Betrayal of Trust

The Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1983 and is a Government agency responsible to the Minister for the Environment, but the land had been set aside for the grazing of cattle by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. A former Lord Mayor of Sydney, Charles Moore campaigned successfully to have the land set aside as a green lung and a recreation area for all the people of Sydney.

The Parklands are readily accessible from bus routes along Oxford Street, Anzac Parade and the exclusive bus roadway through Moore Park. Yet the Trust is listed as one of the members of the Light Rail Round Table and enthusiastically endorsed the Project even though it was just a line of dots on two road maps. One thing is certain, there will be at least three stops inside the parklands and the land between the rails and Anzac Parade and Alison Road will be ghettoised. Local residents adjacent to the Parklands will lose their ready access to the park.

Now the Trust has published land use proposals for a permanent asphalted car park to the east of the rail lines, initially for 2000 vehicles but there are lots more playing fields that can be asphalted over. The Trust's chief executive, Kim Ellis, has said the "facility would be a 'park and fly' carpark for commuters using the light rail", his exact words. He is away with the fairies! These are the petty bureaucrats who have set themselves up to irretrievably degrade public transport in and round the City of Sydney, and who will not accept any professional help.

It costs between $18,000 and $19,000 a year to park all day at public car parks in the CBD adjacent to the George Street rail route, and private parking spaces in buildings in the CBD are strata-titled and sell for hundreds of thousand of dollars. If Bra Boys had this type of money they would probably prefer to spend it on recreational drugs. We can safely assume that almost none of the vehicles in Anzac Parade and Alison Road during the morning and afternoon peaks are heading to or from car parks in the CBD. The Trust will be providing much cheaper all day parking for commuters heading for the CBD and will be adding to the vehicle counts in the south-eastern suburbs crucial main arterial roads.

The Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday (25/06/13) that the Lord Mayor Clover Moore had railed against the plan. I can no longer say that she has not had a rational thought in her life.

Tuesday was a big day for news reports about Light Rail in Sydney. I was on a 5 hour flight to Broome in the Kimberley. I will continue to keep track of developments in Sydney. This blog has is in for the long haul.