WARRINGAH SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT STRATEGY - A SUBMISSION

This submission from Action for Public Transport is in response to Council's document titled "Warringah Council's Sustainable Transport Strategy" (the Strategy) dated February 2012.

Firstly, Council is to be commended for including the word "sustainable" in the title of the policy document. Many of the transport policies adopted in NSW over the last 100 years are now proving to be unsustainable.

We endorse the Strategy. The following comments mainly suggest an increased emphasis on some points in the Strategy.

1. To help Warringah residents and other stakeholders to understand the Herculean task of changing the culture of private car use in the LGA, perhaps a few words in the Strategy should be devoted to acknowledging the history of the development of transport and access in the area. Specific reference could be made to the state "roads" authorities which, in their many guises, have for 100 years devoted almost their entire efforts toward the facilitation of private car use. To this day, "Roads & Maritime Services" (RMS) continues in that role. It is part of the "roads lobby", which The Sydney Morning Herald's Elizabeth Farrelly recently quipped "is to NSW as the gun lobby is to the USA" (Choosing the road to adventure, 9 May 2013).

   Another example of this ingrained car culture exemplified itself when the recent study of bus rapid transit proposals for Warringah concluded that none of the rapid bus options was viable because motorists would be inconvenienced!

   The underlying fact is that most decisions for the funding of access and transport projects have always been made by politicians, who by nature must have one eye on populism.

2. The Strategy might give more emphasis to encouraging residents to think twice before jumping in the private car on every occasion. For many, because it is so convenient, it has always been and still is the natural, or obvious thing to do.
3. A greater emphasis could be placed on the need to identify and reserve mass transit corridors now, even though they might never be used. This need is accentuated by the LGA having only three access points, and the rapid development already occurring along the corridors associated with those points.
4. Given Warringah's hilly topography, making cycling attractive will always be a challenge. Perhaps some mention might be made about the rapid evolution and falling prices of electric bicycles.