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.

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.

SCATS assault from the North Shore Rump

World Square stop

The length of the trams would have little impact on traffic flow at the Eddy Avenue/Pitt Street intersection - even a 57 metre tram should just be able to cross the intersection in the minimum time allowed for pedestrians to cross - 26 seconds. However we have to consider impact on the routes that vehicles displaced from Rawson Place have no alternative but to take: Liverpool Street and Bathurst Street. The closure of Rawson Place turns these into arterial routes.

At Bathurst Street a tram movement shuts down all traffic movements other than pedestrian crossings in parallel with the trams and once again pedestrian densities are among the heaviest in the state. The cumulative run times in the EIS asserted that it would take 1 minute for a tram to set down/pick up passengers and pass from the "World Square" stop to Town Hall stop. The stops are literally a stones throw apart - it takes less than 2 minutes to walk the distance as pointed out in a post on 21 Dec 2013 By George, I think she's got it, but since it takes a five-segment trams 87 seconds to pick up a couple of passengers this is hardly credible. It is physically impossible for the trams to accelerate to the 60 kpm speed limit, hit the pedestrianised zone at this speed then abruptly slow down to a stop - drivers would travel the distance at little more than walking speed. The question that needs to be asked is: would trams travelling at little more than walking speed be given priority by the traffic lights? That is to say, would trams from both directions trigger a change in the signal phasing? That is the 2.2 billion dollar question.

AM LOS

PM LOS

The "mesoscopic modelling" undertaken by TfNSW in 2013 which forecast peak hour intersection performance over the broad CBD clearly assumed that SCATS would continue to control traffic light phasing at Liverpool Street, Bathurst Street and Goulburn Street intersections with George Street - improvements in level of service (LOS) at these intersections in the 2021 light rail scenario compared to 2021 Do Minimum scenario were +2 (off the scale).

The modelling was infantile and based on preposterous assumptions and the conclusions drawn by Booz & Company published in the EIS are risible but we can conclude that there was no intention to give trams priority at intersections in the CBD.

In fact the intersections of George Street with Liverpool and Bathurst Streets would operate much the same with trams as they do now. There is now a bus (and left-turn) lane and two general-vehicle lanes south-bound from Bathurst Street and a bus lane and two north-bound general-traffic lanes to Liverpool Street. The significant difference is that the trams obliterate the second general-traffic lanes. This second general-vehicle lane allows buses to leapfrog buses at stops and pass through intersections two at a time (as you can see in the Google Earth snapshot) and to achieve capacities far in excess that which the tram service can achieve.

At present most of the vehicles travelling north of Bathurst Street are buses heading for the Harbour Bridge or running on empty to Circular Quay in order to physically turn round. If Baird wins the election on 28th March there will be only trams from Kingsford and Randwick, running on empty to Circular Quay, north of Bathurst Street. There are very few private vehicles travelling in parallel with the buses south from in front of Town Hall during the pm peak - mainly there are just taxis from the Hilton and the hotels at the Rocks - as you can observe any evening. With good reason: there is very little parking along George Street north of Bathurst Street and the parking is very expensive. Only buses can turn into George Street southbound south of Grosvenor Street and no driver in his right mind would use George Street to access the southern half of the CBD rather than use the Western Distributor.

The expensive off-street parking along George Street will continue to exist if George Street is pedestrianised. Drivers displaced from George Street will be forced to take tortuous routes crossing the dual tram tracks at least two times each way and more likely three times. This traffic will return to George Street southbound with a vengeance at Liverpool Street and will have been forced into one lane. This is effectively the only change to the traffic flows at the intersections, along with the additional traffic displaced from Rawson Place.

Bathurst Street, pm peak

Traffic flows along Bathurst Street and Liverpool Street become gridlocked at the George Street intersections during the pm peak and SCATS takes over, co-ordinating the traffic-light phases to give  continuous streams of traffic along George Street during its phase. Between 4:20 and 4:50 pm on Friday 28 November 2014 SCATS was allocating about 40 seconds to east-west flows and 1 minute and 9 seconds to George Street flows.

The traffic lights at Goulburn Street/George Street intersection are not co-ordinated with the lights further north and take between 50 and 56 seconds in each direction tallying up to 1:47 during the evening peak.

Bear in mind that the buses are carrying much higher loads of passengers than trams running largely empty from Circular Quay will ever carry - they must have capacity to pick up the bulk of their passengers at Central. There are very high volumes of pedestrians crossing Bathurst Street to and from the Town Hall station concourse.

Crunch time at the pincer movement of death

Trams at the Pitt Street/Eddy Avenue intersection can not be given priority signal phasing without creating intractable congestion in traffic flows to Parramatta Road and City Road and crippling every bus service to the Inner West and the southern suburbs. So trams after spending one and a half minutes setting down and picking up passengers could be held up an average of (1:47 - :27) minutes = 1 minute and 20 seconds. In the worst-case scenario the tram could have been held up an additional 40 seconds at each of the intersections at Bathurst Street, Liverpool Street and 50 seconds at Goulburn Street and it could have taken longer for passengers with mobility problems to embark or disembark from the tram. It is the worst-case scenario that determines the safe spacing of trams.

Spacing of trams is the only mechanism for stopping a following tram from crashing into the tram ahead. Railways run on tracks that have sensors and signalling but this not possible on trams travelling on public roads and through pedestrianised zones. If a tram that has had a clear run (no delays at intersections) arrives at a stop before the tram ahead has moved out from the stop it will smash into the back of the stationary tram. This would occur in an area with large numbers of pedestrians and with passengers on both trams standing without bracing themselves.

Here the length of the trams has great significance. Nine-segment trams will be 12 metres longer. The rear of the tram will be an extra 12 metres from where the driver of the following tram was expecting to stop so it will be moving faster. The trams are heavier so the following tram has more kinetic energy and the stationary tram more inertia.

At the Rawson Place stop the driver would not see the stationary tram until he is passing through the pincer movement of death - buses queued to pass through the pincer movement block his view. TfNSW insist that the trams will be travelling at the speed limit (60 kpm) between stops.

Finally making up time

The consequences are so horrendous we must assume that the trams will have sufficient spacing when they are dispatched from the three platforms at Circular Quay, carrying negligible numbers of passengers. You can do the maths. The timing between trams when dispatched will have to be a minimum of 5 minutes. This does not take into account any delays that may occur in the George Street pedestrianised zone. This is the timing between trams from day one of the tram services and it never gets any better. It gets progressively worse throughout the future life of the City of Sydney.

The frequency of at least 5 minutes between the nine-segment trams is significantly different from the frequency of 1 minute and 44 seconds that would be required to achieve the capacity of 13,500 passengers per hour claimed by Ms Berejiklian.

Trams would be arriving at the Randwick and Kingsford terminuses more than 10 minutes apart.

The revenge of the Chinese communists

Rod Staples on the far right, ominously

NSW Treasury announced the contracts for the North West Rail Link on the 24th June:
"The NWRL will be delivered via three major contracts:

• Tunnels and Station Civil Works package, to be delivered as a D&C;
• Surface and Viaduct Civil Works package, to be delivered as a D&C; and
• Operations, Trains and Systems (OTS) package, to be delivered as a PPP.

The TSC and SVC packages were awarded to different consortiums at the time of the announcement.

"The OTS package involves the design, construction and commissioning of rail infrastructure (including depot and stabling), procurement of rolling stock, operation and maintenance, and financing of the 23km of new rail network from Cudgegong Road to Epping, as well as the upgrade of existing rail network from Epping to Chatswood.

"OTS will be an availability PPP where demand risk will be retained by Government. A substantial State contribution will also be made during construction".

Delving through the acronyms it can be seen that this was a PPP where the private partner cannot lose. The taxpayer provides all the construction funds and takes all the risks and the private partner gets the profits, if any. The NSW government fought a costly battle in the courts to stop the SMH getting access to documents about the project claiming it would prevent the government from getting the best deal for the taxpayer, but it is impossible to imagine a worse deal for the taxpayer.

The announcement named Northwest Rapid Transit Corporation as one of the "two shortlisted consortia" that "successfully lodged their proposals in December 2013".

The $30 billion question is: Did NRTC have any inkling that Baird, the Treasurer in December 2013, would announce that if elected he would sell taxpayer assets to build a tunnel from Chatswood to Sydenham junction under the Harbour for no other purpose than to hand over the Bankstown line to the operators of single-deck trains?

If they did, then this amounts to fraud on a scale that is unprecedented in the history of Australia. This is fraud that reaches to the upper echelons of the NSW Liberal Party, far beyond Senator Arthur Sinodinos.

If they did not then this is incompetence on an unimaginable scale. The PPP was given task of selecting and procuring off-the-shelf rolling stock from overseas without any knowledge that it would possibly be required to pass up and down gradients so precipitous only lighter single-deck trains could negotiate them. At least, they think they can, they think they can. This was cited as a possibility in documents taken to Cabinet.

Leighton media release

The Premier's announcement on 12 June 2014 of the Harbour rail tunnel paid for by selling taxpayer assets clearly did not come as a surprise to Leighton Holdings. Twelve days later, on 24 June, they issued a media release: "The NSW government today announced the Northwest Rapid Transit Consortium (NRT) as the preferred operator for the North West Rail Link Project; the first stage of Sydney Rapid Transit, Sydney's brand new railway network".

Only a Royal Commission with the power to compel testimony can determine who knew what and when.

The Chinese communist domination

MTR Corp is "the major Operator participant with John Holland and UGL each having minority stakes". So what is the connection between the Chinese communist corporation MTR Corp and the multinational property development company UGL Limited?

UGL states on the ethics page of its web site:

• We are committed to and take steps to prevent and detect bribery and corruption.
• We do not make donations to political party funds or candidates

This has been contradicted by a series of emails published in exclusive articles in the SMH and Age newspapers. You can follow them here.

UGL paid the chief executive of Hong Kong C.Y. Leung ₤4 million in two tranches in a secret deal that was never disclosed. The deal was made in relation to UGL's purchase of Leung's insolvent property development company of which the shares were deemed to be worthless. The chief executive of Hong Kong effectively controls 76% of the shareholding of MTR Corporation leaving John Holland as the only independent minority shareholding in the unlisted consortium.

Baird will be selling taxpayer assets to fully fund a tunnel that has no purpose other than to hand over residents on the Bankstown line to a consortium dominated by a Chinese communist corporation and to dump 40,000 passengers an hour on the most vulnerable point of the rail system for south of the Harbour, crippling public transport south of the Harbour forever.

If MTR corp knew of or deduced Baird's plans before or after they lodged their submissions in December 2013 why did they not point out the obvious flaws?

The answer is of course: Why would they?

Revenge is sweet and sour

Baird has provided an "availability PPP", a new term where the NSW taxpayer provides all the funds for construction and takes on all the risks, then the tunnels and rails are handed over to the private unlisted partner. The private partner has nothing to lose. What's not to like.

B-52 wreckage at Victory Museum Hanoi
One of the 15 B-52s shot down during Linebacker II

Then there is the history between Australia and China. During the American intervention in the Vietnamese civil war more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than were dropped on the whole of Europe in World War II.

We have been reminded by the death of Gough Whitlam that after being sworn in as Prime Minister on 5th December 1972 he and Lance Barnard had ended conscription and announced the withdrawal of troups from Vietnam on December 11 which was before Nixon launched Operation Linebacker II, The Christmas Bombings from 18-29 December. Whitlam criticised the bombings in a letter to the US President but it was evidently too late to save Sydney from retribution.

The carpet bombing of Hanoi was paid for by the American taxpayer and the North Vietnamese ultimately faired better than those in the south who are still dealing with the aftermath of Agent Orange and other things. The Viet Cong had tried repeatedly to tunnel under the defences of the Australian base camp at Nui Dat without success.

Now Baird will sell NSW taxpayer assets to build a tunnel under the CBD then pay a Chinese communist corporation to blitz the City Circle rail services with 40,000 passengers per hour at its most vulnerable point. Unlike the Operations Linebacker I and II which ended with election of a Democrat-controlled Congress, the bombardment of the City Circle will never end - the further the single-deck rail lines extend north of the Harbour the more intense it becomes. The irony is delicious. The Chinese authorities in Beijing must be laughing themselves silly at the stupidity of Australians.

Of course it is not the Australian people that are stupid just a little band of North Shore politicians who had festered too long in the rump of the Liberal Party. The NSW voters will have an opportunity to repudiate these politicians and re-establish their reputation for sound judgement and common decency on 28 March 2015.

If the unthinkable happened and Baird won the election then historians will record that this precipitated the collapse of public transport south of the Harbour. The City of Sydney will have been brought low:

Not by reds in the bed but by reds in the bedrock under the Harbour.

Mission creep

The Iemma government spent a very large amount of taxpayer's money designing a metro under the CBD and almost half a billion dollars on compulsory land acquisitions before the penny dropped and the Kenneally government worked out that a relief rail from Central to Wynyard was the only rail line under the CBD that actually reduced passenger pressure on City Circle rail services. Now Baird has abruptly announced that he will sell taxpayer assets to fund a rerouting of the tunnels northward from deep under Martin Place to even deeper under First Fleet Park to under the deepest part of Sydney Harbour and so deep under North Sydney there is lift only access to the surface then on to Chatswood, and southward from deep under Central station to Sydenham junction. This project has never been costed or had any design work done on it or as far as anyone can gather had never been assessed by anyone in Treasury or Transport for NSW when Baird made the announcement.

Needless to say, even the most cursory assessment would establish that the rerouting of the tunnels will cause an even more devastating degradation of public train services south of the Harbour than the George Street trams will have on bus services to the CBD.

The Town Hall transfer

The original planned alignment
Town Hall and Central stations

No rational commuter from the northwest would stay on single-deck trains past Epping and get off at a platform god knows how deep under Central station in order to reach destinations along the Western line when they can transfer to an anti-clockwise Northern line train. The only people leaving the single-deck trains at Central would be from the Macquarie stations, who have no choice. The metro station at nominally Martin Place does not provide connections to anything that is not within walking distance of the station. We can deduce that in order for the single-deck trains to meet their claimed objective of transporting 40,000 passengers each hour during the AM peak through a Harbour rail tunnel close to 40,000 commuters each hour would have to leave trains at the one remaining station under Pitt Street between Park and Bathurst Street.

The stations of the City Circle are close together compared to tube loops in other cities because the lines feed into the same overpass over Eddy Avenue. The entrance to Town Hall station on the eastern side of George Street at Bathurst Street is a stones throw from the entrance to the pedestrian tunnel to Museum station on the western side of Elizabeth Street. The escalators to Museum station on the eastern side of Castlereagh Street at Park Street and to Town Hall station under the Galleries Victoria are a stones throw apart for people with very weak throwing arms. The escalators to the Pitt Street metro station are about the same position as the escalators under the Galleries Victoria (not shown in diagram above - replaced with a row of trees). Town Hall and Museum stations have between them eight platforms delivering passengers from all over Sydney to the Town Hall precinct. Sydney City needs two metro platforms delivering, we are told, almost 40,000 extra passengers per hour to the precinct like a hole in the bedrock.

To the barrier counts

Barrier counts at Sydney rail stations in 2011

Town Hall station is the busiest station in the suburban rail network in terms of the barrier counts of people leaving and entering the ticket barriers, which are collected every day. It is the most vulnerable point in the public rail system that commuters south of the Harbour rely on every day. The latest figures published (the City Rail Compendium archived by Google here) are for 2011. Patronage peaked before the GFC in 2008 but has been climbing back up so it is probably back up to close to the 2008 figures. More passengers would alight at Central to transfer to other train services without passing through the barriers and breaking their journey into an extra trip - Central is the busier station. The barrier counts at Town Hall do not record the numbers of passengers moving up the escalators to the concourse and down again to transfer from the Harbour Bridge rail services to the Eastern Suburbs line. They do not include the additional loadings that would take place from passengers transferring from a metro to a Harbour Bridge train at Chatswood to avoid breaking their journey to transfer to the Eastern Suburbs line.

In order for the Sydney Harbour rail tunnel to meet its proclaimed objective of transferring 40,000 passengers per hour under the Harbour during peak periods it would have to dump close to this number of passengers per hour into the Town Hall station precinct. These passengers have nowhere to go except to transfer to City Circle trains headed to the western and southern lines and for Redfern and stations north of Sydenham. The planned "Central" metro platforms were to be god knows how deep under Railway Square to the west of the Country rail platforms and do not provide a feasible connection to the Western and Southern suburban lines - transfers to the single City Circle line from Town Hall to Central stations are the only options for any of the 40,000 commuters per hour Baird asserts will have stayed on the metro beyond Epping and Chatswood stations.

To put this in perspective, in 2011 an average of 46,000 passengers passed through the barriers at Town Hall Station during the three and a half hour AM peak. To meet its proclaimed objective of transporting 40,000 passengers per hour under the Harbour during the AM peak the rail tunnel would have to add an additional 140,000 passengers to the barrier count during the AM peak. The rail tunnel must quadruple the barrier count at Town Hall station. In the words of Joe Biden: "Not physically possible".

This does not take into account the extra passengers using the escalators for internal transfers. To be fair we should give the hourly figures during the morning peak but the figures for the effects of a Harbour rail tunnel are so ridiculous it is hardly worth it:

Everyone who uses or passes though Town Hall station knows that the platforms and escalators are currently operating at close to their maximum capacity during peak periods. In the evenings the flows through the barriers are reversed for exits and entries.

And what about the northbound Harbour rail tunnel

The Harbour rail tunnel announced by Baird had only two objectives:

1. To cripple the City Circle rail services at their most vulnerable point
2. To hand over residents of Bankstown to, it turns out, a Chinese communist corporation

The northbound Harbour rail tunnel will, we are told, carry 40,000 passengers per hour under the Harbour. For this to happen 40,000 commuters each hour must decide to use the metro to reach destinations north or northwest of Epping rather than take the much shorter and faster route via Regents Park and Strathfield stations.

Rail tickets are effectively tap-on/tap-off so they provide crude origin destination data. We can gain a crude estimate of the maximum number of passengers that could possibly make the really dumb choice to use the metro to reach Epping station from the published data for 2010:

Origin Destination data for 2010

The data reveals the number of passengers exiting at stations along an entire rail line not at individual stations. The 199 passengers from the Bankstown line exiting along the Epping-Chatswood line (ECRL) would have no choice but to use the metro. The 1,738 passengers headed for the North Shore line stations (mainly North Sydney) would have to ditch the metro at Sydenham station unless they are headed to destinations within walking distance of lifts from "Victoria Cross" (a made-up location that exists only in the imaginations of TfNSW planners). We don't know how many of the 150 passengers who exit along the Northern line are headed to the north of Epping and might be silly enough to change from the metro at Epping rather than transfer at Strathfield but we can hazard a guess that this would be zero. Passengers headed for destinations from Chatswood to Hornsby must change from the metro at Chatswood or, you guessed it, Town Hall station.

All told, the number of passengers travelling through the northbound Harbour rail tunnel during the 3.5 hour AM peak each day will be little more than 200, well short of the 140,000 passengers the tunnel was designed to carry.

The original CBD metro

Metro plan in Ron Christie's 2001 report to the NSW government

The original plan for a CBD metro (red line) was in a report by Ron Christie commissioned by the NSW government and delivered in 2001. Christie stipulated that a metro should be built only after heavy-rail lines compatible with the rest of the network (shown in black and blue) had been completed. The metro from the bus/Northern line interchange at Victoria Road in West Ryde to Maroubra was studied and named the Anzac line. In its final incarnation it would have used the abandoned central platforms and rail tunnel under Whitlam Square at St James station. This metro made a lot of sense. It was designed specifically to relieve rail passenger loadings on Strathfield station and on the bus services along Victoria Road.

The proposal was modified yet again to the "nominally Pitt Street" alignment that redirected the rails under Parramatta Road to Sydney University and potentially beyond - the route further west was never specified. It still made some sense but it proved to be horrendously expensive.

Now Baird, without any known further study or any disclosure of cost or indeed the feasibility of tunnelling under the deepest part of Sydney, has turned the "Pitt Street" alignment into the instrument for the destruction of the efficacy of the public rail system south of the Harbour.

The creep on a mission from God

While still in opposition the North Shore rump of the Liberal Party hatched an undisclosed plan to destroy the efficacy of public transport south of the Harbour and to force passengers onto services operated by private companies. The modus operandi for achieving this objective was to replace the heads of the departments with ideologically-aligned public servants from outside the service and to not allow any disclosure of details of their agenda. These public servants continue to churn out "Rail/Bus Future" plans and "Fact sheets" that contain no plausible facts and make demonstrably-false assertions.

The Westminster system of government did not evolve with mechanisms for dealing with public servants that cover their incompetence with systemic dishonesty and lack of disclosure.

Only a Royal Commission with powers to compel testimony can uncover the facts about the events that led up to the project to tunnel from St Leonards station to Sydenham junction at any cost. 

The missing loop

Construction phase Plan B

It has long been recognised that Town Hall station was where the capacity of the Harbour Bridge rail line and the City Circle was determined. This was because of the large numbers of passengers transferring between rail services at this station and the narrowness of the platforms and stairs and escalators. These concerns gave rise to plans for the CBD Relief Line, a twin track tunnel connecting the Western lines with additional platforms at Wynyard.

Laurie Brereton Hon.

Brereton, Minister for just about everything in the Wran Government, announced this proposal in the planning for the Darling Harbour development. The tunnel would have had a Sussex Street alignment with a station giving access to Darling Harbour. Treasury stomped on this scheme and Brereton promoted the Monorail as the alternative. The Monorail did not cost the taxpayer a penny but the shareholders in Thomas Nationwide Transport paid a heavy price. Now Ms Berejiklian has torn it down.

Brereton was an early incarnation of Infrastructure Boy. He eventually became so unpopular he was booted upstairs to Federal Parliament. I took part in several community campaigns against his schemes starting with his plan for the Eastern Distributor. He had become a politician when he was unable to pass the exam to become an electrician. In the end he would accept the good advice of his advisers in the Public Service and left the State relatively unscathed.

Rail Future B

The Public Servants appointed by North Shore Rump politicians to head Transport for NSW are something else again. The CBD Relief Line has resurfaced but has been rebranded Rail Future B.

In fact the CBD Relief Line made a lot of sense. Train are spaced so they do not run into the backs of one another - basically a train will not leave say a Wynyard platform until the previous train on the line has left the platform at Town Hall. There are no bypass tracks at Town Hall station so this determines the frequency of trains crossing the Harbour Bridge rail lines. The newer train lines in Paris and Tokyo for instance achieve higher frequencies using fail-safe signalling. If trains crossing the Bridge fan out on to alternate tracks on leaving the Bridge more trains per hour can cross the Bridge which is the obvious Pinch Point.

A lot has changed since Treasury stomped on Brereton's plans:

• Navsat has been invented to provide an additional level for failsafe signalling;
• Google and others have spent millions developing automated stopping and acceleration for vehicles;
• The litigious Harry Seidler has died;
• The central and northern CBD has been developed just about to the limits allowed by floor-space ratios (which are comparable to those on Manhattan island) without demolishing the remaining sandstone buildings;
• The internet has made battery-hen office space redundant;
• Barangaroo and the area around Wynyard are the only places in the CBD likely to see significant expansion of office space and residential buildings in the foreseeable future;

Eeny meeny

Sydney's suburban railways

The question that must be answered is: how many commuters will ever need to access the CBD from the train line through North Sydney?

The distance from Epping station to Central via Chatswood station or via Stratsfield station is roughly the same. If Baird is not sent packing on 28th March commuters from the north west who arrive at Epping by bus or train will be able to access destinations in the CBD north of Martin Place only with extreme difficulty whichever route they take.

• If they are dumped deep underneath Martin Place via the multi-billion dollar rail tunnel under the Harbour they must catch buses in gridlocked Elizabeth Street northbound - there is no tram stop between Market Street and Wynyard. They will of course transfer to a Harbour Bridge train at Chatswood or St Leonards. 
• If they arrive at Central in a Central Coast train TfNSW has confirmed in the revised figures in the Preferred Infrastructure Report that they are not expected to transfer to a tram in Chalmers Street (see the post Like Father Unlike Son). They will of course transfer to a western line City Circle train at Strathfield or Central or any stop in between these stop. 

The multi-billion dollar Harbour rail tunnel does nothing to relieve pressure on the City Circle loop; it greatly exacerbates congestion on trains through Town Hall Station.

There is a way of relieving pressure on Town Hall station that was established at the end of the Nineteenth Century. The original city loop rail was incorporated into the design of the Central Rail terminal - the tram loop along Pitt and Castlereagh Streets. This loop was supplemented with the City Circle loop alongside the Central terminal when the Harbour Bridge was built, and the tram loop was torn up when the rest of the Sydney tram system was removed. It was assumed that the City Circle loop could cope with the demand for access to the CBD but evidently this was a mistake. Passengers alighting from trains terminating at Sydney Central terminal walk across the historic concourse and board a tram with complete safety, unaffected by weather, as they did for the more than 60 years when the tram loop was operating. The only passengers who would transfer to a City Circle or Harbour Bridge service at Strathfield would be those who work in the immediate vicinity of Wynyard.

The Pitt-Castlereagh tram alignment is the only CBD tram alignment that reduces pressure on the Town Hall platforms. The George Street tram rails dramatically increase congestion at Town hall Station because of the ructions caused to New South Head Road, Victoria Road, George Street and Elizabeth Street bus services. This has been established in previous posts. The Pitt-Castlereagh alignment was brought to the attention of Ms Berejiklian in a letter the day after her dismissive appearance at the Community forum in April last year and was described in more detail in my submission to the EIS. This alignment was not considered by the "Round Tables" who we are told assessed alternative routes.

Despite this, the corrupted public servants at the Department of Planning and Infrastructure declared in the Final Secretary's Assessment Report released after the newly appointed minister for Planning and Environment had signed off on the project: "With regard to route selection, the Department is satisfied that a suitable process has been undertaken to identify a preferred alignment". The 13 December 2012 brochure listed the "Members of the Sydney Light Rail Round Table". Among them were:

• NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure
• NSW Treasury
• Transport for NSW

The Department required by legislation to make an independent Assessment of the project was in on the "Round Table" process that undertook the selection of the alignment! Participants in the "Round Tables" were sworn to secrecy and efforts to find out even the names or qualifications of the people who took part in them have come to naught. Only a Royal Commission into Transport for NSW will uncover what actually took place at these meetings.

Sam Haddad

The Minister for Planning and Environment Pru Goward had sacked the long serving head of the Department of Planning and Infrastructure Sam Haddad as her first act, following the modus operandi of the newly appointed Premier, Baird. Within weeks she was taking advice from the newly appointed head of the Department and signing off on a project that will have irretrievable consequences for the City of Sydney. Her former portfolio was Minister for Community and Family Services. We now learn that on her watch the number of children at serious risk of harm who were unable to get an assessment of their situation increased proportionally yet again.

I guess this was why Baird chose her to sign off on the Assessment of the CSELR Project.