Marborough Lights

Deceptive packaging

The EIS (20 CESLR EIS Technical Paper 1) announces significant changes to Devonshire Street:

• "Delivery of a single eastbound traffic lane;"
• "Existing right turn movements for vehicles travelling eastbound along Devonshire Street are consolidated to Elizabeth Street and Crown Street only;"

That is, the only access to Surry Hills south of Devonshire Street will be from Cleveland Street eastbound, Elizabeth Street southbound and maybe from Crown Street. Literally, the only possible access to Surry Hills south, an area that includes the Belvoir Street theatre and hundreds of businesses, from the entire Eastern Suburbs east of Crown Street will be via a right-hand turn from Crown Street into Lansdowne Street, if this is indeed allowed.

The Surry Hills qhetto

The section of Crown Street from Cleveland Street to Devonshire Street is the most heavily congested section of Crown Street. In the decades before 2005 the measuring station for vehicle flow data was just south of Devonshire Street. It would be difficult to see how right turns from Crown Street could be accommodated; but this is the only entry road into Surry Hills south from the rest of Surry Hills, Darlinghurst and the entire Eastern Suburbs.

Crown Street into Lansdowne Street

Lansdowne Street at Marlborough Street

Marlborough in currently a two-way street, one of many streets allowing access to Surry Hills south, but of course it will have to become one-way north, and there will be traffic lights to cross the tram tracks. The other roads connecting to Devonshire Street will be blocked off.

When a former nazi held a Youth Rally at Randwick Racecourse there was only one legal entry into northern Surry Hills - a right turn from Flinders Street into Short Street - but this was for one day only. O'Farrell's ghettoisation of Surry Hills will last "for a thousand years".

Marlborough Street to the north of Devonshire Street is a short dead-end street so the bus shown in the indicative plan (Figure 5.34) has no where to go except back to Crown Street. Indeed the text states: "The Surry Hills stop would primarily service the local residential, dining and entertainment area as well as a large proportion of Crown Street bus service customers" - whatever this may mean.

Marlborough Street north

The Figure 5.34, indicative plan - Surry Hills stop, is, as we have come to expect, deliberately deceptive. The consultants have tried to conceal that Marlbrough Street will no longer be two-way, showing two cars crossing the intersection from the dead end - the bonnets of the car icons have the stripe down the middle. After all the spectacular failures of transport projects in NSW and Queensland one does not expect consultants to be competent, but it is distressing to observe that they act on the presumption that they will never be held to account. Historically there is a sound basis for this cavalier assumption. The indicative plan does not show traffic lights at this intersection.

The bus shown could only have come from the one entry to the ghetto, Lansdowne Road, so TfNSW intends to loop inbound Crown Street bus services through the ghetto, hoping to turn Ward Park into a public bus to tram transfer station. Transfers from trams to outbound buses in Crown Street  will be much more difficult, since hook turns into Crown Street and traffic attempting to turn from Crown Street into the ghetto will preclude bus stops in this section of Crown Street, which is the main retail centre for southern Surry Hills and Redfern.

TfNSW will be making Marlbrough Street the only exit from the ghetto not only for traffic from the entire Eastern Suburbs but from the north. This traffic will have to join the queue behind the buses looped in from Crown Street to turn into a single lane which fans out into a hook lane and a straight-through lane at Crown Street. Or does it? The hook turn has been cropped from figure 5.34 as has every hook turn in the system.

The EIS refers to the traffic lights at Marlbrough Street as measures to mitigate the lane reductions in Devonshire Street but the only purpose is to give the trams priority over all local traffic movements. The rectangle representing a bus at the bottom of Figure 5.34 supposedly fully informs citizens of the intentions of TfNSW. There is no other information in the so-called technical papers as far as I can tell. The deliberate deception of depicting vehicles from the north entering the ghetto at the Marlbrough Street cannot be dismissed lightly.

This blog has been describing TfNSW and the O'Farrell Government as incompetent but following this EIS this is hardly the appropriate word. An more appropriate word would be "evil".