Secrets of the coven

Figure 7-9 AECOM access plan at Central Station

In the Technical Papers Volume 1 Aecom published crude diagrams showing the bus stops that would retained (green squares with white bus icon) and bus stops that would be created (green squares with black icon) adjacent to the tram stops (the mauve rectangle). Signalised pedestrian crossings are shown as red lines crossing the roads.

The three extra bus stops in Pitt Street are a worry as buses using them would have to make a U-turn in the narrow section of Pitt Street - not physically possible. The double-headed orange arrows represent transfers from buses to the privately-operated trams which is all Aecom is interested in.

The figure 4-1 of key bus routes in the EIS indicated that George Street bus services forcibly terminated at Pitt Street would in fact loop through a right turn into Goulburn Street then an illegal right turn into Castlereagh Street. This contradicted the similar figure in the SCCAS-for-further-consultation brochure released on 11 September 2013 and the figures in the SCCAS-final and Sydney's Bus Future brochures released after the EIS went on exhibition and referenced by the revised EIS, the Preferred Infrastructure Report. These are shown in the post Spot the Difference but are not worth reposting.

Whether forcibly-terminated buses are forced to loop through Goulburn Street or Campbell Street to turn right into Castlereagh Street, Booz & Company in the Technical Papers Volume 1 have them making a right-hand turn into Rawson Place into a set-down-only lane then a perilous hairpin right-hand turn into George Street.

Technical Papers Volume 1

You will have noted the obvious flaws in the design. The passengers being set down at the vast set-down-only bus stop could only have gotten on at stops adjacent to Belmore Park. The exception is of course commuters on the bus services from the North Shore that have been diverted into Castlereagh Street via the Cahill Expressway and wish to travel to the southeastern suburbs and those who caught these buses in Castlereagh Street rather than walk to the few tram stops in George Street. Commuters from the North Shore travelling to the south eastern suburbs are spoilt for choice:

1. Catch a bus terminating at Wynyard Park and traipse to George Street;
2. Catch a bus terminating at Druitt Street and walk to the Town Hall or QVB stops (same distance);
3. Catch a bus terminating at Railway Square and step across the platform from their exclusive set-down-only stop.

Buses on the preferred Castlereagh Street route must inexorably return to the North Shore through the mother of all pinch-point in Elizabeth Street northbound and the Premier's privileged right-hand turn in Phillip Street.

Needless to say the designs of Booz & Company are contradicted by the indicative plans of the stop from Parsons Brinckerhoff. The plan shows a bus icon in the kerb-side lane in Pitt Street southbound and no right-turn bus lane into Rawson Place. The three buses shown in Rawson Place could only have come from Eddy Street (sic). The lane arrows in Eddy Avenue are not shown, as is their wont, but the bus access lane into Rawson Place must be a right-turn lane.

Parsons Brinckerhoff are proud of the design of this stop - it is one of the few indicative plans of stops that it has not revised for the Preferred Infrastructure Report. The plan shows clearly how much of a hairpin bend it will be for buses to turn around into George Street. The dots presumably represent pedestrians who have moved down the platform to the tarmac-level crossing so as to dutifully cross at the lights.

Alignment Diagram given to Sydney City Council

It is pointless to try to resolve the contradictions between the plans published by the three consultants, Aecom, Booz & Company and Parsons Brinckerhoff, in the EIS. The Sydney City Council was supplied with secret alignment diagrams that contradict all three descriptions in the EIS and has now conspired with TfNSW to pedestrianise Chalmers Street, a revision of the exhibited EIS so radical as to make the submissions made by people not in the know redundant.

The access diagrams prepared by Aecom showed the existing signalised crossing of Eddy Avenue east of the tram overpass with an existing bus stop to the west of the crossing. In practice buses set down passengers on both sides of the crossing which is accessible from either side.

The crossing had been deleted from the alignment diagrams inadvertently released by Sydney City Council in their submission to the EIS. This was understandable since the sandstone supports for the overpass almost completely block access to the crossing for bus passengers set down to the east of the overpass - they must cross the tram tracks blindsided to trams zipping through the arches from Chalmers Street.

The revised design replaces the lane used by buses with a two-way cycleway: "key impacts associated with the proposed design changes would include:

• the dual left turn movement from Elizabeth Street into Eddy Avenue would be reduced to a single lane to accommodate the two-way cycleway through the second arch of Eddy Avenue rail bridge
• traffic movements from Elizabeth Street and Foveaux Street into Eddy Avenue would be reduced to a single lane"

The indicative plan of the Chalmers Street stop has of course been cropped so the extent of the cycleway, the fate of the Railway Square bus services and the location if any of a pedestrian crossing across Eddy Avenue remain matters to be secretly determined by Sydney City Council and the Minister for Transport.

The current bus services from the southeastern suburbs to Railway Square connect passengers not only to Central Station but also to Parramatta Road and City Road bus services and they do not impact on congestion in the CBD. The trams that run on empty to Circular Quay after discharging passengers at Chalmers Street do not connect with these bus services unless they are forcibly terminated in Pitt Street and forced through the hairpin left-turn of death at Rawson Place.

Broomstick-eye Computer Graphics simulations of trams swooping along George Street may cause Gladys and Clover to pee their panties but they are very bad news for students and staff at Sydney University and residents of the inner west.

The Manly Connection

Michael Bruce "Mike" Baird

Robin "Robert" Askin

Why do Liberal Party politicians who live at Manly feel a need to make their names sound more butch? Askin pushed ahead with radial freeways centred on Darling Harbour, disregarding all objections. Will the new NSW Premier Baird press ahead with a radial tramway from the Manly ferry wharves to beachside suburbs, disregarding the dire consequences that this would have on residents of the inner west? We must await developments.

Cancerous growth on High Street

Nelune Cancer Centre, Avoca Street

The Health Minister Jillian Skinner and the member for Coogee Bruce Notley-Smith announced on 4 December 2013 that plans for the Nelune Comprehensive Cancer Centre at Prince of Wales Hospital would be on public exhibition until December 13. The exhibition period closed the day after the first disclosure of the plans for the tram rails through Randwick.

Construction site at High Street/Avoca Street corner

The plans are for the demolition of the present oncology unit, which is replaced by a building with facades right up to the street boundaries of of the block at High Street. There can never ever be a bus stop in High Street between Avoca Street and the University of NSW. The first stage, a deep excavation for underground levels up to the Avoca/High Street corner of the block, is under construction.

The red markings on the road may have something to do with the tram rails. Devonshire Street is being closed for road works on the weekends but Randwick City Council is clearly treated with more respect than the undemanding Sydney City Council.

High Street frontage of Prince of Wales Hospital

In fact, there will never ever be a bus stop in High Street to the east of Wansey Road. The revised EIS relocates the tram stop at the south end of Wansey Road into the middle of High Street diverting the single westbound lane into the grounds of the University of NSW. For Coogee/Parramatta Road bus services there will be a new bus stop way to the south in Perouse Road (according to the dubious access diagrams prepared by Aecom) and the next stop will be god knows where west of Wansey Road - the bus stops will be further apart than tram stops!

But the disadvantage for Coogee residents pales to insignificance beside the disadvantages for Eastern Suburbs commuters. Bus services from Bondi Junction use Clara Street to access High Street from Belmore Road since there is no right turn from Avoca Street.

Bus turning into Clara Street

In order to physically turn into Clara Street bus drivers must swing into the centre lane after leaving the bus stop - car drivers are required to give way. They must "encroach on the light rail alignment" making the passengers sitting ducks to be run down by cattle cars with priority signalling. The redeeming feature of the design is that children injured on buses run down by trams will not have to wait for ambulances to thread their way, god knows how, through lanes of grid-locked traffic: the stretchers can be wheeled directly into the Children's Emergency Unit at Prince of Wales. Through traffic in the single eastbound lane of High Street will be blocked from travelling in parallel with tram movements not only by buses turning right into Avoca Street but also by buses turning left into Clara Street.

The Bondi Junction to Rockdale bus routes (numbers 400 and 410) are arguably the most important regional bus routes in the Sydney metropolitan area. They connect the Eastern Suburbs with Randwick, Prince of Wales Hospital, University of NSW, Maroubra Junction, Mascot and the Airport terminals and thence to the southern rail line.

The Eastern Suburbs are the natural catchment area for Prince of Wales Hospital - with the closure of Prince Henry Hospital the only other teaching hospital is St Vincents and this was threatened with closure. The revised EIS chortles: "The relocation of the UNSW High Street stop into High Street would provide ... more convenient access to the medical and hospital precinct to the east". The government is obliterating the bus stops used by services from the Eastern Suburbs to give priority to a radial transport system from the Manly ferry terminal. It should be noted that the submission of Randwick City Council to the exhibited EIS suggested that if the stop was relocated it might withdraw its opposition to the High Cross Park terminal.

The Knutters of the Round Table

The 13 December 2012 brochure listed the Members of the Sydney Light Rail Round Table. Among them were:

• University of NSW
• University of Sydney
• Randwick City Council
• City of Sydney
• Transport for NSW
• NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure
• NSW Treasury
• Infrastructure NSW
• Member for Coogee, Bruce Notley-Smith, MP

I wrote to the University of Sydney, my alma mater, asking if they could provide more information than was provided in the brochure - no response. When the Member for Sydney, my MP, was inducted to the Round Table I wrote to his office. His website reported that the meetings were "closed" - members were sworn to secrecy. There was not even any information on the individuals that took part. It was at these secret meetings in 2012 that the routes of the tram rails were decided.

It should be noted that Transport for NSW that prepared the exhibited EIS and the revised EIS and NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure that has the statutory obligation to assess the EIS (or should that be EISs) were both on these Round Tables.

Revised down

The exhibited EIS cropped the indicative plan of the High Cross Park terminus to conceal that Belmore Road, the sine qua non arterial between Eastern Australia north of Kirribilli and Coogee, would be reduced to a single lane culminating inexorably as a right turn lane. This would not be revealed until the Preferred Infrastructure Report was released months after the exhibition period had closed. The diagrams included in the Technical Papers by Booz & Company deceptively showed two southbound lanes in Belmore Road.

Members of the Round Table included the "honorable" Bruce Notley-Smith and the Randwick City Council and they would have been fully aware that the residents of Coogee and Randwick were being deliberately deceived to deny them any opportunity to raise objections. They are clearly contemptuous of the people who elected them to office and pay them enormous salaries and pensions for life.

There is one startling difference in the revised plan and the diagrams that preceded it: the switch points in front of the oncology department have been deleted. The buildings shown in the revised plan are of the old, to be demolished, oncology department, so the revised plan was prepared before the EIS was exhibited and was deliberately repressed. But why delete the switch points? Booz & Company insisted that only one rail into High Cross Park would be in use at any one time but Parsons Brinckerhoff suggested that trams would alternate between platforms. If the revised plan is approved by the assessors Parsons Brinckerhoff will have triumphed.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption

Barry O'Farrell told the ICAC on Tuesday: "PPPs have been a fact of life since they were introduced by Nick Greiner,  like it or not". I was still surprised when I learned when writing this post that he had followed the career path of Nick Greiner and will resign as Premier after irrefutable evidence emerged that he had lied to an ICAC inquiry.

Misleading the ICAC about a $3000 bottle of Grange red wine is pitiful but it is revealing about the way the state Liberal Party has gone about business from the days of Robin Askin. The Light Rail Project was conceived in meetings where the participants were sworn to secrecy; the underlying assumptions behind the decisions made were never revealed; the public has no information on the individuals who were involved in the decision making; when the project is announced to the public they are told that no change is possible.

It has gotten a whole lot worse than it was under Askin with a deliberately contradictory Environmental Impact Statement that with-held information on matters of public safety and made public servants from across the public service complicit in approving the project without there not being proper disclosure of the impacts on traffic and on the public bus services.

News Corp archive - O'Farrell succession

Just when you thought it could not get any worse, the picture above lifted from News Corp was tagged farrel-succession.

The co-authored conspiracy theory

Post-PM peak

The O'Farrell government has employed three companies to sign off on the concoctions of Transport for NSW. Between the three they were able to produce wildly contradictory descriptions of the design and impacts of the system. Parsons Brinckerhoff produced the cropped indicative plans of the tram stops; Booz & Company was always careful to attribute to TfNSW any figures and tables it published in the Technical Papers that it signed off on, in conjunction with Aecom, the third consultancy firm.

Aecom actually engaged in work for TfNSW. The others appear to have done less work for their money than Arthur Sinodinos. Aecom had the thankless task of counting parked vehicles in surrounding roads at various times of the day. The figures 6.11 and 6.13 above for the "pre AM and post PM peaks" are from Section 6, Project Parking Strategy, in the Technical Papers. The orange strips designate "bus zones/lanes" and the red strips are "no stopping zones". The section of Avoca Street between Belmore Road and Alison Road is swathed in these zones.

The remarkable thing about the figures is that they are total fabrications and every resident in Randwick would be aware of this. The only buses that ply this section of Avoca Street are school buses setting down then in the afternoon picking up students from the small schools along this section of road. So what is Aecom trying to infer?

Their co-authors, Booz & Company, would have people believe that bus services that transfer their passengers to cattle cars would continue the length of Belmore Road and beyond until it was physically possible to do a U-turn, god knows where, then return south back through the retail and civic heart of Randwick and make a right-hand turn to pass around High Cross Park.

Revised EIS

Currently the only vehicles making a right-hand turn here would be traffic from kerbside parking in Belmore Road - other drivers would make the turn from Alison Road or roads further north. With the revised EIS all buses forced to transfer passengers to cattle cars at High Cross Park and proceed along Belmore Road would, we are told, be making a right turn at this intersecton regardless of whether they physically turned around at Phillip Street or god knows where.

Needless to say, TfNSW refuses to say where it intends these buses to physically turn around and is demanding that the Assessors approve Project without them being required to make any disclosure.

So, is Aecom trying to dissociate itself from its co-author and from TfNSW and to intimate that bus services terminated at the Randwick terminus will loop around Avoca Street, Alison Road and Belmore Road, the triangle of roads that TfNSW regards as a bus terminus? Or is Aecom just terminally confused?

My money was on the bus services being terminated in the clockwise direction so they would avoid the entry and exit points to the massive underground car park under Royal Randwick Shopping Centre. But anything is possible with TfNSW. They are incapable of thinking things through.

No U-turn at entrance to Royal Randwick car park

One lane is insane 2

The indicative plan of the Randwick terminus in the EIS was rotated and cropped to conceal the layout of southbound lanes in Belmore Road adjacent to the Highcross Park tram terminus. It clearly showed a northbound general traffic lane alongside a bus stop lane. It showed trams entering and leaving the terminus on different rails despite there being points for switching between rails in front of the Oncology Department at Prince of Wales Hospital. Parsons Brinckerhoff are implying that trams will be arriving alternately at each platform.

In the Technical Papers 5.4.5.4, Booz & Company gave a completely different description of the terminus. The northbound lane was designated as bus only and the southbound lane was not defined further but was required to provide access to properties. The most startling difference however was the tram stop, which was island platform.

The switch points for changing rails are closer to the intersection and the outbound and inbound points are more widely separated, and it is made clear that only one of the rails into the park would be in use at any one time. Which of the rails that would be in use would depend on the time of day, the northern rail would be in use for the "AM peak" and the southern rail at the "PM peak" and it would be anyone's guess which rail was in use throughout the rest of the day and night.

When the Randwick stop was just a dot on an indistinct map, posts on this blog speculated on whether buses would go with the flow of the Cuthill Street sling-shot or go against the flow, with dire consequences. Booz & Company reveal that TfNSW intend to do both, whatever the consequences for traffic flow in the Randwick traffic arteries. Incredibly, they would have you believe that buses would use the alignments of the unused rail to make turns into and out of High Street. Buses of course have to make return journeys throughout the day.

Less cropped plan of High Cross Park stop

Needless to say Randwick Council in its submission stated its opposition to the terminus in High Cross Park: "The Council is opposed to the High Cross Park design as detailed within the EIS... Council supports ongoing discussions to progress detailed study and modelling of the relocation of the Randwick interchange from High Cross Park to the eastern end of High Street opposite Prince of Wales Hospital".

The response of TfNSW has been to reissue a somewhat less cropped version of the plan in the EIS. The northbound lane in  Belmore Road is now depicted as bus only and bizarrely the trams in High Road and the terminus have switched rails. Parsons Brinckerhoff still insist the trams will arrive at alternate platforms, still contradicting Booz & Company.

The less-cropped plan reveals for the first time that there will be a single lane for southbound traffic in Belmore Road to carry all the traffic from High Street, the section of Belmore Road through the retail/civic heart of Randwick, and Avoca Street headed to Coogee Bay Road and Perouse Road. This single lane ends as a right-hand turn into Perouse Road so a vehicle waiting to turn right across the busy arterial Coogee Bay Road will block traffic from entering Coogee Bay Road.

This is the same situation that TfNSW is creating in the single lane in Devonshire Street, which ends in a right-turn into Crown Street, but Devonshire Street is just a local distributor for Surry Hills traffic. Belmore Road has been the sine qua non arterial road from Eastern Australia north of Kirribilli, to Coogee and south Maroubra from the foundation of the colony.

The situation in Devonshire Street was only revealed when Sydney City Council inadvertently released alignment diagrams in its submission, and cropping was also used to with-hold information about the single lane in Belmore Road from the public. Eco-nazis on Sydney City Council and Randwick City Council conspired with TfNSW to with-hold information from the public that will have a profound impact on their lives, for ever.

I railed against the cropping of the plans and the lack of information on Belmore Road in the EIS in posts on this blog but I did not lodge an objection in my submission. In my deluded state I believed that legally you could only object the matters that are disclosed in the EIS. I thought that if I raised objections on the basis of deductions TfNSW could claim they were not obliged to make the data available since it could be deduced.

Apparently the O'Farrell government has obtained advice from the Attorney General's Department that it is legal to make disclosures in a revised EIS months after the close of the exhibition period. Is there no section of the Public Service that has not been subverted by O'Farrell in less than three years?

The double whammy

There has never been a right-hand turn from High Street into Avoca Street, since High Street is two lanes each way. Traffic needing to access Avoca Street is slingshotted from a right turn lane into Cuthill Street at the southern end of High Cross Park. Right turns for general traffic will still be banned so vehicles will be forced to turn into Perouse Road instead. Buses however will be forced to make right-hand turns into Avoca Street. A single bus waiting to turn right will block traffic in High Street from proceeding through the intersection in parallel with the trams - the same old story as in Devonshire Street at Crown Street. But TfNSW acknowledges that High Street is a major arterial. Traffic travelling along High Street to Coogee Bay Road will have to pass through two single lane roads that are inexorably blocked by vehicles making right-hand turns at the ends.

The bus route of death

The exhibited EIS revealed that TfNSW will be terminating some of the Parramatta Road bus services displaced from George Street at Coogee beach via High Street. The revised EIS demands that the assessors just approve the project and allow O'Farrell to tell bus passengers from the inner west where they will be going two or three years after the next state election. Whenever they are informed, Booz & Company has plotted their path through the Randwick terminus.

Parramatta Road bus services terminating at Coogee beach will be forced to cross the tram rails four times, the fourth time is the deadliest. The diagram above of the PM peak shows the buses making an almost 90 degree turn into Avoca Street across the rail active in the morning, according to Booz & Company, or alternately throughout the day, according to Parsons Brinckerhoff. In the words of Vice President Joe Bilden: "not physically possible". It is not physically possible for buses to turn here without "encroaching on the light rail alignment". Not only are bus drivers sitting ducks so are passengers seated in the seats you are asked to vacate for mothers with babies and people with mobility disabilities, who are not able to see cattle cars approaching in the rear-vision mirror. They are in the firing line for cattle cars entering and leaving the High Cross Park terminus.

They are not out of the firing line when the other rail is active. I will refer you to another blog: melbournetramdriver.blogspot.com.au  His second post, in July 2011 "No steering wheel" is relevant to the matter. The google streetview figures below are from this post.

Hawthorn Road in Melbourne

Melbourne tram drivers have shoulder-high "tuna-can levers" for switching between rails but the more heavily used points are of course automated. The driver indicates the direction he wants to go between the first dot and the second pair of dots. The default position is straight ahead. In a tram system the points are vulnerable to vandalism and general failures from weather. In the event of failure of the switch between rails the trams would go straight ahead and take out buses that assumed the other rail was in use - no passenger would be spared.

There are of course no parts of the Melbourne tram system where trams are forced to switch between rails, as close together as physically possible, just before a very busy intersection when travelling at the speed limit of 60 kph, we are told. Trams will be travelling in each direction over the single rail into the Randwick terminus every two minutes as there are only two terminuses in the system. Only New South Wales produces politicians insane enough to contemplate such a system.

One lane is insane

Infrastructure NSW recommendations

The O'Farrell government set up Infrastructure NSW headed by chairman Nick Greiner shortly after gaining office to give independent advice on projects. The advice it received was to build light rail from Central Station to Maroubra Junction, presumably, from the figures they released, subsurface under Foveaux Street since they would have known that Foveaux Street is too steep to take trams. They also examined the idea of running trams along George Street and issued a scathing dismissal of the prospect - some of their milder comments are in the sidebar.

Greiner and his Public Service colleague Paul Broad resigned in May 2013 when it had become clear that loonies had taken control of the asylum.

Loonies take control of the asylum

Revised plan of stop at UNSW

The stop at University of NSW is another stop that has been changed so radically TfNSW has published a whole new set of revised (cropped) indicative plans. The submission of the Randwick Council asked for modelling of the congestion that would occur in Barker Street to the west of Anzac Parade as a result of the tram rails closing the right-hand turn into Day Street. My submission also objected strongly to the closure of right-hand turns at Day Street. TfNSW has not undertaken the requested traffic modelling but asserts in Item 10.1: "Since the release of the EIS, further analysis has been undertaken of the right-turn movements and the space for right-turn bays in some locations is likely to need to be adjusted.
"A design change to the UNSW Anzac Parade stop is proposed comprising relocation of the stop to the centre of Anzac Parade."

The right-turn lane is very short allowing only three or four vehicles or one bus to queue to make a right-turn before the one the only general traffic through lane is blocked. Bus services to Kingsford currently make right-turns here but they will still be rerouted along rat-runs. The revised indicative plan refers to a "potential right hand turn (subject to discussion with RMS)". Roads and Maritime Services is to be Bad Cop who rejects the turn after the Assessors have approved the project, with nothing having been disclosed before the exhibition period closed.

No Hook Turns

The indicative plans of Parsons Brinckerhoff in the EIS were all cropped or arrows on lanes omitted to deliberately conceal whether Hook right-turn lanes would be used to cross the tram rails. There are very good reasons why hook turn lanes are used throughout Melbourne and with tram systems around the civilised world. One of the most important is that it is impossible to stop vehicles waiting to turn right from "encroaching onto the light rail alignment". When a tram with priority signalling inevitably hits such a vehicle the airbags deploy and the vehicle is spun into the path of through traffic travelling in parallel with the tram. When the vehicle is hit in on the other side the airbags are deflating to avoid smothering the occupants - the end of the whole family.

Emasculating Environmental Protection

Section 5.8.1 of the submissions report summarises the large number of "concerns about lack of certainty about changes to bus network" raised in responses to the EIS, and this is fair enough. The response of TfNSW is: "The NSW Government released the final Sydney City Centre Access Strategy (SCCAS) and Sydney's Bus Future in December 2013. These strategies form the basis of the Sydney City Centre bus network and changes to the South East bus network."

Figure 4.2 from EIS (re-post)

The EIS published tables and the figure reproduced again (left) led to the concerns in many of the submissions to the EIS. I raised several objections in my submission, based on the data in the EIS.

Now the only response of TfNSW to all these objections and concerns raised in submissions to the EIS is to ask the Assessors to ignore the data in the EIS and the concerns that arose and to give approval to the project on the basis of brochures that were not included in the EIS and were not released to the public until after the EIS went on exhibition. I do not know when the SCCAS brochure was released in December but the second brochure was released two working days before the exhibition period was due to end.

If this is legal then the EIS legislation has been drained of its life blood and is all but worthless.

The response goes on: "TfNSW will commence detailed planning for the South East bus network in 2016/2017 in preparation for the commencement of CSELR operations". That is, one year after the next state election. The state government has not established that there is any pressing need for O'Farrell's whimsical project - quite the contrary. In my submission I asked the Assessors to not give approval to the EIS until TfNSW has established where bus routes can physically turn around.

TfNSW clearly believes that the Assessors are imbeciles, or it has inside information that the Public Servants at Infrastructure and Planning have been subverted along with those at the monster bureaucracies set up by O'Farrell, RMS and TfNSW.

So where do buses turn around

The trams along George Street obliterate all the places in the CBD where buses can physically turn around except for Phillip Street, but this post deals with Anzac Parade. The concern is listed in Volume 1 Part A Section 5.8.1 as

• Further information requested about where buses will turn around at Todman Avenue following introduction of the CSELR proposal.

Bus services that will be forcibly terminated at the Kingsford tram terminal transfer passengers to privately-operated cattle cars but the tram rails make it physically impossible for them to turn around. Buses must travel on empty until it is physically possible to turn around. This is not until the buses have passed through the newly created "pinch points" at the Strachan Street stop and the revised UNSW stop above. We can deduce: not until Todman Avenue. The University of NSW is the nigger in the wood pile for Anzac Parade having built the sheer glass facade of the foyer of the NIDA theatre on the plot boundary opposite the "Square House". Pavement widths and lane widths must be reduced on either side of the stop.

Once a bus reaches Todman avenue there are extra lanes and alternative routes along Todman Avenue and Doncaster Street, but this is where O'Farrell will terminate bus services to force passengers to transfer from public buses to privately-operated cattle cars. TfNSW has refused to disclose how buses will physically turn around at this terminus prompting the submissions pleading for more information; but one can deduce that buses will be forced to turn right into Todman Avenue and return to Anzac Parade along Doncaster Avenue - the triangle of roads that TfNSW regards as a bus terminus.

Melbourne bus driver console

Drivers in NSW are expected to move forward to the centre of the intersection in preparation to efficiently make a right-hand turn - I failed a driving test for being ultra cautious and not moving forward. Parsons Brinckerhoff have as usual omitted the arrows on the lanes but the number of dashes between the lanes reveal that the right-turn lanes at Todman Avenue are not hook turn lanes. It will be physically impossible for drivers turning right to not "encroach on the light rail alignment". When they see a cattle car bearing down on them, with priority signalling, in their rear-view mirror they will have nowhere to go, trapped by vehicles behind them that have moved forward with them. Bus drivers of every bus service forcibly terminated at the Kingsford terminus, in particular, will be sitting ducks. Their only hope for survival will be to clamber over the Opal Card reader in time.

Todman Avenue intersection

The pupils at Kensington Primary School (cropped by Parsons Brincherhoff) have for generations been protected from heavy traffic since there is no right turn from Anzac Parade northbound into Todman Avenue. They will be experiencing trauma at regular occurrences since this murderous right-hand turn is the only access to Alison Street from Anzac Parade. Indeed, when buses reach their terminus at Todman Avenue the only passengers still on board will be students and staff of the school and parents escorting their children to and from school. O'Farrell really has it in for primary school children.

One lane is insane

Every bus terminated at Kingsford terminal has to travel to Todman Avenue to physically turn around. As pointed out in numerous posts the number of buses "removed" from the critical portion of Anzac Parade from Nine Ways to Todman Avenue is zero. TfNSW has promoted the trams as necessary to relieve congestion in bus lanes in Anzac Parade but the trams will undeniably make congestion a lot worse. With the public servants at TfNSW we are not dealing with rational human beings.

Newly completed Tyree building

TfNSW is proposing to build bus bays into the car park alongside NIDA and under the cantilevered wings of the newly completed Tyree building - no one would accuse the University of NSW of thinking ahead. When Frank Sartor was Lord Mayor Sydney City Council installed kerb blisters in Elizabeth Street at Martin Place, causing massive disruption over a long period. This turned the bus stop lane into a bus bay. Bus drivers would stop in the next lane out from the kerb to avoid being trapped indefinitely by traffic queuing at the traffic lights at the pedestrian crossing. Eventually this lane was made a bus priority lane and buses now use the bus stop lane, but general traffic is forced into one lane.

Elizabeth Street at Martin Place is a wider section between the "pinch points" at the Old Supreme Court Building and Phillip Street, and leads only to the dead end of Circular Quay, so this is not all that significant. Anzac Parade, on the other hand, is the only arterial road between the south eastern suburbs and Eastern Australia from Kirribilli and Cape York and TfNSW is reducing it to one lane for general traffic in the same manner as Elizabeth Street, creating "pinch points" at the UNSW and at the Strachan Street stop. This effectively reduces traffic flow in Anzac Parade to one lane for the critical section from Nine Ways to Todman Avenue. The mid-block crossings in the revised indicative plan have a lot more potential than a right turn into Day Avenue.

Residents of the south eastern suburbs will be paying a high price for the shortsightedness of the University of NSW, unless their only goal in life is to travel to Circular Quay.

The inherent problems in Anzac Parade at the University of NSW are exacerbated and basically originate in the design of the Kingsford terminus and the associated redesign of the Nine Ways intersection. There is no fundamental reason why a tramway cannot be built from Maroubra Junction to Central Station, as suggested by Infrastructure NSW, and to Circular Quay, as outlined in my submission. But first, we the people will have to elect a competent and socially conscious state government.