The CARR that ate Sydney

Traffic experts argue that, to avoid “automobile dependence”, public transport must be faster than cars in all main corridors. Given that Cityrail has its own dedicated track, this should be easy to ensure.

Yet on the lines that are still in operation, services are so bad there is little point in commuters using a timetable to do any travel planning. So many trains were late that, in an effort to sidestep required performance indicators, the minister announced that the definition of a “late” train will be altered from “after the due or usual time” to anywhere up to five minutes after the scheduled arrival time. Isn’t that an ingenious way to “improve efficiency”!

Even the proposed new timetable, due for implementation in September, relies on a reduction of services in the off-peak periods to improve service connections. So you can forget about staggered working hours as a way of relieving congestion levels for a long time yet.

And don’t forget the debacle of the Millennium train. Remember it? It was launched with much fanfare on June 30, 2002, only to have ongoing problems emerge. Luckily it held out until after the elections in late March 2003, only to be withdrawn from service early in April 2003. But it was “re-launched”, again with much fanfare, on June 2, 2003. Claims in state parliament that its cost had blown out from about $250 million to nearly $658 million were followed soon after by an announcement that no more Millennium trains would be brought into service.

Sydney is Australia’s premier tourist destination, attracting more tourists than any other place in the country. One might therefore expect that, as in London, Amsterdam or Paris, there would be a fast, efficient rail link from the airport to the city. But as an employee at Sydney International Airport recently went public to note, CityRail cannot even keep to its timetable on this route, which is “not only an inconvenience but provides a very poor view of our transport system to overseas and domestic visitors and is detrimental to overall tourism”.

And think of the poor workers in Sydney who have to use the rail. According to one source, since June 2004, so many morning and afternoon peak hour trains have run late that 26 million people have, over that period, been late for work.

So bad have things become that even the state’s own Sustainability Commissioner, Peter Newman, has become a critic. Noting that $10 billion has been spent over the past decade on tollways and tunnels, he points out that a road lane can carry only about 2,500 persons per hour; light rail can carry between 7,000 and 10,000 per hour, while trains can carry 50,000 people per hour - 20 times the capacity of a roadway.

And some 200,000 people come into the city by train every day.

He goes on to highlight Builder Bob’s failure to adequately maintain the city’s rail system. After a decade of Carr and cars, we now “need a decade of rail building in Sydney … if we are to make a liveable and sustainable city”.

It was only in mid-March that he suggested a fast train link between the city’s west and the CBD was critical to the ailing transport network. And a consortium of private investors was willing to build - at no cost to the government - a 26km tunnel between Parramatta and Wynyard, extra lines further west to St Mary’s and Penrith, and a new city station, MetroWest.

And how’s this for an example of what passes for transport planning in Sydney. Late in March this year, Costa, in his new role as Minister for Roads, announced that he was reversing a pledge - given in the lead-up to the last election - to hand back to the community land that had once been set aside for a southern freeway from Sutherland to the city.

Costa’s predecessor, Carl Scully, had decided almost three years ago to dump the $700 million F6 motorway, stating that he would prefer public transport, such as light rail, to use the land corridor. But Costa has stated that a dual-carriageway road is now back as a possibility.