The Peril from the North is unabashedly brown

 The 343 bus route travels back and forth along Elizabeth Street and Gardeners Road to the ill-fated nine-ways intersection with Anzac Parade. Buses physically turn around in the CBD by looping up Bent Street and down Pitt Street to Castlereagh Street. It shares this turn-around strategy with bus services from Clovelly and north Coogee that do not have sufficient patronage to justify separate bus services to Railway Square and the northern CBD.

Now the North Shore rump politicians have chosen this route as the invasion route to take over Elizabeth Street northbound. The 343 buses will not be turning round at Bridge Street: they will proceed along Bridge Street and Grosvenor Street to Chatswood via the Pacific Highway, Willoughby Road and Victoria Road.

Invasion routes are brown

This route will be destined to be insanely popular with North Shore commuters headed for destinations south of Park Street as all the other bus services from north of the Harbour will terminate at Wynyard park, Bridge Street or Druitt Place (Druitt Street is to be rebadged). TfNSW believes it can control where commuters transfer between bus routes but this is absurd.

The one way loop across the Cahill Expressway then along Bridge Street and Gosvenor Street is also to be used by buses from suburbs to the west of Middle Harbour accessed via Miller Street. These services currently terminate at Wynyard park. This is where most commuters would want to get off, as the route from Miller Street down the Warringah Freeway to the Harbour Bridge does not pass close to a train station.

Miller Street on-ramp, next stop Bridge Street!

Currently commuters can transfer to a City Circle train service at Wynyard Station or an inner-west or Rozelle bus service from George Street. The new loop will never-ever connect them to the train system south of the Harbour. They have never been consulted, informed or given any choice.

TfNSW possibly believes that commuters can be induced to transfer from the public bus services to a privately-operated tramway but with buses passing along Phillip Street back-to-back throughout the day and most of the night this is a forlorn hope.

The duplicity of Chris Lock

Chris "Grid" Lock

The sacked Deputy Director General of Transport Projects division of TfNSW, Chris Lock, announced to a near-hysterical group of self-proclaimed businessmen at a Randwick businessmen's breakfast shortly after being heckled at a Sydney High School Forum that: "We have moved 60 of those (York Street) buses of a morning. Instead of coming into Wynyard they go over the Cahill Expressway and they come into the city from the Macquarie Street end... Our passengers started making informed choices cos those that wanted to get up to the Macquarie street end of the city started catching those routes. How amazing that passengers are sensible.

"We are going to redesign the bus network. We are going to come to everybody in a Public Exhibition type thing."

EIS figure

It is impossible to comprehend what Chris Lock meant by "a Public Exhibition type thing". It certainly never took place. I pointed out in a post on 7 Feb 2014 "Spot the Difference" the startling differences in the diagrams of the future bus network that appeared in brochures published by TfNSW before and after and in the EIS. None of these showed a bus route along Bridge and Grosvenor Streets.

Commuters using Miller Street bus services will not be given any choice of whether they wish to be deposited on the Macquarie Street end of the city or adjacent to Wynyard Station, informed or otherwise. They have not been consulted and are probably unaware of their fate unless they have accessed the still-deceptive maps of routes through the CBD at mysydney.nsw.gov.au

The scary thing is that Chris Lock was possibly not dishonest, just gormless. He was allowed to conceal his incompetence by a complete lack of disclosure.

The delusion of the Knutters of the Round Table

The names of the Knutters of the Round Table who, we are told, nodded off on the George Street tram lines will not live on in infamy as public transport to and through the CBD goes into terminal decline because all attempts to find out who they were have been thwarted. They are as anonymous as the shooters who quick fired 38 rounds of high-velocity centre-fire ammunition through the imploded doorway of the Lindt Café.

However we do know from the brochure "Sydney's Light Rail Future" that they were misinformed.

The brochure recounts reasons given to the Knutters as to why routes other than George Street were summarily dismissed:

• Pitt Street and Castlereigh Street were too narrow for twin rails
• The gradients of unspecified streets connecting Castlereigh Street to Circular Quay were too steep for trams.

Tram lines in Sydney

The fact that trams had travelled up and down to Circular Quay and the tram sheds at Benelong Point during and after the nineteenth century and that Pitt and Castlereagh Streets had never had more that one tram rail should have raised concerns amongst the Knutters of the Round Tables. However a bus route circling round the Cahill Expressway, Bridge Street and Gosvenor Street, to be used as a terminus for bus services from the North Shore was never disclosed to them. It was not revealed to anyone until the posting of the diagrams of revised bus routes on the mysydney web site.

All previous figures had shown buses from Elizabeth Street north-bound making a right-hand turn from Phillip Street at the Premier's privileged turn to the Cahill Expressway. The post "Spot the Difference" pointed out the implausibility of this. TfNSW has belatedly acknowledged this - the incompetence of the public servants put in control of TfNSW is almost beyond belief.

In the 19th and early 20th Centuries tram services had to extend to Circular Quay as ferries were the only means of reaching destinations from Kirribilli to Cape York. The Harbour Bridge and later the Cahill Expressway changed all that. If buses from the Harbour Bridge are terminated by looping them along the southern side of Bridge Street there is no rational for trams to cross these bus routes. In fact. competently designed tram systems such as Manchester's meticulously avoid tram rails crossing bus routes at transfer stations.

Spring/Bent Street loop

The Pitt/Castlereagh Streets tram route looped around Bent and Spring Streets as well as continuing to Circular Quay. The loop is only very short walk from the southern side of Bridge Street along Gresham or Loftus Streets. Trams operating in a loop can transfer passengers to buses in greater numbers as there is no danger of collisions when reversing from the stop.

Spring Street into Bent Street

There are excellent sight-lines throughout the route and trams operating at sensible speeds for a CBD system could run virtually back to back. No bus route to or through the CBD would be degraded by the tram system. Transport in Sydney would be essentually future proof.

The small plaza in front of Governor Phillip Tower would allow a relaxed radius for the curve into Bligh Street.

If the public servants put in control of Transport for NSW by the North Shore rump politicians had been competent enough or honest enough to inform the Knutters at the Round Tables that bus services from north of the Harbour would be terminated by looping them across the Cahill Expressway and the southern side of Bridge Street there is a possibility that an anonymous little voice may have piped up: "The wicked witches are wearing no clothes at all".

And the people of Sydney would have lived happily ever after in a prosperous Global City.

The brutal reality is that the people of Sydney never had a chance of averting catastrophe once they gave climate-change deniers who had festered for 30 years in the North Shore rump control of the Treasury benches. Eddie Obeid has a lot to answer for.