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

Introduction

This submission relates to the draft revised Strategy at https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/policy-planning-changes/have-your-say-revised-environmental-strategy.

Discussion

We note the strategy's four core directions, namely: Resilient and efficient operations, Efficient and climate resilient buildings, Regenerative and inclusive city & Strong foundations.

We would like to comment on "Regenerative and inclusive city" for which the strategy's caption is:

Regenerating the waterways and land.
Ensuring everyone can access zero carbon transport [our emphasis]
and has the ability to reuse and repair instead of buying new.

We think that public transport improvements should reasonably be expected to attract more passengers out of more carbon-intensive private cars. Council is well placed to press for improvements such as:

• Building more metro stops in appropriate places. Obviously, the Metro West line should not terminate at Hunter St but rather continue south-east or southwards. The Chatswood-Sydenham line should have been built with more stations e.g. Alexandria.
• Expanding light rail services. There are opportunities to do so without complicating existing services - see remarks below about Green Square.
• Removing wrap advertising from the windows of public transport vehicles. The perforated plastic material prevents passengers from seeing outside the vehicles at night and when wet.
• Making public transport services more frequent, generally reducing waiting time for passengers
• Reducing walking distances to and from public transport services, generally making end-to-end trips faster
• Speeding-up public transport services, again making end-to-end trips faster.
• Making walking safer, perhaps by reducing vehicle speed limits and/or by separating pedestrians from battery-powered personal vehicles such as Deliveroo.
• Improving the availability of public transport running information at bus stops, both printed and real-time.
• Improving sight lines at bus stops so that bus drivers can see waiting passengers and passengers can see bus destinations. Regrettably, there are some bus stops in the City area where advertisements on the footpath block sight lines.

Public transport works best when its stops are close to major trip generators. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. Perhaps the clearest example in the City area is the location and design of Barangaroo metro station. Even though the centroid of the trip generators which it seems intended to serve is hundreds of metres south, its sole entrance at present is at its north end. There may be good reasons why the station was designed that way but the extra walking thereby required of patrons merits attention.

An outstanding opportunity for reducing walking distances would be around Railway Square. Despite its name, the Square is not particularly close to passenger rail services. For example, the KFC at the western corner of Railway Square is at least 500 metres' walk from all heavy rail and metro platforms. Connecting Central Walk directly with Henry Deane Plaza would shorten many walks between Central station and the Broadway education precinct. Council has a role to play in convincing T4NSW to make that connection.

The tram trip from Central to the off-road section west of Hay St is about 500 metres long. L1 trams take about 6 minutes to cover that 500 metres. A moderately-fit person could beat that on foot. If traffic signals along Hay St were re-configured, it would be possible to speed those tram trips up. A good start would be altering the signals at the intersection with Darling Drive so that trams don't have to pause while the (non-existent) road traffic has a chance to halt gracefully.

We note that Council advocates for lower road speed limits in the City of Sydney. We support this position.

We refer to Council's support for a light rail service between Green Square and Railway Square. We are concerned that if trams from Green Square were to share Haymarket station with existing L2/L3 trams in Rawson Place, there could be frequent conflicts around the shared track. Council should ensure that proposed new services will not interfere with existing services.

Recommendations

We suggest that the revised Strategy should make very clear that public transport is to be supported in every possible way - see the list above. Tactics supporting that aim could include requirements that any new transport projects or significant developments be assessed for positive support for public transport, especially in the matters mentioned above.

We further suggest that Council prepare a list of worthwhile public transport improvement projects and promote those projects to T4NSW.