Action for Public Transport (N.S.W.) Inc.

Action for Public Transport's submission on the proposal:

Regarding DA Notification: D/2020/1418, 5010 Carrington Street SYDNEY NSW 2000

to City of Sydney, GPO Box 1591, Sydney NSW 2001

attention: Mia Music

Action for Public Transport (NSW) Inc. ("APTNSW") is a transport advocacy group which has been active in Sydney since 1974. We promote the interests of beneficiaries of public transport - passengers and the wider community alike.

We have not given a gift or made a donation to a councillor, an employee, or an approved contractor of the City of Sydney within the past 2 years.

We make this submission on the development application D/2020/1418 which seeks permission to replace numerous roller advertisement panels at CBD bus shelters with electronic screens. The DA wants to adjust the sizes and exact locations of many of the bus shelters. Although the shelters do not need approval, any changes to the advertising displays do need approval. It is not clear whether approval is needed to transfer unaltered an existing display to the new site of its shelter.

The statement of effects does not recognise the importance to waiting bus passengers of being able to see approaching buses clearly. Many stops are served by more than one bus route, so seeing the bus clearly helps the passenger identify its route sooner rather than later. Also, the bus driver benefits from seeing intending passengers sooner so that the bus can signal its intentions to other vehicles well in advance of the actual stop. Again, sighting approaching buses is often compromised by large vehicles on the road or poor light. Generally, sightlines between waiting passengers and approaching buses should be kept as clear as reasonably possible. Unfortunately, advertising panels on bus stops sometimes block sightlines; our submission is that the sightlines are more important than the advertising. The only exception to this would be bus stops which are exclusively used as termini; such bus stops generally don't have shelters for waiting passengers. Typically, advertising panels on the upstream ends of bus shelters can be expected to interfere with sightlines. So would panels on the downstream ends of nearby shelters as well as any freestanding advertisements near to but upstream of shelters.

We think that some mistakes were made in permitting certain panels to be installed and, even if the mistakes cannot be undone, Council should refuse permission for replacement with electronic panels.

The attractions for the applicant of digital screens are threefold:

(a) Flexibility - displays can include short movies and can be varied several times per day. This is also an advantage for Council whose messages can be displayed for up to 10% of the time

(b) Simplicity of programming - no need to prepare rolls of advertisements

(c) Economy - no need to send technicians around to change the rolls.

However, the second and third advantages can't be realised unless all or nearly all the screens are digital. The applicant has an incentive to switch all his screens to digital.

If some panels cause a nuisance, Council would seem to have the option of refusing permission for digitising those panels. This refusal would put economic pressure on the advertising operator to remove those panels altogether. Clear sightlines would result.

We particularly refer to the following panels as being likely to interfere unacceptably with sightlines:

Alfred St: the upstream advertisements on BSH1002 and both advertisements on BSH1149

Alfred St: the upstream advertisements on BSH1008 and both advertisements on BSH1012

Carrington St: the upstream advertisements on BSH1022 and BSH1026

Carrington St: the upstream advertisements on BSH1027

York St: the downstream advertisements on BSH1052

Elizabeth St: the upstream advertisements on B1059

York St: the upstream advertisements on BSH1068

Oxford St: the downstream advertisements on BSH3065 and BSH3064

Elizabeth St: the upstream advertisements on B3500

Oxford St: the downstream advertisements on BSH3064 and BSH3065

Eddy Ave: the upstream advertisements on BSH3601 and both advertisements on BSH3600

York St: the upstream advertisements on BSH3700

York St: the upstream advertisements on BSH3701

York St: the upstream advertisements on BSH3702

We submit that Council should not give permisson to convert those panels to digital.

Finally, we note that the statement of environmental effects does not canvass the issue of environmental sustainability. Do the digital displays use markedly more power than the existing roller displays which they would replace? If so, is the extra power to be supplied from environmentally sustainable sources?