Councillor Chris Harris

Sydney’s CBD has been sentenced to a future of congestion, noise, pollution and economic disadvantage by a Transport Plan recently released by the State Government

Like the State Plan it is a plan to deceive, using selective arguments and pages of spin to gloss over its defects.

Key to the plan is its rejection of light rail in favour of more buses, argued in a one-page pro-bus rationale which ignores both international trends and local experts who have made a strong case for light rail based on detailed research.

This will cost Sydney dearly in many ways, both economically and in terms of amenity. Here are just some of the compelling arguments in favour of light rail the state plan has ignored:

The CBD already suffers 7,400 buses per day and growth estimates predict this will increase to 9,400 by 2021.

One light rail set can replace three buses. Do the math! With a single driver, light rail has lower operating costs even while offering the convenience and efficiency of a conductor.

Sydney’s bus system is at capacity yet still carries fewer than half the passengers our trams carried in the 1940s.

Trams, although wider than buses, actually take up less road space because they travel on rails and do not meander between traffic lanes. Such predictability also makes trams much safer for pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers.

Their higher capacity would reduce or eliminate that bane of inner city bus travellers - standing helplessly at a stop while bus after bus roars past, full.

Buses are also subject to ‘bunching’ whereby buses on the same route catch each other so passengers suffer a feast-or-famine effect and waiting times can double from say ten to twenty minutes.

On the other hand, fewer trams travelling on their defined routes are far easier to regulate.

Buses cause much of the congestion they suffer from. Already in the CBD peaks, long lines of buses queue up nose to tail along George Street, with space for layovers at a premium.

Buses are far noisier than trams especially as they hurry to make up lost time, roaring along often only a metre or so from pedestrians.

Buses cause far more pollution than trams. While transport produces 14% of greenhouse emissions across NSW, in the city it is far higher:

‘Mobile
sources account for almost half of the emissions of volatile organic compounds, 80% of nitrogen oxides, and almost 20% of particulates. Diesel-powered vehicles in particular contribute to nitrogen oxides and particulates emissions, as well as being a major source of air toxics such as Xylenes, Toluene, Styrene, PAH’s, Formaldehyde, Ethylbenzene and Benzene. Concentrations of these chemicals are a particular issue in inner city streets where large numbers of buses operate, and where the highest concentrations of pedestrians occur.’ (Glazebrook Associates report for City of Sydney)

Trams are simply more efficient than buses - according to rail enthusiast and former deputy PM Tim Fischer, a steel wheel on a steel rail creates seven times less friction than a rubber tyre on a road.

The Glazebrook report notes that Sydney’s main competitors in a globalised business world are other cities, and a future of noise and congestion will only deter large corporations from basing here.

Over 100 cities have built new light rail / tramway systems, or expanded their existing systems, in the last decade. Those that are well integrated with other modes are showing huge success, as in the example of Strasbourg with its 56% increase in public transport use over that decade. (See report on the State Plan, below.)

So while buses may be the cheapest option, the Labor government’s plan risks damaging Sydney’s economy in the longer term.

The Transport Plan’s pro-bus page of spin is headed, untruthfully, ‘The reality of light rail’. It lists a string of rubbery figures which are flatly contradicted by equivalents in the Glazebrook Report and the studies it quotes.

There are large and unexplained disparities. For example, the government says light rail would replace only 20% of the city’s buses while the Glazebrook Report targets 36%, with a 54% replacement in northbound streets. These targets are backed up by extensive study and working examples from other cities.

The credibility of the NSW Transport Plan continues to fall apart when you read the small print. Its three glowing pages about underground metro lines extending as far as Penrith lose their gloss in the light of a sidebar on page two which admits the section illustrates merely ‘a commitment… to the investigation of higher capacity transport modes.’

A ‘commitment to an investigation’? Talk about non-core promises! But, hey, it looks pretty enough to fool the casual reader.

As usual cycling gets short shrift from this government despite its obvious advantages, growing popularity and unequalled bang for buck. While buses may seem the cheap option, consider the following relative costs in terms of reduction in carbon emissions:

• secure bike parking at rail stations would abate hydrocarbons for $300 per ton;
• commuter rail car-pool matching: $3,900 per ton;
• express park-and-ride service: $96,000 per ton;
• feeder bus services to rail stations: $215,000 per ton.

Building cycleways instead of motorways is similarly less expensive, so the government’s behaviour cannot even be explained as simple thrift.

How can State Labor get it so wrong? Their pro-bus-and-car strategy does not even benefit their precious coal industry! Could it be they are simply misinformed by a transport bureaucracy that seems stuck in the 1950s?

The Greens endorse the Glazebrook Report, and continue to exhort the government to wake up to itself. (See our transport policy here) We need to act NOW. The studies have been done and the strategies are in place. Only the government seems to have missed the point, and the best way to kick them out of greenwash mode and into real action is to vote for The Greens in both houses of Parliament in March 2007.