The Oyster Card and Victoria Road

As was discussed in the post on 25 February 2014 The world is your Oyster Card Sydney was on the brink of becoming a future-proof world city when the previous state government selected the Pearl Consortium as the preferred tenderer for a smart card public transport ticketing. The Oyster card allowed commuters to change destinations freely at shared bus stops regardless of what destination was on the front of the bus that passed through their pick-up stop. Unlike the Broadway bus services there would be no need to introduce a financial incentive to change destinations for the Victoria Road bus services.

The Oyster Card was not the only thing gifted to the incoming government. When the Rozelle to CBD Metro was abandoned because of the escalating cost Premier Keneally announced a transport plan for Sydney which included relief rail tracks for the western line and a tramway to Barangaroo from tracks past Paddies Market. Barangaroo would also be connected to Wynyard station via the tunnel under Kent Street. Wynyard station was physically located under York Street with the main exits to the bus stops at Wynyard park but there were exits to the west to Clarence Street and under Kent Street.

In December 2010 cabinet agreed to spend $286 million on the pedestrian link from Wynyard station to Barangaroo via an overpass over Sussex Street. Lend Lease was not required to provide funding although its office towers would be the main beneficiaries of the project.

Lend Lease subsequently agreed to build a further overpass at Napoleon Street and the O'Farrell government decided to build a wider tunnel under Kent Street. Lend Lease has completed construction of the overpass and its office towers appear to be ready for letting but, five years on, the Clarence Street portal to Wynyard station is a construction site and the Kent Street pedestrian tunnel is a "deep excavation".

Napoleon Street bridge open to the public

Clarence Street portal 

The fourth destination

The relevence of the Kent Street pedestrian tunnel to resolving congestion in bus routes in the CBD is that it opens up a fourth destination for bus services from Parramatta Road, City Road and Victoria Road. Currently (before 4 October 2015), all these bus services have used George Street north-bound to reach Circular Quay where they can physically turn round.

Deep excavation, western side of Kent St.

The Kent Street pedestrian tunnel delivers large volumes of passengers to potential bus stops on the western side of Kent Street at "Napoleon Place". Buses from Victoria Road would enter the CBD from the Western Distributor at the Bathurst Street off-ramp and travel along Kent Street before turning down Napoleon Road to turn into Sussex Street/Hickson Road ending at a terminus at Walsh Bay. The outbound route would be back along Hickson Road/Sussex Street to the on-ramp at Market Street; a fast and efficient route.

Argyle Park bus terminus

Buses from Parramatta Road and City Road would access the Kent Street bus stops from Liverpool Street, avoiding the recently created (against my fervent objections) pinch point at the George Street cinemas and the congested turns from Druitt Street. They would continue along Kent Street to the existing bus layover at Argyle Park.

The out-bound journey would be to George Street via the convict-dug Argyle Cut then south along George Street or Castlereagh Street. Bus services from City Road would mainly use Castlereagh Street, sharing bus stops with the buses that remained on George Street northbound.

When Pitt Street was closed by the Pitt Street Mall George Street north-bound was made to carry buses from City Road and Victoria Road as well as the traditional bus services from Parramatta Road. This predictably enough has led to congestion in bus lanes in George Street north of Market Street.

The only way to releave this congestion is to divert some of the buses to alternative routes. George Street has been the main axis for bus routes to the west of the CBD from the foundation of the colony and must remain so.

The brochure Sydney's light rail future blithely opined that "Elizabeth Street will be the main north-south bus route" and this was chanted by Chris Lock at public meetings before he became a total recluse. In fact the pinch point at the Old Supreme Court Building has benn recognised as the major congestion problem for CBD transport for more than 200 years and the greatest minds of the 19th and 20th centuries have sought to minimise the congestion. The assertion that traffic flow can be increased by painting red lines between traffic lanes and that buses from all the routes that use George Street, as well as routes from the Harbour Bridge, can be diverted into Elizabeth Street northbound is so preposterous it brings into question the sanity of the public servants involved.

Forever blowing thought bubbles

Original CBD metro, Wynyard stop

The original plans for a CBD metro from Rozelle had a stop to the north of Wynyard station. It would have been so far under sea level the only access to the surface would have been by lifts and there was no indication of where the lifts would have been located. Rod Staples is a new breed of public servant with little but contempt for the public. They could at least conjecture that some passengers of buses that are terminated at Wynyard Park might have found their way a couple of blocks north and got on a metro train rather than flood onto the City Circle trains. "That was a bloody stupid idea" commented Kristina Keneally after she had cancelled the project.

Rod Staple's plans for the North Shore rump politicians do not hold out any hope for diverting bus passengers disembarking at Wynyard park away from the CBD loop trains. The metro begins its precipitous decent to pass under the deepest part of the Harbour after crossing over the Cross City under Park Street, if indeed this is possible - it is yet to be confirmed.

Now, on 23 June 2015, Mike Baird and his new Minister for Transport  and Infrastructure Constance announced revised plans for the alignment of the bottom-of-the-Harbour metro.

This metro project is progressing in the same manner as the NorthShoreConnex road tunnels with infantile CGI generated videos released, which contain no plausible information. The diagram left was produced by the SMH trying to make sense of the announcement. The announcement was that the underground station was "expected to be located at Central Barangaroo" and "a working party will be formed" to consider "the optimal scale of Central Barangaroo in the light of the increased transport capability".

The video released with the announcement was a reworking of the original video implausibly showing separate tunnels on top of one another passing under the deepest part of the Harbour. The video continued to refer to stations at Martin Place and Pitt Street prompting the graphic artists at SMH to show violent dog-legs to Castlereagh Street and back to Pitt Street.

Underground? Make that underwater

Millers Point 1907

The waters of Darling Harbour lapped against the cliff to the west of Kent Street. Convict labour built the Argyle cut to link the wharves at Millers Point and Walsh Bay to George Street. There was no road at the foot of the cliffs and Darling Harbour which was deep enough to take the largest ships of the time. Central Barangaroo is a concrete slab constructed over the Harbour in order stack containers before the container wharves were built in Botany Bay. The original plan for a metro station at Barangaroo placed the platforms to the east of the escarpment spanning up to a block north of Wynyard Station. It was never disclosed how deeply underground it would have been or how passengers would have reached the surface.

The Kennelly plan for Barangaroo

When Paul Keating took control of the planning at Barangaroo he insisted on chipping away the concrete slab to roughly resemble the original shape of Millers Point. Christina Kennelly as Planning Minister called for submissions for landscaping the slab and the new government dared not alter the plans. The Barangaroo Authority released a YouTube video of time-lapse images of the transformation of the slab on 27 July 2015. I have downloaded a link in an accompanying post. Hickson Road and a boardwalk are the only part of the slab to remain at the base of the escarpment west of High Street and its heritage listed terraces.

A underground subway station "expected to be located at Central Barangaroo" would have to remain deeply under the floor of the Harbour after passing under the deepest part of the Harbour. So what would this cost?

The underground station at Edinburgh Airport had been costed at half a billion pounds in 2006, because of the necessary provisions for fire emergencies and the need to facilitate evacuations - this was a year after the terrorist bombings in London. The plumetting Au$ makes it difficult to make conversions. No-one has built an underwater subway station anywhere in the world so it is impossible to estimated what it would cost to build one. Baird has set aside $84 million in the State Budget to supposedly find out.

Baird changed the plan at Barangaroo to give Packer absolute waterfront land at the southern end of Central Barangaroo without competative tendering and without disclosure of the terms of the contract. The announcement of a subway station can best be seen as a ploy to do the same to the remaining waterfront land at Central Barangaroo. It is not the developers that will meet cost of building a subway under the Harbour, whatever it would cost.

The coup de gråce for rail services south of the Harbour

One of the first acts of the Liberal Party government was to commission a "pre-feasability study" into Bus Rapid Transport from the Northern Beaches which was published in June 2012. None of the options short-listed came close to being economically viable.

Baird announced before the election that his government would fund a feasability study into a bus rapid transport corridor, which would reach the same conclusions, but would be required in order to declare the scheme a State Significant Major Project. The project required doubling the capacity of the Spit Bridge but it was never specified how this would be done. The pre-feasability study considered terminating the buses at Wynyard Park, as at present, or at the mysterious Victoria Cross, shown as adjacent to North Sydney and accessed via Falcon Street. The dot representing Victoria Cross has now drifted further north in TfNSW videos and crude maps but no-one knows where. So the terminus will be Wynyard Park.

In fact Northern Beaches bus services were stopped from accessing the traditional terminus at Lee Street at the beginning of November 2014. Passengers were forced to catch a George Street bus to reach the new terminus at Wynyard park. North Shore politicians truly believe they can do what they like with voters from the Northern Beaches.

Hills Buses will also be effectively terminated at Wynyard Park. This has not been formally announced but has been indicated in the "City Centre bus network map" detailing routes that will be implimented when George Street is closed for traffic. Baird will insist that there will be temporary pain before the trams run, but it will become progressively worse for the rest of the life of the City.

The route map shows Hills buses terminating at Druitt Street while buses from Pyrmont are sent north to King Street where they pass through the mother of all pinch points along with every bus from George Street and every bus from Oxford Street and Flinders Street. Will buses be forced to riffle-shuffle with private vehicles through the pinch point? The only buses that will be using the vast layovers at the Lee Street terminus when buses are forcibly terminated at Randwick and Kingsford are minor routes to Elizabeth Bay.

Unmanageable congestion in Elizabeth Street and Druitt Street will immediately force a revision of these bus routes.

Whether Hills buses terminate at Druitt Street or Wynyard park passengers will quickly realise that their best chance to transfer to a train or a Parramatta/City road bus will be to flood onto a City Circle train at Wynyard.

Preventing bus services from the Hills suburbs, the North Shore and the Northern Beaches from reaching Railway Square for the first time in the history of the City, except through the Elizabeth Street pinch point, will create overloading of the City Circle at its most critical point (Town Hall Station). The George Street trams will do nothing to relieve this congestion - the stops are too remote and inconvenient and the service cannot compete with the tube trains.

The localised overloading of the City Circle will cripple all the rail services south of the Harbour.

Druitt? Screw it!

Pedestrianised zone George/Druitt Streets, 8:52 am

Pedestrians crossing George Street 5:11 pm

When the project was announced Sydney City Council immediately issued computer-generated artists impressions of trams at the George Street/Druitt Street intersection - they had been forewarned. The simulations showed Druitt Street pedestrianised. These were later withdrawn and we don't know who produced them, TfNSW or SCC.

The 13 December 2012 brochure shrieked: "Most people arrive in the CBD via public transport. This means we can see 370 buses moving along George Street outside Town Hall in the morning's busiest hour - creating congestion". The horror, the horror! In fact we can see any day we look that none of the buses passing through George Street in front of the Town Hall suffer any delays in passing through the intersections. The buses are from a very large number of routes and only buses from Park Street have to wait for a second phase to pass through the intersection at any time of the day.

The phases of the George/Driutt intersection

Phase 1

This is the only phase that fails to clear buses in a single phase. The buses are mainly Metro buses with some from William Street. Congestion in Druitt Street, particularly where buses and other vehicles turn right into Clarence Street, causes traffic to bank up in Park Street - during some phases at the Pitt Street intersection hardly any vehicles make it across Pitt Street during a phase in the morning peak. Vehicles have to give way to merging buses so buses can move along the left-turn lane and merge into the queued vehicles, getting closer to the head of the queue.

TfNSW asserts that the trams will perform the same function as metrobus services from Coogee and Maroubra Junction but this is another lie. The purpose of the metrobus services was to avoid the need for layovers and terminuses in the CBD giving fast access to the centre of the CBD. The trams are the antithesis of the Metro bus services.

Metrobus goes to the head of the queue in Park Street

Phase 2

Phase 2 only takes place if a bus has passed over the metal-sensing loop in either or both bus-only right-turn lanes.  If not, the northbound and southbound traffic movements in George Street begin immediately after the Park Street phases. This phase is timed according to demand and in general lasts as long as there are buses passing over the loops. The buses turning into Druitt Street are mainly headed for Victoria Road after physically turning around at Circular Quay.

Phase 3

Phase 3 feeds buses and general traffic into Clarence Street via Druitt Street as well as carrying buses heading north to physically turn around at Circular Quay. Northbound buses use the second lane from the kerb which is marked left-turn-buses-excepted, or they can use the third general-traffic lane which does not carry many private vehicles apart from taxis.

Private vehicles do not seriously impede the movement of buses at any time of the day except for congestion in Druitt Street where vehicles turn right into Clarence Street. Two of the five phases feed traffic from George Street into Clarence Street.

Phase 4

Pedestrians have learned that this phase does not give enough time to cross between the Woolworths corner and the Queen Victoria Building using the marked crossings so they cross diagonally as you can see in the photos above above - a yellow Hillsbus leads the queue waiting for the phase to end. Buses and other vehicles from the car park under York Street and further north turn from York Street into Druit Street westbound during this phase. The timing does vary slightly during the day but is a bit more than 36 seconds.

Phase 5

Phase 5 is the other phase that carries buses and other traffic from George Street into Clarence Street and southbound from York Street into George Street. The timing would be based on the number of buses queued from York Street but is short and pretty constant through the day - 20 seconds in the morning peak and around 17 seconds for the rest of the day.

Pedestrianisation of George Street

Pedestrianisation of this crucial section of George Street displaces traffic that moves into Clarence Street and northbound past Park Street in parallel with bus movements into Pitt Street. Traffic that currently causes minimal disruption to bus movements now has to cross the dual tram tracks twice. Once at Eddy Avenue, which sets up trams to be run down at the Rawson Place stop, and then after vehicles join the traffic queued in Park Street to cross into Druitt Street. This traffic movement can not be blocked as it crosses Eddy avenue in parallel with every bus from Parramatta Road and City Road and it determines the maximum frequency with which trams can be dispatched from Circular Quay.

The sixth phase 

Buses queue to make a U-turn into Clarence Street, Monday 8:17 am

Currently buses heading north to the bus stop at QVB and then to physically turn round at Circular Quay and the small number of vehicles with expensive parking spaces along George Street move in parallel with traffic turning into Druitt Street in phase 3. Currently every phase of the traffic lights delivers buses and other traffic into Druitt Street westbound. Trams with the exclusive right to travel along George Street shut down every traffic movement apart from pedestrians crossing Park Street in parallel with the trams and buses and other vehicles turning right into Druitt Street from York Street: they require their own additional phase.

York into Druitt Street, Sunday 5:15 pm
Buses making a U-turn muscle into the general vehicle lane in York Street

"Proposed bus network" Dec 2012

The trams block buses sent south past Wynyard park along York Street from reaching the Lee Street layover forcing them to make a U-turn across the single eastbound lane of Druitt Street and back across this lane into Clarence Street. Three buses from Victoria Road held up at the Druitt Street pedestrian crossing would block this U-turn so this phase can not cut in randomly into the signals phasing at George Street to give 67-metre-long trams priority when inching between the Town Hall and QVB tram stops.

The front of the 67-metre trams will be only half a tram length from the Park Street pedestrian crossing in front of Town Hall leaving little time for the lights to change if a driver were to signal he was moving off - I have no idea how priority signalling would be implemented. When the tram is waiting at the crossing for the lights to change the rear carriage of the tram will not have left the Town Hall stop!

Town Hall stop falls just short of actually being in front of Town Hall

There can be no bus stops in the eastbound lane of Druitt Street so Victoria Road buses sent on to terminate God knows where in the Eastern Suburbs (i.e. Edgecliff station) will be crammed when they reach the Park Street intersection. On the other hand, trams will be running on empty to Circular Quay. So we have established that trams will not have priority at the Park/Druitt Streets intersection, right? So the phasing of the lights adds to the cumulative delays that determine whether a tram that gets a clear run at intersections crashes into a tram that misses every light, at the Rawson Place stop or indeed the Chalmers Street stop. This determines the frequency with which the trams can safely be dispatched from the Circular Quay terminus and the maximum capacity that the system can ever achieve.

I have observed the operation of the signalling at the Druitt/George Streets intersection on different days of the week from Monday to Sunday and at times from 7am to after 7pm. Effectively it was the U-turn movement from Druitt Street into Clarence Street that was responsible for congestion that at times banked up to George Street. The Park Street into Druitt Street phase that follows was blocked causing buses on occasions to block northbound movements in George Street and causing vehicles to come to a virtual halt in Park Street in the am peak. The trams make it impossible to ever relieve this congestion - it gets progressively worse for the rest of the life of the City. Baird is not only creating intractable congestion in Elizabeth Street he is creating intractable congestion in Druitt Street.

The mega phase

All the traffic that currently passes through the intersection in five phases will be consolidated into a single phase. This mega phase is basically the same as phase 1 with a couple of exceptions:

• Victoria Road buses do not turn into George Street but cross the tram tracks on their way to God knows where;
• Buses and other vehicles do not turn into George Street southbound;
• Pedestrians are forced to cross the tram tracks in a separate phase to crossing Park Street.

Motorists are not bicyclists. They are not treating the CBD as an adventure park or trying to save the planet by inflicting as much damage as possible on anyone who has qualified for a driver's licence or is productively employed. All the vehicles currently passing through the intersection have a reason to be there and that reason will not go away. Unfortunately the phase 1 was the only phase in the morning peak to become congested to the point where almost no vehicle movement was occurring. This is understandable as vehicles must move into Druitt Street in two lanes only. Every vehicle currently using the intersection will be forced to join the two-lane queue and every vehicle will pass through the Druitt Street/Clarence Street intersection.

 
Bus stop Druitt between Clarence and Kent

The lights at the George/Park Street intersection are demand based - using data from the metal-sensing loops - so the timing reflects the minimum time needed to clear the traffic passing through the intersection. Pedestrian movements across the tram tracks take place in parallel with vehicle movements so one can subtract 36 seconds from the time required to clear the intersection.

TfNSW has not disclosed how many Harbour Bridge services will be sent south past Wynyard park or how many Victoria Road bus services will be sent north to terminate at Wynyard park so no estimate can be made of how long phase 6 would last. TfNSW can manipulate the figures to satisfy itself that congestion would be manageable in 2021 - effectively transferring congestion to Wynyard, whatever the consequences. All Victoria Road bus services must pass through the Druitt/Clarence Streets intersection inbound and outbound so TfNSW is just manipulating the figures. Since a 36-second phase comprehensively clogs Druitt Street between York and Clarence Streets we can see this as an upper limit.

When there are no buses waiting to transfer from York Street to George Street phase 5 is omitted reducing the overall time of the traffic light cycle and when northbound lanes were blocked by a bus the cycle was extended confirming that the lights are controlled by signals from the loops in the road. Victoria Road buses have privileged entry to Druitt Street from the bus-only right turn. There are five lanes feeding traffic into Druitt Street during four phases. During the morning from 7-9 am and in the evening from 4-7 pm these phases add up to between 1 minute:12.5 seconds and 1 minute:19 seconds. It is inconceivable that it would take less time when all this traffic is forced into two lanes in Park Street.

This does not take into account the extra bus services that TfNSW will be forcing into the Druitt/Clarence intersection. New South Head Road bus services will be prevented from turning into Elizabeth Street and forced to physically turn round, God knows how, somewhere in Walsh Bay. All bus services to Barangaroo and the Hungry Mile will circle Wynyard park or do a U-turn in Druitt Street - there must always be separate services to these destinations. As with Victoria Road bus services TfNSW given itself the ability to manipulate the figures.

Frequency of tram services

We must add the maximum delay for the trams at the Park/Druitt Streets intersection to the delays expected at Bathurst, Liverpool and Goulburn Streets. The placement of the stops ensures that all these delays are cumulative. The cumulative delays at these intersections are a minimum of 4 minutes:49 seconds. This does not take into account any extra delays caused by vehicles failing to clear the tracks because of congestion in Druitt Street.

Then we have to add in delays at the Market Street, King Street and Hunter Street intersections which are more difficult to estimate.

Ms Berejiklian has lied about the frequency that tram services can ever achieve for more than two years now. Her latest claims are announced in her ridiculous media release (23 November 2014). Her public servants are now quoting her: "Gladys Berejiklian announced light rail would have 50% more capacity than the 9,000 passengers per hour previously announced". They do not want to be associated with her.

The latest indicative figure for the Rawson Place stop from Parsons Brinckerhoff appears to have been deliberately designed to conceal the pincer movement of death. The elimination of a crossing of the tram tracks at Ultimo Road transfers more traffic to Bathurst Street and to the single lane of George Street southbound. This will ensure that trams will be approaching the Rawson Place stop at their maximum speed.

Using existing traffic flows through intersections the frequencies with which trams can be dispatched from Circular Quay claimed by TfNSW cannot be achieved from day one. The claims about the frequencies of the trams that could be achieved in 2031 are delusional.

TfNSW has never revealed the assumptions it made in making calculations of Level of Service at intersections and has no intention of allowing an independent assessment to be made. The Business Case Summary confirmed that some of the assumptions are bizarre: "The light rail is also forecast to attract a significant number of car users (17 per cent of passengers)".
"The majority of the economic benefits ($2.2 billion, or 57%) result from public transport benefits related to faster, more comfortable, more reliable journeys".

In my submission to the EIS I pleaded with Planning and Environment to ascertain the maximum number of cars that could conceivably switch from driving from the catchment areas to park in very expensive off-street parking adjacent to George Street by doing a simple origin/destination survey - to no avail. The consequences of not doing such a survey are so catastrophic it was not much to ask.

Slaughter of the innocents

Martin Place tribute

The media reported that one of the officers that stormed the Lindt cafe had suffered shotgun pellets to the face. It turned out that his cheek had been grazed by a bullet - friendly fire. Only his cheek could have been grazed he was wearing Kevlar from head to toe and goggles. The people in the cafe had no protection - it was like shooting goldfish in a barrel.

The event in Martin Place was irrational and could not have been foreseen, although it could have turned out differently. Sydney faces far greater tragedies in Rawson Place. These catastrophes are predictable and would be inevitable if Ms Berejiklian were to force Connecting Sydney into an "availablity PPP" that required the consortium to maintain tram frequencies in George Street based on indisputably erroneous calculations, regardless of the consequences.

If the contract agreed to pay the consortium an assured amount if it did maintain these schedules, regardless of the patronage - which appears to be how these contracts work - then, not only would public transport in the CBD be crippled physically by the trams, public transport throughout the State would be crippled financially for the foreseeable future.

Only a Royal Commission into "availability PPPs" can uncover what is going on in these negotiations. A tragedy in Rawson Place is both predictable and avoidable. If Baird is sent packing on 28 March 2015 it will never occur.

The Brown Peril

During the 1950s political parties distributed posters warning of the threat from the north. These posters showed a yellow arrow targeting Australia from south-east Asia. They were never published and have disappeared from records - in today's political parlance they would be described as white-only ops. The term that arose was "The Yellow Peril" and was embedded sufficiently in the Australian psyche for it to be used to describe a sculpture by a New South Wales sculptor that won a commission for an art piece for Melbourne Square in 1980.

The sculpture has since been moved to a number of different sites in Melbourne. The art piece that attracted equivalent derision in Sydney would be the "poo on a stick" sculpture privately commissioned for the forecourt of the apartment tower over the Kings Cross Tunnel.

Vault sculpture aka The Yellow Peril

I was recruited by my dad to put Liberal Party pamphlets in letter boxes during the 1949 federal election - I had just started primary school. The big issue at this election was nationalisation of the banks which had been ruled as invalid by the High Court but upheld by the Privy Council in England. Over the past week various Liberal Party elders have drawn contrasts between the present day party and the party of Sir Robert Menzies. My family was staunchly Liberal and would agree.
The Party of Menzies has become a party of sloganeering

We will stop the boats

We will turn round the boats

We will stop the buses turning around

The threat from the north in New South Wales

The main threat to residents south of the Harbour has always been closer to home. Forty five years ago suburbs in the inner Eastern Suburbs, South Sydney and the Inner West faced wholesale devastation by radial motorways passing through Darling Harbour. Green bans by the Builders' Labourers Federation run by Jack Mundey was all that staved off what is now recognised as an unqualified disaster for Sydney. The North-Shore based government of Bob Askin was pressing ahead with the plans at any cost but was defeated in a cliff-hanger election by Neville Wran.

Now the North Shore rump of the Liberal Party is back in power following a fraudulently-funded election and the inner Sydney suburbs are under threat again.

The Brown Peril

This time they are being more surreptitious. Crown stated that they wanted to build a casino for high rollers only at Barangaroo. When approval was given there was no commitment to restrict the access of local punters. Now Sydney City Council is outraged on learning of unpublished plans that more than double the floor space available to the developers of properties in this area over what had been approved. The developers are not being asked for any quid pro quo for the financial advantage they will be receiving. They could hardly be asked to contribute to the provision of public transport to the area since there are no such plans, other than to terminate buses, god knows how, at Walsh Bay.

In order to reach destinations in Barangaroo passengers on bus services from Parramatta Road and City Road will be dumped in Pitt Street and forced to catch a tram or train to Town Hall or Wynyard then to transfer back to a bus for the rest of the journey - an expensive three-trip journey. There was no disclosure of this when the brochure of Sydney's light rail future was released.

Dec 13 2012 brochure

The yellow dotted line purported to show a western CBD/ Barangaroo transport corridor, ominously passing through Paddys Market, connecting to Harris street and Broadway. The changes in the bus routes in the CBD that eventuated in the EIS were distressingly predictable: bus services from the North Shore and the Northern Beaches are taking over the Castlereagh Street/Elizabeth Street routes and have access to the growth area in Barangaroo from Wynyard. Bus services from the Eastern Suburbs and the inner west are stuffed.

Which brings us to the Brown Peril. The current politicians from the North Shore are the most duplicitous to emerge from the rump of the Liberal Party, ever. Turds that are difficult to flush away are not yellow so it would be more appropriate to describe the peril from the north as brown.

Demonstrating at Parliament House

The upper house voted today, May 8, on a motion from the shadow transport minister Penny Sharpe calling for disclosure of documents of the Business Case for the CBD South East Suburbs Light Rail. These motions are very rare in Parliament but this was the second one this year. The motion passed with a majority of two. The government has 28 days to make the papers available.

I took part in a demonstration in front of Parliament House attended by people from Surry Hills and Kensington in support of more disclosure of the Project.

Last Exit from Barangaroo (expurgated version)

The Menzies Government banned the novel "Last Exit to Brooklyn" - it contains naughty words. Now the O'Farrell Government is redefining the definition of "obscenity".

Deceptive diagram of City Roads in 9/11 13 brochure

Vehicular access to Darling Harbour and Barangaroo from the south is from George Street via Hay Street which is not shown as a one-way road in the 9/11 13 brochure. Vehicular access to the CBD west of George Street from the south and from the Eastern Suburbs is from Liverpool Street, into Kent Street, which is not shown as one-way west of Elizabeth Street and inexplicably ceases to be a "priority route for general vehicle traffic within the city centre" from Elizabeth Street to Pitt Street and west of Kent Street.

Vehicles from New South Head Road have other options: they can access Kent Street from Druitt Street and Barangaroo and Darling Harbour via the cross-city tunnel.

Cross-City Tunnel exit

There are at least five lanes of traffic (the yellow  lines) plus two more from Pier Street, and the Cross City Tunnel, feeding vehicles into Barangaroo and Darling Harbour. Unfortunately, the only way traffic can return to the Eastern Suburbs from Barangaroo via the cross-city tunnel is by looping from Sussex Street into Liverpool Street then into Harbour Street North: Sussex Street is the only exit to the Eastern Suburbs and the southern suburbs whether they use the tunnels or the surface roads. Needless to say, Sussex Street is slowed to a crawl throughout the evening hours on week days - it is quicker to walk.

Binary choice, turn into Bathurst,

or continue to Liverpool Street

Attempts to force drivers to pay the cross city tunnel toll by generating congestion in Bathurst Street and William Street have failed dismally. Nationalizing the loss-making Cross-City Tunnel, in line with Liberal Party ideology, and reducing the toll, will not mitigate congestion in Sussex Street. The Tunnel is a cause of the congestion. Pedestrianizing George Street between Market and Bathurst Streets will force vehicles from the off-street parking in Pitt Street north of Park Street into Sussex Street, and congestion will get much worse as Barangaroo is built.

Private cars can exit Sussex Street, eventually, into Harris Street via Ultimo Road, but Public Transport must get back to Railway Square. Buses could turn into George Street from Bathurst Street but would be forced into one lane to pass  the World Square and Chinatown tram stops and would be hit by traffic displaced from George Street returning with a vengeance from Liverpool Street. Goulburn Street is two lanes each way west of George Street and there will never be right-hand turns into George Street.

Goulburn Street, no way back for buses

The only place where buses can turn efficiently into George Street and make it back to the depot in Lee Street is from Druitt Street. The 13 Dec 20012 brochure stated: "Most people arrive in the CBD via public transport. This means we can see 370 buses moving along George Street outside Town Hall in the morning's busiest hour". This would indicate to a rational person that the section of George Street from Market to Bathurst Street is the most important road for Public Transport in the state, and indeed it is the key to providing efficient services. It can never be "pedestrianized". Turning George Street over to a service for commuters from Maroubra and Prince of Wales Hospital achieves nothing, and apparently makes it impossible for TfNSW to provide public transport for Barangaroo.

"Proposed bus network"

The 13 Dec 12 brochure contains this diagram entitled "Proposed bus network" with the dotted yellow line labelled "Western CBD/Barangaroo corridor" starting with a dot and passing through the middle of Paddy's Market and ending with an arrow at a one-way section of Harris Street. The Deputy Director General of the Transport Projects Division TfNSW, Chris Lock, was more forthcoming at the Community Forum at Sydney High School in April. He confirmed that it had been decided not to proceed with the previous Government's commitment to evaluate building a tram service to Barangaroo - it would not be commercial, he said, since commuters would use the pedestrian tunnel to the underground platforms of Wynyard Station. He said there would be a bus service from Circular Quay, presumably passing under the Harbour Bridge. To reach Barangaroo from Parramatta Road you would be transfered to a cattle car at Rawson Place then back onto a bus for the tortuous trip under the Harbour Bridge.

9/11 13 brochure (full size)

In the 9/11 13 brochure, Barangaroo is only accessible from bus services from the north of the Harbour. There are linkages along Erskine Street, which ends at Wynyard Park, and King Street ending at York Street. There is no indication of how the buses will be turned around.

There have been three completely different indicative plans for bus services issued by TfNSW in less than a year, in the course of developing an Environmental Impact Statement, which we are told will be issued in the next few weeks. None of the plans contain any details whatsoever that would allow them to be independently assessed. Transport for NSW is so dysfunctional as to be beyond belief.

The director-general of TfNSW, Les Wielinga, has retired and the Roads Minister announced his successor yesterday. It will be a Queensland public servant, David Stewart, who was sacked by the Newman Government. He will be walking into an Augean stables when he starts his job later this year or early next year. It is not to much to expect a public servant to have an ethical compass whatever their level of competence. There will be further posts about the above diagram.