The Enigma of the Randwick Triangle

Randwick Triangle

Trams will enter the triangular traffic island from High Street. One cannot deduce the orientation of the tram rails once they are inside the traffic island but presumably they would be roughly parallel to Belmore Road. The trams are so long they would stretch about half the length of the park.

Cuthill Street, to use a NASA term, slingshots traffic from Coogee Bay Road into:

• Avoca Street south
• Avoca Street north, to the Eastern Suburbs
• Belmore Road/Alison Street, thence the CBD and Eastern Australia from Kirribilli to Cape York
• High Street

Transport for NSW Wiki-leakers have described this dot as a possible/future bus/tram exchange - it is the only dot on the tram lines within Cooee of the Coogee bus routes.

But, Houston, we have a problem.

Buses have their doors on the left hand side. For buses to discharge passengers directly to the trams they need to circle the island in the anticlockwise direction, against the established traffic flow. There will need to be two extra lanes whittled away from the park in both Belmore Road and Cuthill Street exclusively for buses travelling against the flow and for the bus stops.

In order to turn around, buses will need to circle the private cattle car wagons like Injuns, crossing the tram rails at the acute angle where the trams enter the park.

There will be no bendy-buses for Coogee and the South-East Suburbs.

The dire alternative: Go with the flow

Buses go with the flow

If buses go with the flow in order to circle the private cattle car wagons the situation for bus passengers is more dire. Buses will need to join the queue of vehicles proceeding north along Avoca Street in order to make the right hand turn across the tram tracks.

Bus stops in Liverpool Street have moved progressively east towards Wentworth Avenue in order to give bus drivers a fighting chance of making it across to the right-turn lanes into Elizabeth Street. For this reason, the closest bus stops in Coogee Bay Road will move east so the bus drivers can reach the lane that turns into the straight-through centre lane in Avoca Street. So Public Bus passengers will be forced to alight way to the east in Coogee Bay Road and forced to use three pedestrian crossing in order to be herded into privately-operated cattle cars.

Given a choice no bus passenger would transfer to a cattle car unless the service was forcibly terminated. The $1.6+ billion question is: Will O'Farrell terminate Coogee bus services by making buses circle clockwise or anticlockwise? In either case the buses have to cross the tram rails in order to turn around.

Your guess is as good as mine. My guess is that O'Farrell will treat the citizens of Coogee with the same contempt he has shown for the citizens of Surry Hills, Kensington and Kingsford: buses will go with the flow and passengers will be forced to trudge through rain, sleet and hail, across busy roads, in order to be transferred to cattle cars.