Lights, cameras, no action

Bus lane monitors in Elizabeth Street

Investigative journalism has ceased to exist in NSW. Most people will have never seen bus-lane cameras. Fortunately blogs and social media are now available to keep people informed. This post not only shows what the cameras look like, it details where they are located in Elizabeth Street (above).

I'm scared

I'm scared

The cameras for bus-lane monitoring have to be more than 100 metres apart and must come in pairs.

Bus-lane cameras 1

Bus-lane cameras 2

There are two sets of cameras with each monitor. There is a wide-focus camera on its own Smart Pole and, in Elizabeth Street, two cameras focused on the bus lane, mounted on a street light pole or their own pole. The digital cameras focused on the bus lane record the number plates of vehicles. The cameras record the rear plates.

The cameras may work a treat on long stretches of highway but they are clearly all but useless in Elizabeth Street, as we shall see.

Elizabeth Street south of Park Street

Once again there is little correlation between the plans published and assessed in October 2014 and what eventuated just before 4 October 2015, so we have had to take photographs. The northern-most monitor is about level with the northern side of 201 Elizabeth Street, the Askin-era building that overshadows the War Memorial. It does not appear to be able to read number plates of vehicles in the bus lane south of Park Street and is focused on the other side of Park Street.

Google Earth View from Maps no longer allows labels to be turned off. The distance measurer is superior to the App.

x marks the spot of the bus lane cameras.

The length of the bus lane between Bathurst and Park Streets is little more than 100 metres so the same rules of engagement apply as is the case at King Street. General vehicles are permitted to enter the bus lane after the Bathurst Street intersection and can queue in the three lanes at the Park Street intersection lights. Vehicles can turn in pairs into Park Street which does not have a designated left turn lane. Vehicles heading north past Park Street must make a bee-line from the second lane to the NO STOPPING kerbside lane at the Park Street intersection.

Before the lunatics put in control of TfNSW showed their hand on 4 October 2015 sanity prevailed for bus services using Elizabeth Street. Buses queued in the inner of the two right-turn lanes to turn from Liverpool Street into Elizabeth Street then made their way into the kerbside lane to arrive at the bus stop that butted onto the Bathurst Street intersection. When passengers had been discharged and had boarded the buses the drivers pulled out into the second lane. General traffic is required by law to make a space for a bus to pull out from a bus stop and motorists throughout the state are aware of this - it is one of the rules studied for a drivers licence. A bus driver was never stuck at the stop as he could move forward to the intersection. Buses could have been given first access to the intersection with a B green light but this was evidently considered unnecessary.

Motorists headed north past Park Street avoided the second lane which was a de facto bus lane with buses headed straight to the set-down only stop outside the David Jones store. Buses that left the stop at the intersection had to riffle-shuffle with vehicles needing to turn left into Park Street but this worked smoothly as there is a fourth lane between Bathurst and Park Streets and the kerbside lane was a perpetual NO STOPPING lane.

The George Street trams will dramatically increase the number of vehicles that have no option but to make left-hand turns from Elizabeth Street into Liverpool, Park and Market Streets, as has been pointed out in posts over the last three years, and will be discussed in a future post. Bus drivers will, of necessity, have to cope with riffle-shuffling through these vehicles from the kerb-side NO STOPPING lane (yellow lines) as well as the centre lane (blue line).

The capacity of Elizabeth Street northbound to handle buses has been drastically diminished while the number of bus services it is expected to handle has gone through the roof.

If you want to know how to facilitate the movement of buses in a city ask a bus driver. Do not rely the advice of public servants with a degree in Traffic Management from a Roundhouse/Squarehouse university.

One lane is insane

Infrastructure NSW recommendations

The O'Farrell government set up Infrastructure NSW headed by chairman Nick Greiner shortly after gaining office to give independent advice on projects. The advice it received was to build light rail from Central Station to Maroubra Junction, presumably, from the figures they released, subsurface under Foveaux Street since they would have known that Foveaux Street is too steep to take trams. They also examined the idea of running trams along George Street and issued a scathing dismissal of the prospect - some of their milder comments are in the sidebar.

Greiner and his Public Service colleague Paul Broad resigned in May 2013 when it had become clear that loonies had taken control of the asylum.

Loonies take control of the asylum

Revised plan of stop at UNSW

The stop at University of NSW is another stop that has been changed so radically TfNSW has published a whole new set of revised (cropped) indicative plans. The submission of the Randwick Council asked for modelling of the congestion that would occur in Barker Street to the west of Anzac Parade as a result of the tram rails closing the right-hand turn into Day Street. My submission also objected strongly to the closure of right-hand turns at Day Street. TfNSW has not undertaken the requested traffic modelling but asserts in Item 10.1: "Since the release of the EIS, further analysis has been undertaken of the right-turn movements and the space for right-turn bays in some locations is likely to need to be adjusted.
"A design change to the UNSW Anzac Parade stop is proposed comprising relocation of the stop to the centre of Anzac Parade."

The right-turn lane is very short allowing only three or four vehicles or one bus to queue to make a right-turn before the one the only general traffic through lane is blocked. Bus services to Kingsford currently make right-turns here but they will still be rerouted along rat-runs. The revised indicative plan refers to a "potential right hand turn (subject to discussion with RMS)". Roads and Maritime Services is to be Bad Cop who rejects the turn after the Assessors have approved the project, with nothing having been disclosed before the exhibition period closed.

No Hook Turns

The indicative plans of Parsons Brinckerhoff in the EIS were all cropped or arrows on lanes omitted to deliberately conceal whether Hook right-turn lanes would be used to cross the tram rails. There are very good reasons why hook turn lanes are used throughout Melbourne and with tram systems around the civilised world. One of the most important is that it is impossible to stop vehicles waiting to turn right from "encroaching onto the light rail alignment". When a tram with priority signalling inevitably hits such a vehicle the airbags deploy and the vehicle is spun into the path of through traffic travelling in parallel with the tram. When the vehicle is hit in on the other side the airbags are deflating to avoid smothering the occupants - the end of the whole family.

Emasculating Environmental Protection

Section 5.8.1 of the submissions report summarises the large number of "concerns about lack of certainty about changes to bus network" raised in responses to the EIS, and this is fair enough. The response of TfNSW is: "The NSW Government released the final Sydney City Centre Access Strategy (SCCAS) and Sydney's Bus Future in December 2013. These strategies form the basis of the Sydney City Centre bus network and changes to the South East bus network."

Figure 4.2 from EIS (re-post)

The EIS published tables and the figure reproduced again (left) led to the concerns in many of the submissions to the EIS. I raised several objections in my submission, based on the data in the EIS.

Now the only response of TfNSW to all these objections and concerns raised in submissions to the EIS is to ask the Assessors to ignore the data in the EIS and the concerns that arose and to give approval to the project on the basis of brochures that were not included in the EIS and were not released to the public until after the EIS went on exhibition. I do not know when the SCCAS brochure was released in December but the second brochure was released two working days before the exhibition period was due to end.

If this is legal then the EIS legislation has been drained of its life blood and is all but worthless.

The response goes on: "TfNSW will commence detailed planning for the South East bus network in 2016/2017 in preparation for the commencement of CSELR operations". That is, one year after the next state election. The state government has not established that there is any pressing need for O'Farrell's whimsical project - quite the contrary. In my submission I asked the Assessors to not give approval to the EIS until TfNSW has established where bus routes can physically turn around.

TfNSW clearly believes that the Assessors are imbeciles, or it has inside information that the Public Servants at Infrastructure and Planning have been subverted along with those at the monster bureaucracies set up by O'Farrell, RMS and TfNSW.

So where do buses turn around

The trams along George Street obliterate all the places in the CBD where buses can physically turn around except for Phillip Street, but this post deals with Anzac Parade. The concern is listed in Volume 1 Part A Section 5.8.1 as

• Further information requested about where buses will turn around at Todman Avenue following introduction of the CSELR proposal.

Bus services that will be forcibly terminated at the Kingsford tram terminal transfer passengers to privately-operated cattle cars but the tram rails make it physically impossible for them to turn around. Buses must travel on empty until it is physically possible to turn around. This is not until the buses have passed through the newly created "pinch points" at the Strachan Street stop and the revised UNSW stop above. We can deduce: not until Todman Avenue. The University of NSW is the nigger in the wood pile for Anzac Parade having built the sheer glass facade of the foyer of the NIDA theatre on the plot boundary opposite the "Square House". Pavement widths and lane widths must be reduced on either side of the stop.

Once a bus reaches Todman avenue there are extra lanes and alternative routes along Todman Avenue and Doncaster Street, but this is where O'Farrell will terminate bus services to force passengers to transfer from public buses to privately-operated cattle cars. TfNSW has refused to disclose how buses will physically turn around at this terminus prompting the submissions pleading for more information; but one can deduce that buses will be forced to turn right into Todman Avenue and return to Anzac Parade along Doncaster Avenue - the triangle of roads that TfNSW regards as a bus terminus.

Melbourne bus driver console

Drivers in NSW are expected to move forward to the centre of the intersection in preparation to efficiently make a right-hand turn - I failed a driving test for being ultra cautious and not moving forward. Parsons Brinckerhoff have as usual omitted the arrows on the lanes but the number of dashes between the lanes reveal that the right-turn lanes at Todman Avenue are not hook turn lanes. It will be physically impossible for drivers turning right to not "encroach on the light rail alignment". When they see a cattle car bearing down on them, with priority signalling, in their rear-view mirror they will have nowhere to go, trapped by vehicles behind them that have moved forward with them. Bus drivers of every bus service forcibly terminated at the Kingsford terminus, in particular, will be sitting ducks. Their only hope for survival will be to clamber over the Opal Card reader in time.

Todman Avenue intersection

The pupils at Kensington Primary School (cropped by Parsons Brincherhoff) have for generations been protected from heavy traffic since there is no right turn from Anzac Parade northbound into Todman Avenue. They will be experiencing trauma at regular occurrences since this murderous right-hand turn is the only access to Alison Street from Anzac Parade. Indeed, when buses reach their terminus at Todman Avenue the only passengers still on board will be students and staff of the school and parents escorting their children to and from school. O'Farrell really has it in for primary school children.

One lane is insane

Every bus terminated at Kingsford terminal has to travel to Todman Avenue to physically turn around. As pointed out in numerous posts the number of buses "removed" from the critical portion of Anzac Parade from Nine Ways to Todman Avenue is zero. TfNSW has promoted the trams as necessary to relieve congestion in bus lanes in Anzac Parade but the trams will undeniably make congestion a lot worse. With the public servants at TfNSW we are not dealing with rational human beings.

Newly completed Tyree building

TfNSW is proposing to build bus bays into the car park alongside NIDA and under the cantilevered wings of the newly completed Tyree building - no one would accuse the University of NSW of thinking ahead. When Frank Sartor was Lord Mayor Sydney City Council installed kerb blisters in Elizabeth Street at Martin Place, causing massive disruption over a long period. This turned the bus stop lane into a bus bay. Bus drivers would stop in the next lane out from the kerb to avoid being trapped indefinitely by traffic queuing at the traffic lights at the pedestrian crossing. Eventually this lane was made a bus priority lane and buses now use the bus stop lane, but general traffic is forced into one lane.

Elizabeth Street at Martin Place is a wider section between the "pinch points" at the Old Supreme Court Building and Phillip Street, and leads only to the dead end of Circular Quay, so this is not all that significant. Anzac Parade, on the other hand, is the only arterial road between the south eastern suburbs and Eastern Australia from Kirribilli and Cape York and TfNSW is reducing it to one lane for general traffic in the same manner as Elizabeth Street, creating "pinch points" at the UNSW and at the Strachan Street stop. This effectively reduces traffic flow in Anzac Parade to one lane for the critical section from Nine Ways to Todman Avenue. The mid-block crossings in the revised indicative plan have a lot more potential than a right turn into Day Avenue.

Residents of the south eastern suburbs will be paying a high price for the shortsightedness of the University of NSW, unless their only goal in life is to travel to Circular Quay.

The inherent problems in Anzac Parade at the University of NSW are exacerbated and basically originate in the design of the Kingsford terminus and the associated redesign of the Nine Ways intersection. There is no fundamental reason why a tramway cannot be built from Maroubra Junction to Central Station, as suggested by Infrastructure NSW, and to Circular Quay, as outlined in my submission. But first, we the people will have to elect a competent and socially conscious state government.

Lies, deception and subversion of public servants at Circular Quay

Circular Quay bus terminals

Circular Quay tram stop

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is currently investigating the awarding of leases for restaurants at Circular Quay without going to tender. This may have resulted in taxpayers missing out on rent collections worth a few tens of thousands of dollars a year, although it is claimed the restaurants are now operating at a loss. A few metres to the south however, a project has unfurled that will cost taxpayers and/or public transport users billions of dollars and will have irretrievable consequences for the City of Sydney. Senior Public Servants have used systemic deceit to promote this project.

The Deputy Director General at Transport for NSW, Chris Lock told the Randwick Business breakfast in April that "we have run out of real estate" - kerb space for bus stops. This is patently untrue. Less than half the kerb space in Alfred Street is currently used to turn buses around. The limited lane space in George Street between Martin Place and Margaret Street is what limits the numbers of buses that can use Alfred Street to turn around. Congestion in this part of George Street is not a result of vast hordes of commuters trying to reach Circular Quay by bus - the buses are largely empty by this stage - it is the direct result of the failure of the O'Farrell government to properly schedule bus services from Broadway. O'Farrell is using this failure to demand carte blanch to obliterate most of the places in the CBD and its immediate surounds where it is physically possible for buses to turn around and maintain scheduled departures.

The 9/11 2013 brochure Sydney City Access Strategy contained a map showing the numbers of passengers currently entering the city centre 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM. The number of arrivals by ferry at Circular Quay was 4000. Most of these would be from Manly and since Manly and the bus routes that feed into it have no proximity to a rail station, most would seek to board a train service.

The EIS confirms this observation. The figure above is an extract from the Sydney Light Rail Round 5.2 Demand Report, 2013 which I have not been able to access. Even on the absurdly optimistic assumptions of Booz & Company less than 500 commuters are projected to transfer from ferries to the trams during the AM peak. This figure would get less in future if a competent post-O'Farrell government established a ferry terminal at Barrangaroo.

Clearly Sydney needs a tram system that (chant) "can deliver up to 19,000 people in each direction" to Circular Quay, like a hole in the head. The big problem for the less than 500 people per hour silly enough to try to catch the trams will be working out which of the three platforms the next tram will be arriving at. Crossing the tracks between the platforms to catch a departing tram could prove fatal.

The figure above is from the same page of the Technical Papers EIS as the first figure. These are the only extracts from the undisclosed 5.2 Demand Report. They confirm that the trams will be running on empty when they pass the trio Town Hall Station stops.

The Results of Gonski's Test - FAIL

Booz & Company explain in the Technical Papers that when the O'Farrell government decided to press ahead with the Project regardless of any criticism, "TfNSW commissioned the development of a demand model specific to the requirements and intricacies of the CSELR project". This model - the Public Transport Project Model (PTPM) - is referenced at various points of the EIS but it has never been subjected to critical analysis. Basically, it allows Booz & Company to make any assumptions it wants.

One of the most bizarre of its assumptions is that the Surry Hills stop will be the most heavily used stop in the system, as you can see from the first figure. Most of the passengers boarding the trams at this stop will be students and staff from the University of NSW who, it is assumed, will exit Central Station via the Devonshire Street tunnel, cross the tram lines and traipse along the northern footpaths of Devonshire Street in sun, rain and sleet to Riley Street, where they will cross the road at the signal-controlled crossings to board the trams. Booz & Company have plotted every step that they will make.

Not only will the residents of Surry Hills have to contend with trams passing through their suburb at 50 kpm, on average every one and a half minutes, they will have thousands of raucous and abusive students forced to walk through their suburb every hour. And their suburb will have been ghettoised to facilitate these movements.

Currently there are express bus services between UNSW and Central Station and Railway Square that travel along established route along Cleveland and Chalmers Streets and deposit students and staff at the entrance to the Devonshire Street tunnel and pick up passengers in Elizabeth Street. I have pointed out in previous posts that there is a much faster route using the bus roads in Moore Park and the under-utilised priority bus lanes in Foveaux Street.

The University of NSW is cited in all the brochures put out by TfNSW as one of the "stake holders" in the project. It must have come as a shock to students of UNSW to realise that they are to be treated by O'Farrell as the second-class citizens they undoubtedly are. We will see after 30 December  if the university or student bodies raised any objections.

The Kingsford tram line was developed by Randwick Council and UNSW to supplement the bus services to Central Station. It was O'Farrell, on a whim, who linked these plans to the City of Sydney's lunatic desire to pedestrianise George Street. It was TfNSW that insisted that the trams must run on their own exclusive lanes with priority signalling in a futile effort to compete with express bus services.

It is inconceivable that any one would use the trams if the buses were able to compete. At the community meeting on 21 November, the pizza boy, Jeff Goodling, was saying that that there was commercially privileged information that was being made available to PPPs. I put it to him that they must be being told which bus services will be terminated. He responded, speaking slowly, that the PPPs were not receiving any information on what bus services would be terminated.

Will the next State Government need to refer this project to the ICAC or set up a Royal Commission to find out what is actually taking place in the Minister's negotiations?

Day is done

I presumed before the release of the EIS that there was too little wriggle room between the sheer glass facade of the foyer of the NIDA theatre and the University of NSW building to provide for a hook-turn lane into Day Street and maintain two lanes of traffic around the tram stop. It turned out I was right.

I did not believe that anyone in their right mind would eliminate the turn into Day Street from Anzac Parade. Day Street is the sine qua non route for the Kingsford bus services which go along Eastern Avenue, and are also the mainstay of the bus services along Crown Street and Campbell Street in Surry Hills. The main parking area of NIDA is also accessible from Day Street.

 I probably got that right too; but none the less TfNSW will be eliminating the right turn into Day Street. Booz & Company proclaim it bluntly in Technical paper 1 5.4.4. Functional changes:

• The right turn from Anzac Parade into Day Avenue will be banned. This will require rerouting of bus services that currently make this manoeuvre. Pending further Council approval and investigation of impact to bike lanes this route will likely to be via Doncaster Avenue.

That is to say the buses will crisscross the rails northbound as well as southbound.

21 CSELR EIS Technical Paper 1 5.4.4.

There will be no right-hand turns allowed from Day Street into Anzac Parade so the parking area shown in the Figure left will be accessible only from rat-runs through Kensington and Kingsford. The Day Street intersection has been cropped in this Figure.

In fact Kingsford is to be ghettoized; with the only access from the north to the entire Kingsford grid north of Gardeners Road being a single hook turn lane at Barker Street. The main retail strip will not only lose all bus stops except for a stop so far north of Strachen Street it has been cropped from the data in the EIS, it will lose curbside parking and customers will need navsat to reach off-street parking areas.

The ghettoization is not as overwhelming as the ghettoization of Surry Hills as there are tortuous rat-runs through Kensington, but I would not like to be in the position of someone who has superannuation invested in their business in Kingsford.

The Old Nick Stratagem

When the Greiner Government extended the M4 Western Motorway from Mays Hill to Prospect in 1989, the consortium that built the road was allowed to place toll booths on the much more heavily used section east of James Ruse Drive, which had been built without tolls. Bob Carr promised to refund tolls paid by commuters from the public purse during the March 1995 election campaign and won the election by a knife edge margin and one seat.

Building the missing section of the motorway was an important piece of infrastucture and was of benefit to Parramatta but there was sufficient local resentment to tip the electoral scales. The section reverted to public ownership in February 2010 as contracted and the toll was removed as promised. Now the Liberals are back, and talking of reimposing the toll to pay for a tunnel extending from the end of the motorway at Strathfield to Port Botany. Foreign companies that package public/private partnerships are demanding a toll on trucks using the M5 tunnel as well.

The tunnel would be of little benefit to the vast majority of drivers that use the M4 and would be mainly of benefit to trucking companies bypassing the Moorebank Intermodal Terminal developed by the previous Federal Government and the NSW State Government. Tony Abbott promised $1.5 billion in June 2012 for the tunnel, so the funding is up in the air.

However O'Farrell is demonstrating that the Stratagem can be applied to Public Transport Projects.

The tramway from Chalmers Street to UNSW/Anzac Parade is possibly the most expensive tramway per kilometre in human history. Student Concession holders from UNSW could not possibly make the Project economically viable for a private consortium. The plan therefore is to terminate unrelated bus services and herd passengers onto the cattle cars. It is the bus services that use Parramatta Road and City Road that mostly face termination.

Rawson Place bus tram interchange

Bus services currently take less than a minute to go from Broadway to Rawson Place (the red line). The expected arrival times at the stop at Rawson Place are 1 minute ahead of the last stop on Broadway. This is the case at all times of the day.

O'Farrell will be forcing Parramatta and City Road bus passengers to disembark at stops in Pitt Street (the blue line), walk around the YHA building and transfer to cattle cars at a stop at the western end of Rawson Place (the green line), to continue a journey north along George Street. There is no way that this could be passed off as an advantage, so all details have been concealed.

To give an example: A student or staff member at Sydney University using Public Transport, would be expected to catch a bus to Pitt Street, transfer to a cattle car at Rawson place, disembark at Town Hall, catch a Victoria Road bus service to Edgecliff Station (or is that Kings Cross) and finally catch a Watsons Bay bus service to reach destinations in the harbour side Eastern Suburbs. The cattle cars provide the connection between Rawson Place and Town Hall then carry on empty to Circular Quay simply because they can't turn round.

The tolls imposed under the old Nick Greiner Stratagem were "for a while" and were removed as promised, but the changes O'Farrell will be making to the CBD are irreversible.

The eye of a needle

The one and only Bus Corridor (green)

The brochure released on December 13th, 2012 contains the figure left, reproduced in full size. This diagram is deliberately deceptive, like most of the diagrams in the brochure. The arrows show only outbound bus movements concealing the fact that northbound traffic into Elizabeth Street and Wentworth Avenue from Chalmers Street will be reduced to one lane at most and probably no lanes. Traffic flow in Foveaux Street appears to be reversed. The greatest deception is the the corridor is shown to be the same width for its whole length. In reality, Phillip Street, from Hunter Street to Circular Quay, is only four lanes wide, and always will be.

The trams will only ever carry, voluntarily, off peak passengers from the Prince of Wales hospital and the University of NSW. To establish a business model, the privately-operated trams must crush the public bus services. This occurs for bus services using Anzac Parade primarily in Anzac Parade, but for other bus services, as well as Anzac Parade services, it occurs mainly in Phillip Street.

Phillip Street bus terminus

Buses that have a terminus from Phillip Street circulate clockwise, setting down passengers in Young Street, waiting if necessary for their scheduled start, in Young Street then picking up passengers on the north side of Alfred Street. Alternatively, the buses circulate anti-clockwise, setting down passengers in Phillip Street and picking up passengers on the south side of Alfred Street. In general Flinders Street buses circulate anti-clockwise and the rest circulate clockwise. This arrangement is necessary because of the limited curb space available in Alfred Street east of the Customs House.

O'Farrell would have you believe that all the bus services using George Street and Castlereigh Street will be terminated at this Phillip Street terminus as well as the existing services, and services from the north shore using the Cahill Expressway. O'Farrell's contempt for the intelligence of residents of the Eastern Suburbs knows no bounds.

Up yours

Ve vill tell everyone they vill be going to Circular Quay

then ve will terminate them at secret locations

"Things will get nasty in Anzac Parade, Forever."

Thirty years ago Laurie Brereton announced a design for the Eastern Distributor that would have narrowed Flinders Street to one lane each way north of Albion Street, forcing all traffic from Oxford Street into the lane used by buses to the South Eastern Suburbs. I was able to access traffic flow data in the University of Sydney Engineering Library which showed that this would create congestion that would cripple bus services to the South Eastern Suburbs. Brereton appointed an expert panel that came up with the current design of the Eastern Distributor.

Now O'Farrell is going to reduce an entire section of a crucial arterial road to one lane each-way. It is beyond belief.

Thirty years ago the vehicle flow data was published in books that were too large to stand up on the shelves and were stacked up in quite a high pile. Now they are posted on line in very large MS Word documents on the Transport for NSW web site. You can use this link http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/trafficinformation/downloads/aadtdata_dl1.html

The data was published every second year until 1993, then every third year until 2005, then unfortunately, zilch. The files of interest for Sydney roads are k5syaadt.xls which gives the weekly traffic flow data on surveys from 1989 to 2005, k5sya a Word doc with 215 pages that has data for monitor stations on main roads and k5sy4 a Word doc with 786 pages that has data for stations on other  roads. The monitor station we are most interested in is the station no. 12.012 an Anzac Parade north of Day Avenue. This is in file k5sya on page 30. This is the site of the tram-stop between NIDA and the University of NSW that forces all traffic not headed for Circular Quay into the one bus lane and establishes the business model for the privately-operated tramway. I have copied this page to Google docs, click here.

Street View of Day Ave intersection

The main parking area for the University of NSW is between NIDA and Day Avenue, accessible only from Day Avenue. The tram stop will be about where the bus is.

Traffic flow data is collected for one week at each monitor station during the survey year, using mainly pneumatic tubes taped to the lane surfaces. After a week the equipment is moved to another station. The week chosen for the survey would vary from year to year. The weekly flows for this monitor station are consistent in the surveys from 1989 to 2005. So the current traffic flows certainly would not be less than in 2005.

Transport for NSW are obsessed with morning peaks in traffic headed to the city. So we will discuss the data for the north-bound lanes on Tuesday. Traffic flow peaks at 1660 vehicles per hour from 8am to 9am, then tails off in the next hour, but stays above 1100 vph for the rest of the day. Vehicle flows increase again after 1pm reaching another high peak of 1504 vehicles per hour from 5 to 6 pm. One would need the recent figures and the traffic-light timings to prove that Anzac Parade will be gridlocked when reduced to one lane, and only the Roads and Traffic Authority has this data. If O'Farrell refuses to allow the RTA to do traffic flow modelling around the tram routes then we are pretty well stymied. "Freedom of information" requests can not access modelling that does not exist. O'Farrell is good.

However the vehicles per hour figures are so far in excess of the maximum flows that can be achieved in a one lane each way highway with hook turns that one hardly needs to do the calculations. Both carriageways of Anzac Parade will be paralysed, not just in the morning and afternoon peaks but for 12 to 13 hours per day during week days, and for long periods at the weekends.

"Things will get nasty in Anzac Parade."
 Not for a while, forever.

Nine Ways to kill a tramway.

Nine Ways roundabout Kingsford

The tram rails continue along Anzac Parade until they pass through the Nine Ways round-about and reach the broad centre islands between the carriageways of Anzac Parade east of Nineways where they inexplicably terminate at the dot named Kingsford. Trams could continue along the centre of Anzac Parade with minimal interference to traffic flows or bus services all the way to La Perouse. And this would be the explanation. Once the tram rails have reached the broad centre island they have achieved their purpose:

• This is not a competently designed tram system. 
• This is an irrational, idealogical attack on the Public Bus Services.

The business model for setting up a private company to build and operate the tramway requires the rival public bus services to be crippled, and for public bus services to be forcibly terminated at the two possible/future bus/tram interchanges.

There was a bus stopped at the bus stop leading into the inbound bus lane along Anzac Parade when the satellite was taking its snapshot. It is at the top of the screen grab but you can follow the arguments with Google Maps. The bus could have come from Anzac Parade like the other bus in the snapshot waiting to enter Nineways, but is more likely to have come from Bunnerong Road, which passes through more populated areas and carries many more buses. These buses have an exclusive route to the tidal bus lane along Anzac Parade, shown by the blue line. This route passes nowhere near the Kingsford tram terminal, so these services will compete with the trams. They are given short shrift by Transport for NSW.

Every vehicle travelling along Anzac Parade, west of Nineways, is forced into the one the only bus lane. It is not just the bus services along Bunnerong Road that will be crippled. there are bus services taking students and staff at the University of NSW to a various destinations, bus services through Kensington along Todman Avenue and Lenthal Street and bus services through Kingsford.

The impossible bus/tram interchanges.

Indicative only map from June 21st Significant Infrastructure Application

I am not aware of any road in Melbourne that carries both trams and buses, but then the Melbourne transport system was not designed by a self-proclaimed genius. The map above is from the Significant Infrastructure Application supporting document, released on June 21st, three weeks after the anonymous Department contributors leaked the names of the dots in the Wikipedia. This document is a legal requirement for an EIS and is available on the Transport for NSW website. The grab above is full size so the lack of discernible detail is quite deliberate.

We cannot say anything about the Carlton Street dot except the this is one of the crunch points that force all vehicles into the bus lane. We can note that the Todman Avenue dot is a long way south of its namesake, the horizontal white line, and the UNSW dot is midway between Day Avenue and High Street. This is inevitable. The one the only bus-and-every-other-vehicle lane must swerve around tram stops and hook-turn lanes, bus stops, loading bays, local short-term parking bays, set down bays for students driven to Uni, taxi ranks and service vehicle bays, ducking and weaving more often than an eco-nazi on the Randwick City Council. The kerbside lane beside the tram stop becomes the hook-turn lane and if this is not long enough to cope with the worst-case scenario then through traffic is blocked. Unfortunately the tram stops will be set in concrete and unable to cope with changed circumstances.

Bus stops are traditionally placed adjacent to cross roads, for obvious reasons: passengers who do not live or work directly on the route can use the footpaths of the cross road to reach the stop, rather than clambering over fences and rooves. If placed before the intersection, buses can be allowed to jump the queue of vehicles waiting to pass through the intersection, as at Taylor Square:

Queue jumping bus lane

Hook turns put an end to all this. Bus stops must be placed after the intersection. Even if bus passengers became frustrated with interminable congestion in the bus lane and left the bus en masse, and trekked back over the pedestrian crossing, over the length of the hook lane and over the extra pedestrian crossing, and transferred to a tram, the bus would have to carry on empty to the terminus because hook turn lanes prevent buses turning around.

The anonymous Transport for NSW authors of the Wikipedia article referred to the Kingsford and Randwick dots, the two termini, as possible bus interchanges which distinguishes them from all the other dots, which are impossible bus interchanges. They have now changed this description to future bus interchanges. That is future as in after the Environmental Impact Statement.

The Kensington Wedgie

Kensington is defined by two of Sydney's most important arterial roads, South Dowling Street on the western boundary and Anzac Parade that passes thought the eastern side. The internal grid roads once connected to South Dowling Street but now terminate in a single lane feeder road, Samuel Terry Ave., running down from Todman Avenue. If you miss the left turn into Todman Avenue you are at the Domestic Airport before you can turn around. I am pretty sure this predates the Eastern Distributor. I caught a taxi to the Australian Golf Course in the 1980s and the driver could not find the entrance. He drove to Mascot and back and would have repeated the manoeuvre if I had not yelled at him to turn into O'Dea Avenue.

To reach destinations in Kensington from Eastern Australia from Kirribilli to Cape York you have a binary choice: you can turn left into Todman Avenue from South Dowling Street or right from Anzac Parade. I don't have off-street parking and there is a steep gradient so the bike is easy to knock over, so I arranged to leave it at a carport at a unit in Lenthal Street while I was in Broome. I missed the right-hand turn from Anzac Parade to Todman Avenue so I got to find out how far one has to go to turn around in Anzac Parade. I was able to make a right-hand turn into Day Street at an intersection without traffic lights just south of NIDA.

Day Street is the boundary between Kensington and Kingsford and is the only street distributing traffic to the whole of the Kingsford grid so this is an important right-hand turn. Without this turn all traffic to Kingsford from the north would have to turn into Todman Avenue and pass through Kensington. And the turn into Todman Avenue has enough to deal with. Satellites pass overhead at all different times so Google Earth choses times around noon, when there are less shadows, for their snapshots. The screen-shot above was not in the morning or afternoon peaks, but the right-turn lane, which stretches an entire block, was full of vehicles during the traffic-light phase in operation at the time of the snapshot.

In roads without tram lines right-hand turns take place simultaneously during the same phase or take place with only one direction blocked. However, hook turns where more than two or three vehicles typically turn right during a traffic-light phase, require separate right-turn phases for each direction, when nothing else moves.

So we can deduce that the right-hand turn at Day Street will be retained. Unfortunately hook turns at intersections without traffic lights are really scary. The driver must wait for a simultaneous gap in three lanes of traffic and two tram lines carrying, we are told, trams in each direction every two or three minutes. So the intersection will need traffic lights, and the hook turn will block both directions of traffic.

We can also deduce that the dot called University of NSW, NIDA will indeed be south of Day Street wedged between the buildings on each side of Anzac Parade. It will be a fair distance south to allow a left-hand turn lane into Day Street and will need its own pedestrian crossings.

We are in a position to assess the damage O'Farrell is inflicting on the public bus services along Anzac Parade:

• Two lanes of vehicular traffic forced into the one and only bus lane.
• At least one extra traffic lights controlled intersection.
• Traffic flow impeded by hook turn phases throughout the length of Anzac Parade.
• Extra pedestrian crossings at each tram stop.