Do unto others as you would do unto yourself

The George Street trams exacerbate congestion in York Street. Inflicting collateral damage on Eastern Suburbs bus services and directing buses at the physical barriers across Grosvenor Street at York Street makes things worse.

The damage inflicted on the rail services south of the Harbour by the overloading of the Wynyard/Central rail lines is much more serious. This is not something that will lessen significantly when the tram lines are operational; this will persist for the rest of the life of the City.

Congestion in bus routes, week one smh

But the damage that the North Shore rump politicians are inflicting on the residents of their own electorates pales to insignificance when compared to that being inflicted on residents of the Inner West and southern Sydney.

Broadway in 1910

George Street west was prone to flooding in the early days of the colony but it was widened in 1906 when Central Station was built at the start of the twentieth century when it was renamed The Broadway. It has provided the people and businesses of western and south-western Sydney untrammelled access to the Center of Sydney, the Eastern Suburbs and the Darling Harbour docks (The Hungry Mile) for more than a century.

The trams were replaced by buses in 1958 and since then buses have travelled from the stop at the start of the Devonshire Street tunnel to a stop at Rawson Place in a minute at all times of the day. Buses would then reach the stop outside the Queen Victoria Building in two more minutes.

What happened after this was of concern only to passengers of bus services that dumped passengers at Wynyard Park without the option of reaching Railway Square. Passengers of the Manly ferries were able to transfer to bus services to all parts of the inner west and all parts of the Eastern Suburbs and the southern suburbs. Circular Quay Station gives them access to the whole of the rail services south of the Harbour.

The birthright of untrammelled access to the center of the Sydney CBD for bus passengers from Parramatta Road and City Road was taken from them by North Shore politicians on 4 October 2015 without explanation. For the rest of the life of Sydney these bus routes will have the most congested entry to the CBD of all the routes into Sydney. The irony is that entry to the CBD for bus routes from the Harbour Bridge is also being degraded. There are no "winners" for any user of Public Transport in Sydney. When the trams are running everything gets worse.

Turning back the Broadway buses

The Hay Street crush

Every bus diverted from George Street must pass through the intersection of Pitt Street and Eddy Avenue. This is the sole gateway for buses from Broadway to cross the "Berlin Wall". Private vehicles can cross the tram rails here or at Bathurst Street.

The buses that cross the tram tracks physically turn around by making a right turn into Campbell Street then another into Castlereagh Street or they make a right turn into Hay Street and proceed to Elizabeth Street then pass through the mother-of-all pinch points in order to make a U-turn into Castlereagh Street at Hunter Street. Every bus from Parramatta Road and City Road must return by passing through the Campbell/Castlereagh Streets intersection and pass along Hay Street and Pitt Street. They are joined in Hay Street by rebadged 378 buses. Hay Street westbound is a two-lane street constrained by a tram line down the middle and with a right turn lane into Pitt Street.

Vehicles and buses turn into Hay Street

Buses as far as the eye can see at stop in Pitt Street

Week 2 at new "Railway Square" stop in Pitt Street

Vehicles turn two at a time from Castlereagh Street into Hay Street then merge into one lane to turn left into Pitt Street; buses join the queue. During the evening peak (5-6 pm) it was very slow going for buses in Pitt Street in week two, as the SMH had observed. The queue of buses stretched almost the whole length of Belmore Park. This was occuring while the Rawson Place arterial road was fully open to traffic and private vehicles had unfettered access to George Street. When Rawson Place and Chalmers Street are closed to traffic, congestion in these bus routes will get much worse.  When the trams are operating the congestion will worsen still more.

The bus services that are forcibly terminated in Pitt Street west of Belmore Park are shown in the on-line and published diagrams of a new CBD bus network as having the terminus "Belmore Park" but the buses have "Railway Square via Parramatta Road" in LED lights on the front and side panels. It is of course physically impossible for Parramatta Road buses to turn around at Railway Square - TfNSW is engaging in deceptive advertising. If I had the money I would report this to the ACCC.

There were far more serious discrepancies between the current actual operation of bus routes and the information on bus routes published in the booklets handed out to passengers in the street and in the online information. On Thursday evening 15 October a large number of the routes that were to be forcibly turned around at Hunter Street (mainly City Road services) were, in fact, not turning into Hay Street but proceeding north along Pitt Street to dog-leg instead along Goulburn Street to Elizabeth Street. The return journey was along Goulburn Street from Castlereagh Street to travel south along Pitt Street. This is the narrowest section of Pitt Street, so there are no stops, and the brilliantly-placed stop alongside the Goulburn Street car park is bypassed. It is a huge distance between the southern-most stop in Castlereagh Street and the "new Railway Square" stop in Pitt Street.

Constance has said that the people of NSW had a right to judge the government harshly if they did not get the bus system right. So what went wrong?

Making Hay Street grid-locked while the sun shone

Thursday was a perfect balmy evening but things were grim for Sydney's bus drivers.

Castlereagh/Hay Streets intersection 6:07 pm

There is no right-hand turn from Goulburn Street into Elizabeth Street. Drivers must turn into Pitt or Castlereagh Streets using the freshly-marked lanes and percolate along Campbell or Hay Street to travel south along the main southern arterials. It had been thus from the earliest days of the colony.

On the Wednesday evening there had been a police officer (you can see him in the photo above) stationed at the critical intersection. He did not appear to know what he was supposed to be doing. On Thursday evening there was another officer on the other side and there were huddles of Transport officers in yellow fluoro jackets at other intersections. They looked as bemused as the bus passengers in Pitt Street.

Buses were running up and down Pitt Street to dog-leg along Goulburn Street, making right-hand turns from Pitt Street even more difficult for bus drivers. At around 6:10 pm the queue of buses in Hay Street trying to reach Elizabeth Street started from Castlereagh Street and stretched around the corner into Pitt Street and back to Eddy Avenue. They would have been queued on the other side of Eddy Avenue also. The buses were hardly moving and were blocking south-bound traffic in Castlereagh Street and Pitt Street.

Boy-in-fluoro unable to do anything 

Queue of buses starts at Castlereagh Street, 6:09 pm

Queue of buses in Hay Street, 6:10 pm 

Queuing to go round the corner, 6:12 pm 

Some south-bound buses have moved, 6:12 pm 

Queue of buses stretches to Eddy Avenue, 6:13 pm

I recorded the queue of buses for prosperity, walking round the corner with my iPad, which records the time a shot is taken.

It takes just two buses waiting to turn into Elizabeth Street to block lanes in Castlereagh Street so bus drivers have to bide their time, giving private vehicles the jump on them.

Ve vill tell you where to go

Elizabeth Street was all but grid-locked at this time and this will be the subject of a subsequent post. Suffice it to say now that Elizabeth Street south-bound now has only one lane for general traffic between Park and Bathurst Streets forcing south-bound traffic into Castlereagh Street, where the only route to Elizabeth Street is via Campbell Street or Hay Street. That is, it will do when George Street is pedestrianised. The current chaos is occuring when private vehicles have unfettered access to George Street and Rawson Place and Chalmers Street are fully operational.

Congestion that is intractable

The ploy of using Goulburn Street to dog-leg Broadway bus services to Elizabeth Street and back from Castlereagh Street only works for services that pass through the mother-of-all pinch points and make a U-turn at Hunter Street. That is, if it works at all - the grid lock in Pitt and Hay Streets occured while the ploy was in operation. Services forcibly terminated at "Railway Square" must return through the Castlereagh/Hay Street intersection. So any attempt to reduce congestion in Elizabeth Street north-bound by terminating more services in Pitt Street west of Belmore Park, in order to, say, feed buses from the North Shore into Castlereagh Street, leads inexorably to further grid-lock in Pitt and Hay Streets. The congestion in bus routes caused by the George Street trams in Pitt Street at Eddy Avenue and in Elizabeth Street is intractable. Every sane person, including Greiner and Infrastructure NSW, who has examined the project has been saying this for four years.

Attention: Editor of Sydney Morning Herald

The Sydney Morning Herald has not endorsed a project as enthusiastically or as mindlessly since it tried to con Australians into replacing a constitution that had worked for 100 years with a constitution that was so flawed it was unworkable. Fortunately the Australian people had the opportunity to vote in a referendum in 1999 and rejected it; nowhere more decisively than in NSW.

Now the SMH is describing Luke Foley as opportunistic for opposing a project that has never been properly disclosed, was not properly assessed and can be shown to be as unworkable as the constitution that Turnbull reportedly spent $2 million of his own tax-exempt money trying to promote.

The editorial went on to say: "The joke, of course, is that buses have barely been running on George Street for a long time: they've so often been at a standstill."

The sad reality is that delays in bus routes in George Street north of Hunter Street only affected the very small number of passengers who chose to reach Circular Quay from the inner west by bus. Congestion in the north-bound bus routes had no affect on south-bound services and any delays in south-bound bus movements north Wynyard only affected the arrival times further south; the frequencies remained the same.

With the introduction of the Oyster Card it was ridiculously easy to reduce congestion in bus routes by:

1. Scheduling;
2. Introducing alternative routes along Kent Street;
3. Excluding private vehicles in George Street between Market and Hunter Street.

The final option was mooted by Infrastructure NSW when it was in its sane phase.

Now the Sydney Morning Herald is lauding a project that ensures that no Broadway bus service will ever maintain a timetable and creates intractable congestion in the Broadway bus services diverted inexorably into the Pitt Street / Eddy Avenue intersection.

The challenge for the editorial staff at SMH is to come up with anyone in the whole of Sydney who would be better off because of the project.

Relieving congestion in the City Circle and Northern rail lines

The tram network north of the Harbour started with cable grip cars from the ferry terminal at Milsons Point but eventually extended through Mosman to the Spit bridge. A line from the northern side went to Manly and Collaroy. Tram lines dropped down to other ferry terminals on the North Shore. The building of the Harbour Bridge and the adaption of the train tracks on the eastern side to carry trams allowed the trams to access platforms 1 and 2 at Wynyard. When the trams were closed down congestion in York Street became the enduring legacy for North Shore commuters to the CBD.

There were further problems however; congestion in the City Circle and Harbour Bridge rail lines between Wynyard and Central stations. The Wynyard station platforms are directly under York Street so when some Northern bus services were extended to Railway Square Wynyard remained the most convenient station for those commuters needing to transfer to rail services south of the Harbour. Passengers getting off at the set-down bus stop in Lee Street have to transverse the Devonshire Street tunnel to transfer to a train.

Lee Street set-down stop

The problem to be solved by the Oyster (aka Opal) Card for Harbour Bridge bus services is that the buses inexorably pass over the rail stations at Wynyard and Town Hall in order to reach the terminus at Lee Street. Of all the places where bus passengers can transfer to rail: North Sydney is the most debilitating (it over-loads the Harbour Bridge line), Town Hall next then Wynyard.

The number of buses in George Street in not a problem - this can be solved by scheduling. The problem is the small number of passengers on the buses as they approach their terminuses. The only way to reduce congestion in bus routes is to use buses more efficiently.

I explained how the Oyster Card can reduce congestion in bus services from the Harbour Bridge in my submission to the EIS. "Once again there are three, at least, destinations: Wynyard, Druitt Street and Railway Square. You know the rest. The return journey from Railway Square can avoid the bottleneck in George Street between Liverpool Street and Bathurst Street and a right-hand turn in Druitt Street by accessing Kent Street from Liverpool Street".

I apparently left to much for them to work out. Passengers still on a Railway Square bus after a point, say the last stop in Military Road, pay for two extra sections regardless of where they get off.

"People making a casual trip to the city may be prepared to pay the price to stay on their bus, but with regular commuters the cost would mount up. Statistically you are ahead. The Oyster (aka Opal) Card can also impose penalties".

This mechanism alone cannot reduce congestion on the City Circle and Harbour Bridge rail lines. Passengers need to be encouraged to stay on the bus until the Lee Street terminus. At Central there are more platforms for the City Circle line services and additional peak services along relief rail tracks can be provided at platforms at Central terminus.

Here is where financial incentives that can be offered by the Oyster Card come in. The Oyster system knows where you tap on and tap off. It can offer cheaper transfers from the Harbour Bridge bus services to the rail services south of the Harbour at Central Station. Problem solved. George Street must remain the main axis for bus services as it has been from the foundations of the colony.

Jonathan Burrows

The awesome London rail system uses the Oyster Card to provide incentives to encourage proper behavour on the rail lines. Commuters who tap readers at platforms where internal transfers take place are offered a reduction in their fare. This is possibly to close down a loop hole in the system that Jonathan Burrows exploited so spectacularly (Australian innovation: Nobody Pays 9 June 2015).

My Oyster Card was inspected by a uniformed Inspector when I was travelling on the Docklands Light Rail. He tapped the card on the bottom of a reader and looked at the verdict on the front. His reader must have had a list of all the cards that had tapped on and not tapped off yet by wi fi.

"Such a little thing"

Chris (Grid) Lock expounds

Chris Lock occupies a unique place in the annals of the Australian public services: he is the first senior public servant to be stood down for incompetence. In true "Utopia" style his post Deputy Director General Projects Division Transport for NSW was obliterated. He had been in the public service for 10 years so he will be on a massive taxpayer-funded pension.

Everything at TfNSW was deferred to the Acting Secretary Tim Reardon whose post has since been made the permanent.

Chris Lock told a self-proclaimed businessmen's Breakfast in Randwick in April 2013: "There's a queue of buses coming over the Harbour Bridge all trying to get into York Street around Wynyard and they back up and the queue sometimes starts on the northern side. So what have we done? A little thing.

"We have moved 60 of those buses in the morning: instead of coming into Wynyard they go over the Cahill Expressway and they come into the City from the  Macquarie Street end. It is such a little thing."

He was reiterating a claim made in the December 2012 brochure. In fact it never took place. The bus stop on the southern side of Bridge Street where Miller Street bus services will dump their passengers remained derelict until 4 October 2015. The staff at the TfNSW information booths did not have a clue as to what Chris Lock was talking about. A decision had been made to not show their hand until the last possible time. Chris Lock was complicit in this decision and became a total recluse - he had too much to hide.

A devastating thing

TfNSW were not disclosing things with much more devastating consequences. A post The Hills hoist with their own petard 26 November 2014 discussed this issue.

For 83 years the George Street buses have protected the Bradfield rail lines under the CBD from overloading. The most overloaded station in the City Circle has long been Town Hall Station which has consequences for the entire rail system south of the Harbour. The City Circle is in fact an horseshoe with Illawarra/Airport line services transmogrifying into western line services as they pass around. Passengers that get on to travel one or two stops deny places for the commuters that rely on the rail network to access the CBD. This affects the efficacy of train services throughout the entire rail system.

When TfNSW terminated Northern Beaches bus services at Wynyard in November 2014 and then terminated Hills buses at Bathurst Street or Druitt Street at the end of January 2015 the effects on the rail system were muted. Commuters could transfer to Parramatta Road and City Road bus services in George Street.

Kent Street at Town Hall

Bathurst St bus stop

Buses from the Harbour Bridge that dump their passengers at the bus stop in the lower part of Bathurst Street west of Sussex Street (yellow line) and the Miller Street buses that dump their passengers in the middle of Bridge Street (brown line) are the only buses that will ever be removed from York Street and Clarence Street. Commuters dumped in Bathurst Street have nowhere to go but up the hill to the entry plaza of Town Hall Station where they will flood onto the overcrowded escalators of the station to go one stop to Central in order to access the Parramatta Road and City Road bus services that have been removed from George Street.

Turning back the Hillsbillies

Kent St north of Druitt stop

Buses that dump their passengers in Bathurst Street pass over "Napoleon Plaza" at a great height on the Western Distributor. They are then forced to turn immediately into Kent Street and make their way back to whence they came, Napoleon Plaza, before exiting back onto the Bradfield Highway. This is just plain loopy.

Whether the Hills buses are terminated at Bathurst Street or Druitt Street the buses will never be able to maintain a schedule after 4 October 2015. The first bus stop after Bathurst Street is some distance north of Druitt Street. None of the bus stops in Kent Street have timetables, just numbers to call-stations or web sites to call on your mobile phone; a wise decision.

When a bus enters the chain of freeways, road tunnels and toll roads starting from the Bradfield Highway there is no getting off until the stop at Bathurst Street. The entry point for express services could be the M2 motorway. Hillsbus passengers will have to make their decision to jump buses early in the journey.

Western Distributor over Westpac Plaza/Napoleon Plaza

The Opal card is allowing free transfers between bus services within an hour of taping off a service but you need to make your move at the earliest possible stop. If you delay transferring, the bus services to your prized destination will be packed to the rafters and skipping stops.

Bathurst Street is the last place anyone would want to be dumped. Even if you are heading for a destination south of Park Street, the terminus in York Street at the Queen Victoria Building is closer to Town Hall Station than the stop in Bathurst Street, and you have a much better chance of getting on a City Circle train by transfering at Wynyard Station.

Doing a U-turn into Clarence Street

The congestion from buses doing a U-turn from York into Clarence Street is paralytic as predicted but this is of no concern when you have gotten off the bus; just remenber to board the bus in Clarence Street for the return journey. This congestion is occuring before the penny drops for commuters on how to survive in a city that has entered a death spiral. This congestion will be getting progressively worse for the future life of the city.

Update on Napoleon Street pedestrian bridge

Taxpayer-funded Sussex Street overpass

Westpac Plaza under the Westpac building in Kent Street, the exit for the original Kent Street pedestrian tunnel, has been connected to the Lendlease Napoleon Street overpass. The taxpayer-funded overpass across Sussex Street appears to be complete but has not been opened to the public. The Kent Street pedestrian tunnel is just a deep excavation.

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.

Australian innovation: Nobody Pays

Jonathan Burrows

Jonathan Burrows exploited a loophole in the Oyster Card system over a five year period. He commuted from a station without barriers in East Sussex to a tube station in the City of London, a journey that should have cost £21.50 each way. By not using a ticket when he entered the rural station and when he transferred to the tube line he was only charged the maximum for the shorter distance of the tube line when he exited through the ticket barriers at Cannon Street station in the City, £7.20. British rail estimated the fares he had evaded amounted to £42,550 which he paid within a couple of days hoping to avoid publicity. To no avail. He was taken to court and his name was released to the British tabloids. He was sacked from his job at the UK branch of Blackrock and the Financial Conduct Authority banned him from working in financial services for life.

These were astonishing consequences, particularly when you compare the FCA with APRA.

A commuter is in fact highly unlikely to be picked up for fare evasion when travelling between train stations that do not have ticket barriers, in peak hours. If a commuter exits at a station that has barriers it will be picked up that he did not tap on and most commuters have destinations with ticket barriers.

It is unclear if he tapped on/off when he transferred to the tube train. He could have made the transfer at a station that allows transfers to be made by switching platforms without going near a ticket barrier, such as Strathfield or Central in the Sydney network. When he did not tap on or use a paper ticket at the station in east Sussex the Oyster system had no idea where the journey had commenced and would have charged him the maximum fare for the tube route. The fault was with Oyster system - Burrows merely took advantage of the flaw. If he had not admitted everything by paying the estimate for the evaded fares he could have only been fined for evading the one fare when he was picked up on the platform of the station in east Sussex following a tip off - a small fine that increases after three offences. They knew where he lived and where he worked but Scotty could have been beaming him up to London.

The Opal system has the same flaw. A passenger who has not tapped on can transfer from a Newcastle train or a Blue Mountains train to, say, an inner-west City Circle line at Strathfield or Central and tap off anywhere in the City Circle and be charged only the maximum for that route. Ms Berejiklian challenged commuters to try to take advantage of the system! Illawarra line passengers can transfer to inner-west trains at Redfern station.

The Western Line has relief rail lines that make it physically possible to trap fare evaders. Trains from outer Sydney skip long swathes of stations in inner Sydney. Ticket inspectors (are they still called that) have time to go through the carriages asking passengers to show a validated paper ticket or tap a card on on a hand-held reader. Any passenger bailing out prematurely can be asked to do the same by backup inspectors on the platforms.

This is not possible with the trams. The doors open at every stop and once a passenger with an untapped card steps off the tram he is home free. Passengers in the other carriage will have a view of an inspector working through a carriage through the face to face unoccupied drivers cabins.

Ticket inspector on Melbourne tram

This is not a problem with the Myki Card:

• The onboard readers are disabled when the doors are closed.
• The inspectors can observe any one exiting without tapping off.
• A passenger who taps off without having tapped on will eventually be detected.
• An inspector downloads a list of all the cards that have tapped on and not yet tapped off on entering the carriage - anyone who taps his reader with a card or a smart device that has not been tapped on is immediately pinged and can pay an on-the-spot fine if he is not a recidivist.
• Melbourne trams are never coupled.

The North Shore Death Cult

The impossible situation that Opal Card inspectors will have to confront has been laid out in a secret risk assessment report from Arup who were consultants on Visual and Landscape assessment in the original EIS. The risk assessment focused on the number of intersections to be encountered by vehicles crossing the tram lines and the speeds at which the coupled trams will be presumed to be travelling. This unreleased report is the first time information on the presumed speeds of trams through intersections has been provided to consultants. SAMSA, the "independent" consultants for the Peer Review of Traffic & Transport Assessment commissioned by Planning and Infrastructure, were fobbed off with the assertion that the presumptions of which intersections would be given priority for trams were "conservative". Now Arup, hardly independent consultants, have been told that trams will pass through 23 intersections at "high speed" (up to 70 km/h), 17 intersections at "medium speed" (up to 40 km/h) and six intersections at low speed (less than 25 km/h). The intersections are not identified in the report. The assertions of high speeds through intersections are preposterous as tram stops are perforce situated adjacent to intersections and trams must slow down to stop without throwing passengers around.

Arup does not question the assertions of Transport for NSW and concludes "The risk profile for CSELR equates to 1.14 fatalities per year". Arup did not consider any of the matters brought up by myself and others in Submissions to the EISs. They did not consider the blindsiding of pedestrians at every crossing to and from Central Station, the attempted diversion of pedestrian routes at Riley Street, the impossibility for buses to make turns without encroaching on the tram alignments, the proximity to pedestrian areas and the other matters. Arup are plucking figures from thin air in line with the other consultants for the project. There is no tram system anywhere in the world remotely comparable to the George Street trams. The fatalities expected from collisions at intersections alone are many times higher that those experienced by the current public transport system.

The proclaimed speeds between stops leave very little time for ticket inspectors to operate. Once an inspector has been identified passengers who have not tapped on can exit at the next stop when all the doors open. If smart devices are ever permitted to be used to tap on/off in NSW, passengers will be able to take mug shots of ticket inspectors and upload them to apps that track inspectors and issue warnings to fare evaders in following carriages.

This will be of little concern to ALTRAC since the "availability PPP" guarantees the consortium profitability regardless of how much it collects in fares.

Maxing the Opal Card

Commuters filmed by SMH maxing Opal cards

When the Opal Card was introduced by Ms Berejiklian it was not clear whether a trip in the opposite direction on a bus or tram route with the same number on the front within one hour of tapping off would be regarded as another journey. I speculated that, say, James Packer could travel by bus from Palm Beach, complete his business in the Sydney CBD within an hour and travel back to whence he came, so the distance travelled according to the GPS calculators was zero, and then pay the fare for the minimum distance travelled. Now intrepid commuters have put the system to the test and apparently he could.

Journalists from the SMH filmed commuters walking or running or bike riding between stops at the Pyrmont Bay and Star casino. The word on the street was that it would take 28 trips between the stops to accrue the 8 short journeys needed to travel anywhere in the metropolitan area using the Opal card for free for the rest of the week. Four trips within an hour of first tapping off counts as a journey. If travel in the reverse direction was a separate journey only 8 movements back and forth between the stops would be necessary.

This is possible because Opal card scanners are not on the trams but on the pavement beside the stops - you do not have to catch a tram to make a trip. Any two stops can be used for this ploy. The stops at Capitol Square and Paddy's Market would work just as well but involve multiple crossings of George Street.

By George I think she's got it

Town Hall stop to QVB stop

The George Street trams will open up a new set of possiblities for people to minimise their cost of weekly travel. The Citadis X05 has double exit doors at the front and rear and these woutd be the prefered exits so one of the multiple Opal card scanners will be placed in front of the Town Hall steps and another beside the mid-block entry to the QVB - literally a stones throw apart - less than 200 metres apart.

But the big advantage from the George Street trams is the ability to break trips into separate journeys without making four trips for each journey. This can be accomplished by switching between linear routes.

On arriving at Central by train bus or tram (one trip) on a Monday morning it only remains necessary to generate seven extra journeys to travel by train or bus anywhere in greater Sydney for the rest of the week. This can be done quickly and cheaply without ever actually catching a tram - you can use a tram for some of the journeys if one happens to turn up in time. You can generate an extra journey by spilting the train trip to Central into two shorter journeys by, say, leaving the train at Erskineville station on the Illawarra line or Newtown station on the Western lines and walking to Macdonaldtown station to reach Central.

If you arrive by train at Central Electric tap on at Chalmers Street then tap off at Rawson Place (one trip for the cheapest distance). Then backtrack across Pitt Street and up the escalators to tap onto the Dulwich Hill line, then down the escalators to tap off at the Capitol Square stop in Hay Street.

It is not clear if a journey on another route cancels the hour period in which trips on the previous route count as the same journey but it probably does. Ms Berejiklian made the point that James Packer, for instance, could have up to three stops for coffee or shopping and continue his journey so long as he caught a bus on the same route - the hour countdown restarts at each tap off at the end of each trip. One of the intrepid commuters interviewed by SMH talked of "rinsing" the card at the end of a trip.

If this is indeed the case one could complete the necessary seven trips by switching between tram routes. This could be accomplished by a short walk to Campbell Street to tap on at Chinatown stop then tap off at Rawson Place.Then up the escalators to tap on again at Central stop and tap off at Capitol Square. Walk to the Haymarket stop to tap on and tap off at Capitol Square  Finally catch an Elizabeth Street bus to your destination in the CBD. Another bus to Central in the evening outside the hour period and the journey home and every journey anywhere in the greater metropolitan area for the rest of the week is free.

If this is not the case, one must switch between routes. For instance: catch a Railway Square bus from Eddy Avenue, then a bus forcibly terminating in Pitt Street, tapping on south of Rawson Place and tapping off at the next stop to the north. Then an alternative route from Pitt Street to Railway Square, City Road or Parramatta Road, tapping off at the setdown only stop at Rawson Place. Then tap on a bus heading for Elizabeth Street at Pitt Street south stop and tap off at Eddy Avenue. And so on.

Oyster v Myki

Myki terminal on Melbourne bus

This ridiculous scenario does not occur on the Myki system introduced in Melbourne. I recall that when Melbourne metropolitan transport had paper tickets a commuter had 4 hours from the first use of of the ticket in which to transfer to any other route, within a zone system. With the Myki card this has been modified to 2 hours from the first tap off.

With the Myki card a commuter from Bronte could transfer from a bus headed to Railway Square to a bus headed to Circular Quay without paying for two journeys, and visa versa for Bondi commuters. Melbourne was laid out with a classic Victorian orthogonal road network and public transport allows commuters to reach any destination it the CBD with only one journey. It is the attempts by the deleriously-incompetent public servants put in control of Transport for NSW to impose a public transport system based on linear routes that creates impossible situations. The system must inexorably fail because of the pinch point in Elizabeth Street which has been the fundimental determinant in tranport planning in Sydney for 200 years.

Commbank can't

The contract to roll out the Opal card was negotiated by the previous, competent State Government. The lead partners in the Pearl consortium were the Commonwealth Bank and Cubic Transportation Services, the corporation deeply embedded in the military/industrial complex that had implimented the Oyster card system in London.

Docklands Light Rail in 1987

The Oyster card was rolled out on the Docklands Light Rail which is a genuine light rail system opened in the 1987 utilising the elevated goods rail lines of the London Docks around Canary Wharf. Additional concrete viaducts took the line to the south over Canary Wharf. The Canadian company Olympia & York developing the Canary Wharf filed for the biggest bankrupcy in history but the rail project was sound and has been extended.

The carriages are now twice as long and more frequent. The high-floor carriages draw power from the underside of a third rail under the overhang of the platforms and are fully automated, without drivers - the standards of system safety are claimed to be higher than for heavy rail. Routes that would have required trams to run through streets were rejected in the 1980s. No "World City" has built trams through city streets.

The main difference with heavy rail is the length of the carriage sets and the lack of ticket barriers at the entrances to the platforms. When I descended from the platform at Canary Wharf station there was a looped public address announcement reminding passengers to go back if they had not tapped off.

 Tragically, the Oyster card system of placing card readers on the platforms developed for the Docklands metro lines have been mindlessly adopted for the Sydney trams.

In Melbourne the Myki card readers for the trams are placed at the entrances to the carriages. This has far-reaching advantages with the development of the latest technologies, as it turns out. The contract for the rollout of contactless cards signed by the previous state government required the system to be upgradable to more recent technologies.

Oyster card reader at ticket barrier

The systems already in use round the world were the use of credit/dedit cards with printed circuits (used in tap and go terminals) in place of the Opal cards. However Apple and Google (Android) were already marketing smart phones. In September last year Oyster card readers in London were upgraded to recognise mobile phones. Banks issue apps that allow mobile phones to charge Oyster payments to an account set up by the commuter.

Needless to say the Apple Pay app has been "synced" to the newly released Apple Watch. The big advantage of a smart phone or smart wearable over a printed circuit on a plastic card is that they have a rechargeable battery. They can operate over greater distances - it is not necessary for the device to be lain flat on a pad in order to initiate a transaction. This will be the main selling point for the Apple Watch.

At an "assisted checkout" at a supermarket, for instance, a transaction could take place as soon as you touch the "pay now" field on the touch screen. The Apple Watch currently requires you to click the side button twice: Apple needs to get the support of banks in making it accepted at "touch and go" credit card terminals.

As far as can be gathered the big four Australian banks have not signed up to recognise Apple-Pay-enabled mobile devices or the equivalent Android devices. These would potentially operate in competition with the lucrative credit cards they issue.

The smart devices operating over greater distances can eliminate the distinction between gated and no-barrier stations. A commuter would trigger a transaction by walking through the entrance to a platform or entering and leaving a bus or tram. Passengers not carrying a mobile device would still have to tap a card on the pads. With these systems the dwell times at stops for buses and trams would be reduced, achieving faster jouney times. In fact we would expect the systems in use for the Oyster card readers in London to be introduced in Melbourne for the Myki card readers any time now.

But not in NSW. Anyone walking passed a Opal card reader with an activated mobile device would trigger a phantom journey. Whether this was to Central or Dulwhich Hill or to Circular Quay or Kingsford would presumably depend on which side of the tracks they were walking. Someone walking across the tracks could trigger journeys in both directions. If they missed the buzz in their pocket they would not learn of these phantom journeys until they examined the periodic accounts issued by their bank.

The Commonwealth Bank clearly has no intention of upgrading the Opal card readers despite the Sydney rollout having taken place after the upgrading of Oyster card readers in London, and despite the requirements of the contract with the former State Government.

It appears that the advice Ms Berejiklian has been receiving has been as shonky as the financial advice given to Joe Hockey's mother in law. It is despicable for a bank that has a privileged position as one of the four pillars to take advantage of the defiant obtuseness and mathmatical incompetence of North Shore Liberal ladies.