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.

Victor is not Victoria

Rozelle Metro station

The CBD Metro was designed to give residents along Victoria Road a rail line to the CBD. There was no rail line to this area of the city. Originally it was conceived to link up with the Northern Line and take pressure of Stratsfield Station and the Western Line. It was then redirected to link directly to Epping station. The project was abandoned when the cost of the first stage escalated out of control but not before the state government had spent almost half a billion dollars on property acquisitions.

When North Shore rump politicians came to power the CBD metro project was revived and the disgraced public servant Rod Staples was brought back from the dead and put back in charge. Ms Berejiklian redirected the line away from Victoria Road to, you guessed it, Chatswood in her electorate. The tunnels would have to pass under the deepest part of Sydney Harbour. Instead of taking a rail line to a part of the city that had never had a rail service, the metro line would replicate almost exactly the existing Chatswood to Central rail line, with subway stations so deep beneath North Sydney and Wynyard Station that there was lift-only access to the surface, a subway station under Pitt Street, directly adjacent to Town Hall station and a subway station deep under the western end of the Central Country Terminal.

Needless to say, no attempt has been made to cost the project. Baird claims he can fund the project by appealing against an independent assessment of power pricing and selling urban electricity distribution assets.

But where does this leave the commuters using Victoria Road to access jobs in the CBD? Baird's ultimate insult to them is to call his proposed station under North Sydney "Victoria Cross". The residents along Victoria Road have been double-crossed.

One-Stop loop

Schematic from Dec 2012 brochure

The original plans announced in Sydney's Light Rail Future showed buses from the Harbour Bridge being given exclusive access to the Druitt Street U-turn. North Shore buses would stop in York Street at Wynyard park and outside the Queen Victoria Building. Passengers wanting to tranfer to a South Eastern Suburbs tram would not have as far to walk to a stop in George Street at Town Hall.

Bus services from Victoria Road would just pass through to William Street. I mentioned in previous posts that this was not credible (Just passing through 11 September 2013).

Currently, bus routes from Victoria Road travel along George Street to Circular Quay ot to the west, after entering the CBD via the exclusive bus lane to Druitt Street from the Western Distributor. The 501 route makes a bee-line to Railway Square along Harris Street and travels north along George Street to a set-down only stop in front of the Town Hall, physically turning round with an east-bound lane in Market Street between Clarence and York Street. This lane is also used by buses that enter from the Western Distributor at King Street, terminating with a stop outside the Queen Victoria Building.

Market Street bus lane eastbound against the flow.

The Metro buses have supplimented the routes to destinations south of Park Street, travelling south along Elizabeth Street. Between these four routes commuters have had it made, despite not having a rail option.

The very expensive alterations to the kerbs in Market Street being undertaken by the Baird government do not in any way change the two-way operation of Market Street west of York Street - there is nothing to show for the expense.

The north-bound routes along George Street will be obliterated from 4 October but the routes (yellow line) entering the CBD at King Street continue as at present, looping to a stop outside the QVB:

Victoria Road bus routes through the CBD

The fate of commuters that use bus services along Victoria Road that currently travel along George Street to physically turn around at Circular Quay is largely determined by how they voted at the state election and whether the bus route passes a Rail Station. Bus routes (red line) from Parramatta that allow passengers to transfer to a train at West Ryde Station and bus routes from Macquarie University continue to Circular Quay, passing through the mother-of-all pinch points at the Old Supreme Court Building and turning around at the hopelessly-overcrowded Phillip/Young Streets loop - the most congested bus route in New South Wales. Any attempt to force them to use a privately-operated tram service that stops only at train stations would just propel them onto the train system.

Priority access lane to Hyde Park bus stops

The return route to Vicoria Road currently requires a right-hand turn into Druitt Street from George Street but Elizabeth Street carries much heavier north-bound traffic so buses will be diverted east to College Street to make the turn into Park Street, along with buses terminated at the Domain car park forecourt. Buses will have to join the queue of private vehicles from King Street headed to the Eastern Suburbs - no going to the head of the queue after passing through the pinch point.

The bus routes that make it from West Ryde to Circular Quay in competition with the railway are relatively well off, inflicting collateral damage on Eastern Suburbs bus transport. Baird's wrath falls mainly on the inner suburbs.

The Bathurst 500s

Kent Street at Town Hall

Baird defines the "core" CBD as being to the east of Kent Street so buses forcibly terminated on the western side of Kent Street are "removed from the CBD". The green route is for bus services forcibly terminated "outside the CBD". Whenever TfNSW sees a triangle of roads they assert this can be a bus terminus. The green route is deliberately deceptive - TfNSW cannot help itself even at the death knock. Victoria Road bus services are to be terminated by entering the real CBD at Bathurst Street and looping to a bus stop in Kent Street adjacent to the Town Hall office block then exiting via Druitt Street, or is that Market Street? At the going down of the sun, buses will loop round the building in Elizabeth Street, approved when the Manly boys were last in power, that casts shadows over the War Memorial.

Kent Street has been reduced to one lane with one lane for parking and left-hand turns by Sydney City Council, so inner-city dole bludgers can hold naked bike runs through the CBD. The pedestrian crossing to the arcades leading to the concourse under George Street has been obliterated. The one lane in Kent Street must not only handle traffic to the cavenous car parks under the Town Hall office block it will also be the preferred route to the western side of the "Berlin Wall" and Harbour Bridge for vehicular traffic from Broadway. TfNSW has opined that vehicles from City Road would turn into Wattle Street and access the CBD west of George Street by linking onto the Western Distributor at the congested Fig Street entry, but why would drivers do this when they have a path along George Street uninterrupted by bus movements and cross traffic at Rawson Place and Ultimo Road.

Hills districts buses, that currently use the Lee Street layover, will be also be forcibly terminated by looping from the from the Western Distributor south-bound into Bathurst Street and Kent Street, when they are not are turned around at a U-turn from York to Clarence Streets across Druitt Street. It is not surprising that the systemically deceptive public servants placed in control of TfNSW should seek to conceal the plans for these routes until the last moment before 4 October.

TfNSW believe that commuters dumped in Kent Street will be forced onto cattle cars to make connections with bus services terminated at Wynyard park and Pitt Street but this is extremely unlikely when they are dumped directly adjacent to the entry to Town Hall Station. Until the trams are running, transferring to a City Circle train will be their only option for reaching destinations to the north or south of Park Street or transferring to bus services terminated at Wynyard park or Pitt Street, other than to trapse across town to hopelessly congested Elizabeth Street bus services. If the rail system south of the Harbour has not collapsed by the time the George Street trams start operating they are unlikely to alter their habits. Bus services in George Street, however slow, have prevented overloading of the Wynyard/Central rail link from the earliest days of the rail system.

The redundant tram stop

Town Hall/Queen Victoria Building stop

The tram stop outside the Queen Victoria Building is now barely a tram's length away from the Town Hall stop. I discussed this in a post on 28 January 2015, We are not amused. Now TfNSW has confirmed that the stop is redundant. The only buses not from the Harbour Bridge to stop in York Street outside the QVB will be the buses from Balmain:

Balmain bus routes

These are infrequent services. Understandably, since the route requires a right-hand turn across Market Street. The only passengers who would conceivably catch a tram north would come from these buses. The trams only take passengers back to Wynyard park.

Passengers dumped in York Street outside the QVB would walk from York Street to the Town Hall tram stop to reach destinations south of Park Street or to transfer to bus services forcibly terminated in Pitt Street.

So the George Street trams will have a redundant tram stop at QVB and no stop anywhere near Martin Place. This ludicrous flaw has been self evident from the earliest manifestations of the project.

The incompetence of the public servants placed in control of TfNSW is beyond belief.

The Riddle of Coogee

What do you get when you vote for an arse-hole licker?

Notley-Smith retained the seat of Coogee for the Liberal party in the state election with the electorate in blissful ignorance of what was planned for their public bus services. I had issued a post before the election warning of what could be deduced from the EIS for Sydney City Centre Bus Infrastructure (Missing in inaction, 16/11/2014). Without any confirmation about the state government's planned bus routes it was not possible for the issue to gain traction in the election campaign. Now everything written in the post has been confirmed.

Elizabeth Street intersection with Hay Street

North Shore politicians have made Bronte the terminus for one of the Paramatta Road bus services. The rebadging of the 378 service to 440 has been used to inexplicably change the route.

The right-hand turn from Elizabeth Street into Hay Street exists solely to give taxis and private vehicles access to the taxi ranks and short-term parking to the west of Central intercity terminal. Unfortunately it also opens up a rat-run to Pitt Street. The right-turn lane is in one of the narrowest sections of Elizabeth Street where arterial traffic branches into Wentworth Avenue - the bus priority lane is discontinued through this section. Buses have never used this right turn in the history of Sydney.

The colonnade was built as an integral part of Central Station, opened in 1902, so that tram movements did not disrupt arterial traffic movements between the Eastern Suburbs and Parramatta Road. For more than 100 years buses have turned from Elizabeth Street into Eddy Avenue to avoid conflicts with tram services and bus services in Castlereagh Street. There is only one conceivable reason for stopping buses from turning here and forcing them to turn into Hay Street. This is in order to obliterate the bus stops adjacent to the entry to Central Electric station, and this is insane.

The bus stops ouside Central Station are among the most heavily used bus stops in Sydney and are crucial to the operation of the public transport system south of the Harbour. The 378 bus services halve the number of buses in Oxford Street that have to pass through the pinch point in Elizabeth Street north-bound. If the passengers who pour out of buses at Eddy Avenue were forced onto the Eastern Suburbs railway they would add the congestion in the elevators and barriers of Town Hall Station.

The 378 buses are the only way of reaching the rail lines for people in Woolahra, Paddington and Darlinghurst - they are the ones to lose the most. Passengers from Bronte can transfer to rail lines at Bondi Junction, at the expense of starting another trip. Once they are on the railway thay can change lines as often as thay like for one trip.

440 route map

378 buses terminate at the spacious layover at Lee Street allowing them to maintain schedules closely. Whatever layovers are available at Roselle, by the time the 440 buses reach Railway Square there will be little semblance to a timetable. There are layovers at Bronte beach but it will be difficult to maintain schedules over long routes facing chronic congestion in Pitt Street.

The bus stop in Hay Street has been obliterated so when the trams are operating passengers will be set down in Rawson Place adjacent to the out-bound tram platform instead of being set down in front of Central Station. This is the last place commuters from Bronte and Woolahra would want to be set down. Anyone wanting to go to Randwick, Prince of Wales Hospital, UNSW or Maroubra Junction would have transfered to a direct bus service from Bondi Junction. Anyone with destinations in the northern CBD would catch a 380 bus.

There is no rhyme or reason for linking Bronte bus services to a tortuous bus route to Roselle or for obliterating the crucial set-down stop in Eddy Avenue. Commuters heading for destinations other than Roselle will have to survive passing through the pincer-movement of death to tranfer to a bus to another destination in the Inner West.

Residents in Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Paddington, Woolahra, Bondi Junction or Bronte were not consulted or even informed of the dire changes to their public bus services that North Shore rump politicians intended to inflict on them. But Notley-Smith was in on it from day one.

The Member for Maroubra Michael Daley has been vocal in his criticisms of the government. He has said it was outrageous that light rail was being built without detail on long-term bus changes. He said that Mike Baird was "treating people like mugs" for not being transparent about the bus plan.

"The State Government is spending $2.3 billion on a project that's going to have huge changes to the bus network and we are not being told what those changes are", he said.

But there has not been a word from the Member for Coogee - no word of criticism or requests for more information or an explanation of decisions that do not make any sense. His tongue is embedded too far up the North Shore rump for him to have any concern for his constituents in Bronte.

answer: You get treated with contempt.

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.

The Campbell Street connection

Buses from Parramatta Road and City Road have to travel north at least to Campbell Street in order to physically turn around. It does not make any sense then for trams to access the CBD south of here. Running coupled 90 metre long trams through the three major pedestrian crossings from Central Station and blindsiding pedestrians would not be acceptable anywhere in the civilised world. It is also completely unnecessary. If trams from the southeast enter the City to the north, the Randle Street loop that worked impeccably during the Olympics and at events ever since remains virgo intacta. The trams are an additional resource for clearing the crowds. It is Baird's obsession with crippling the Public Transport system and forcing people onto privately-operated transport that is the sole motivation for this disastrously misconceived tramway.

Connecting Campbell Street trams to the Pitt/ Castlereagh Street loop

I outlined how trams from the southeastern suburbs would connect to the Pitt/Castlereagh Streets tram loop in my letter to the Minister more than a month before Hazzard declared the undeveloped Project to be critical Significant State Infrastructure. The tram rails are side by side in the lower part of Campbell Street west of Hunt Street and occupy the redundant left-turn lane in Campbell Street and then some to the east of Hunt Street. Outbound buses would access Crown Street by travelling straight up Goulburn Street which is now one way all the way, east of College Street. The tram tracks in Campbell Street do not obey the drive on the right rules which is of no matter since the tracks are isolated from pedestrians for most of the route and would have an appropriate speed limit for this limited distance.

Inbound tram services
Campbell Street westbound west of Elizabeth Street is just a rat-run for vehicles that choose not to use Eddy Avenue or Hunt Street to reach Pitt Street or George Street. It would be closed to vehicular traffic other than trams east of Pitt Street and buses to the west.

Campbell into Castlereagh thence Central Station 

Campbell at Elizabeth Street

There would be separate tram services from the southeastern suburbs to Central and Railway Square and to the northern CBD, as has been the case from the foundation of European settlement in Sydney. The width of the roads in the northern CBD was predicated on this policy.

Because the rails do not obey the keep to the right rule there would be inbound stops at Taylor Square and say Harmony Park. There would be no right turn from Campbell Street into Elizabeth Street just a left turn. Vehicles including buses would use Hunt Street to make this turn - there are no destinations between Campbell and Goulburn Streets.

In a previous post "Managing congestion with the Oyster (aka Opal) Card" I outlined how the Opal Card can mitigate congestion in George Street bus lanes north of Market Street in the few hours of a week day when this is a problem. This is the case even if there are no tram tracks to the north of the CBD. With the Pitt/Castlereagh Streets tram loop restored there is a fourth terminus in the CBD for Parramatta Road and City Road bus services. Buses can terminate at Campbell Street, making a left turn from Pitt Street. Passengers can transfer to Loop, southeastern Suburbs and Lilyfield Line trams by crossing Campbell Street to a stop in Pitt Street. Buses terminating here cross the Lilyfield rails coming and going but they do not cross tram tracks a mind-numbing five times while running on empty after dumping their passengers in Pitt Street, as proposed by TfNSW. This terminus does not offer opportunities for buses to lay over and would mainly be used during the AM peak. The cost on the Opal Card would be the same as for a service to Randle Street. With the Opal Card commuters can change to a service to the appropriate destination at any stop in Parramatta Road or King Street as pointed out in the previous post.

Most tram services from the Lilyfield Line would continue to the north of the CBD but there would be the usual choice of destinations to Central Station. Off-peak services would stop at Central on the way north.

The Loop tram services add additional capacity to transport services to the CBD and do not degrade any existing bus service. They make Sydney CBD transport future-proof.

Outbound tram services
The outbound tram rails are through the "Golf House" building and the building behind it as outlined in my letter to the Minister and submission to the EIS. There would be a stop here then the next stop would be at Bourke Street. The trams would enter Foster Street at a higher level and Foster Street would be closed to traffic between here and Campbell Street. The air rights above this stop could be flogged off at a later date.

The Golf House

Foster Street at rear of Golf House

Blackburn Street - closed at end

The trams services to the southeastern suburbs would be on a demand basis and would be additional to existing bus services to Elizabeth Street and Central and Railway Square which are largely unaffected. Bus services to Railway Square to not contribute to congestion in bus routes to the northern CBD which was falsely advanced as the raison d'être for tram rails in George Street.

The tram services from the southeastern suburbs to the northern CBD would actually be faster than existing Elizabeth Street bus services even without priority signalling, being a more direct route with less queuing at intersections. Tram movements would be in parallel with bus movements and vehicular movements and controlled by the SCATS system.

The plot thickens

The northern lanes of Campbell Street are currently being butchered for a one-way bicycle path. So there is a binary choice: you can have an efficient and safe tram service to the CBD from the southeastern suburbs or yet another plot for cultivating inner-city pansies.

The main reason for the Pitt/Castlereagh Street tram Loop is to reduce localised congestion on the City Circle trains, something the George Street tram alignment conspicuously fails to achieve - it does absolutely nothing to reduce this congestion. It has been demonstrated that a competently designed tram system for the southeastern suburbs can compete successfully with bus services without crippling them with deliberately generated congestion in crucial traffic arteries or forced termination of services.

I will discuss the Flinders Street end in another post.