"Sustainable Sydney 2030" - APTNSW Submission
<br>Sustainable Sydney 2030 Team
<br>Level 9, City of Sydney
<br>GPO Box 1591, Sydney, NSW, 2001.
<br>(email - 2030@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This submission has been prepared in response to the City of Sydney's
exhibition, website, and other media promoted under the heading
"Sustainable Sydney 2030" in April 2008. Action for Public Transport
is a Sydney based, member-funded, transport advocacy group, formed
circa 1975. We maintain a website at www.aptnsw.org.au

"Sustainable Sydney 2030" (the "Plan") is commended for inviting
citizens to think about how they want Sydney to look and function in
the future. The Plan's extensive use of graphics has made this
process easier. We welcome the opportunity to express our views.
Our interest is in transport, and we note that of the five "big
moves" identified in the Plan, transport is a factor in four of them.
 A distinction needs to made though, between "transport" and
"access". People's lives can be improved by better "access" to
services and facilities. "Transport" is just one means of achieving
that improved access.

We endorse the central theme of the Plan, which is to make walking,
cycling and public transport more attractive and to restrict the
availability of car parking. But we have concerns. Most of the
ideas are expressed in broad terms, which is probably appropriate for
a plan of this type, but it leaves perhaps too much scope for
misinterpretation, intentional or otherwise. It should be noted that
the sentiments expressed in the Plan about Sydney's transport
"problems" are not new. They have been espoused, little changed, by
transport professionals and newspaper editorialists for at least
thirty years. Yet Sydney's transport problems persist.

Which brings us inevitably to politics. All the decisions about the
development of Sydney in the period under examination will be
political. It is disappointing that there has been nothing in the
Plan to make citizens aware of this element nor to stimulate
discussion about the role politics will play in the outcomes.

Nor does the Plan address the numerous institutionalised
encumbrances within and between government agencies which threaten to
stifle its implementation. The community needs to understand these
threats, discuss them, and to drive reform, for the Plan to succeed.
Many analysts have commented on the excessive influence exercised by
the Roads & Traffic Authority (RTA) on transport developments in
Sydney since the middle of the twentieth century. The "railway
ethos" constraining RailCorp and its previous entities has also been
public knowledge for decades. Successive governments have promised
reform but progress has been slow, and ultimately ineffective.

Recent developments in Sydney have only confirmed that these
depressing tendencies are likely to continue. Of all the transport
infrastructure projects promised over the last three decades, only
the roads projects have been completed. The effect has been to make
car travel more attractive. The few rail projects which have been
started have been curtailed or threatened with contraction. The
electronic tolling of motorways has been integrated by merging a
number of independent systems but a similar plan for an integrated
electronic public transport ticket, "Tcard", has faltered. The RTA's
policy on implementing bus priority measures is that they will only
be countenanced so long as they do not in any way restrict the flow
of general traffic. The RTA is focussed on moving vehicles, rather
than people.

The "silo" culture within state agencies has been aired in the press
recently. Instead of constructive inter-agency development and
mutual support for projects offering community benefits,
we have isolation
and competition between agencies which have undermined or thwarted such
projects.

The new federal government is showing signs of an interest in urban
issues, particularly with the establishment of its well-resourced
infrastructure fund.

It is our hope that the politicians from all three levels of
government can capitalise on the synchronicity of a number of events;
the Plan, a growing public awareness of the causes and solutions of
congestion, increased awareness of peak oil and climate change, and
federal funding for infrastructure. Only with such unprecedented
cooperation will Sydney succeed in showing the rest of the world that
that we really can effect worthwhile change.

Kevin Eadie
<br>Convener
<br>Action for Public Transport (NSW)
<br>PO Box K 606, Haymarket, NSW, 1240.

http://www.aptnsw.org.au/

29 May 2008.