bikes and cars to cross safely. The simplicity of the solution is breathtaking. Even more impressive is the way it allows right hand turns to be executed safely and easily (in the video they are left hand turns, due to the Dutch driving on the opposite side of the road to Australians).
With the accelerated expansion of bike paths in Sydney, this is also somewhere that city planners in Sydney could learn a thing or two from overseas.
Transport Sydney 