Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

I understand the need to finish the missing bits of Sydney's road infrastructure. By all means the M4 should be connected up to the City West Link and the F3 should be connected up to the Gore Hill Freeway. No problems with that and they should stick tolls on them to pay for them.

From there though, the rest stinks. Turning Parramatta road into a southern cross drive would be a massive disgrace. They need to bite the bullet and do it properly, charge us all a new tax or something but it needs to go completely under ground. The entire corridor has massive potential and they will destroy it having a open cut depressed road deciding the two sides of the road. It will also free up more space for perhaps a future tram or light rail line along with bike paths, public spaces, etc...

The public transport parts of the plan also stink. They are a band aid solution to carry us over till the problem gets so bad that short sighted Sydney siders get forced to see the blindingly obvious that we need to completely re think out rail system and re draw it from scratch. The failing here is not the government but ours as citizens. We make it imposable for any government to 1. borrow a heap of money and run a deficit to finance such projects or 2.to raise taxes or levies to fund such a system. Everyone likes to blame government but as the saying goes, you get what you vote for and our short sightedness is getting us surprise, surprise short sighted governments.

Borrow the money, raise some taxes impose a new levies and build a proper metro system like every other major city in the world thrives on. Small, fast, regular, single decker trains with heaps of entry and exit points. Its going to cost a motza and take 50years to pay back but it is the only real option and Sydney would be soooo much better of for it.

Kuufu wrote:So in summary, either change the method of transportation or change the destination. Two easiest methods without major infrastructure projects.

One could argue that by doing nothing, the market will deliver these outcomes anyway.

i.e. people and businesses will eventually choose to move to more efficient/better locations. I have to admit that cycling from near central Sydney has got less inviting over the last couple of decades, to the point that I may consider living elsewhere.

I'm not saying this is the right solution, just that it is one way to solve the problems.

Catching the train today at peak hour, it was ridiculously overcrowded. Need more peak hour trains. However the line is already at capacity, so no more trains without more capacity.

Now what was in the plan for rail infrastructure...

They should try reducing capacity on the roads, if you build more roads your just building a massive liability.

More revenue is funnelled into maintaining them, more people die on them and the congestion fills them up. It is proven to fail.

So lets try the opposite, rip lanes out. Reduce your roads budget overnight, reduce death, reduce heart disease...

Make it expensive to privately register a motor vehicle, phase out internal combustion engines gradually over 10 years. People can put themselves on the 'do not drive' register and get a $7,000 bonus. We can call it the First Home Owners Grant to confuse the Daily Telegraph.

50% of people living in Sydney are in Strata, this is increasing. Public transport is the way to go, getting more people onto it means you can run more services and ticket revenue is up. We going to get there via the free market but we should speed things up.

Embrace change.
JM

Part of the problem is Australia's "home ownership" culture that you don't necessarily see in Europe and elsewhere. This combined with stamp duty, absurdly high real estate fees etc, means that people tend to live far away from their workplace and don't move even if they change jobs and have to commute even further.

Apart from the distance, cycling rates are easy to increase. All you have to do is make cycling more convenient than driving. This means well developed cycling infrastructure, with traffic light timing and priority optimised for bicycle travel rather than car travel. This is what they did in Copenhagen, parts of the Netherlands etc and it works.

Secondly other things like lowering residential speedlimits (first to 40km/h, then 30km/h) will both improve safety and increase usage of other means of transport.

I like the idea of more tolling. If you want to use your car, you should pay for the privilege. The money could be used to fund more public transport.

For what it's worth, I made a comment saying we need more separated bike paths, cycling on footpaths, encourage electric bikes and folding electric bikes. Of course they will ignore it, but at least I made the effort to send them something.

Comments close on 26 October 2012.

mikesbytes wrote:Catching the train today at peak hour, it was ridiculously overcrowded. Need more peak hour trains. However the line is already at capacity, so no more trains without more capacity.

Now what was in the plan for rail infrastructure...

I get a seat every day. I do feel for those poor people on the Western line who jam into those sardine cans. Freezing in winter, boiling hot in summer time.

diggler wrote:I like the idea of more tolling. If you want to use your car, you should pay for the privilege. The money could be used to fund more public transport.

For what it's worth, I made a comment saying we need more separated bike paths, cycling on footpaths, encourage electric bikes and folding electric bikes. Of course they will ignore it, but at least I made the effort to send them something.

Comments close on 26 October 2012.

I agree totally with that. With the anti-cycling scare campaigns, you'll never get a lot of people riding on the roads at all. People are scared of being assaulted by car drivers, or terrorised by certain Channel 9 tabloid TV shows. Even though that is rare, the number of times people get deliberately run off the road or harassed by car drivers is a big deterrent to people using cycling for transportation.

g-boaf wrote:

mikesbytes wrote:Catching the train today at peak hour, it was ridiculously overcrowded. Need more peak hour trains. However the line is already at capacity, so no more trains without more capacity.

Now what was in the plan for rail infrastructure...

I get a seat every day. I do feel for those poor people on the Western line who jam into those sardine cans. Freezing in winter, boiling hot in summer time.

diggler wrote:I like the idea of more tolling. If you want to use your car, you should pay for the privilege. The money could be used to fund more public transport.

For what it's worth, I made a comment saying we need more separated bike paths, cycling on footpaths, encourage electric bikes and folding electric bikes. Of course they will ignore it, but at least I made the effort to send them something.

Comments close on 26 October 2012.

I agree totally with that. With the anti-cycling scare campaigns, you'll never get a lot of people riding on the roads at all. People are scared of being assaulted by car drivers, or terrorised by certain Channel 9 tabloid TV shows. Even though that is rare, the number of times people get deliberately run off the road or harassed by car drivers is a big deterrent to people using cycling for transportation.

I don't blame people for being afraid of Sydney traffic. I think we need separated bike paths and cycling on footpaths.

Public transport doesn't make any sense between some points in Sydney unfortunately

I injured myself a bit on the weekend and want to take a few days off before riding again to recover so I'm driving from Ashfield to Macquarie Park but if I wanted to take a train it would be either two or three trains (Ashfield-Strathfield-Epping-Macquarie park or Ashfield-Central-Macquarie park). If I wanted to take a bus it would be two buses, one of which follows the same route that I drive which is a traffic nightmare and would probably take well over an hour to go the 15.6km.

I've been working there for a bit over 2 years now and the traffic has become noticeably worse over that time as more businesses move in and nothing happens to the transport infrastructure. At least now that we're getting into summer I'm looking forward to being able to ride more often because even though my bicycle route is about 8.5km longer than the car route it's often faster.

I think it is only a matter of time before fuel costs fix the problem anyway.....

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/10/14 ... ity-biking

alf wrote:I think it is only a matter of time before fuel costs fix the problem anyway.....

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/10/14 ... ity-biking

I wouldn't be so confident. Solar electricity panels are getting cheaper all the time. Electric cars are getting better. Presumably batteries are getting better. I think people will just swap their petrol cars for electric cars.

For a significant % of the population the only thing more important than fuel is booze and ciggies

Andrew Burns comment regarding using 2 trains or buses is a common concern.

What gets to me about this and I am NOT having a go at anyone, is that behaviour like this does not promote positive change.

We need people to ride to and from work where it is remotely possible, where it is not catch public transport. If we get more patronage on PT we will get more PT.

Unfortunately so many people drive and vote, so we will waste billions on roads that are totally unnecessary and lead to more waste. The repairs, the deaths, the congestion, the pollution... it all costs.

If everyone woke up to themselves one day and all headed to their local bus stop or train station or jumped on a bike it present a huge problem to the NSW (Australian) government and they would need to fix it by the next election or be relegated to the minor league.

JM