Cycling in Sydney Australia
Global Sydney report- bike lanes in George St?
His other comments on cycling are a bit wonky, see http://www.globalsydney.org.au/Chapter-2/walking-and-cycling, but supportive. No mention of the high usage in Northern European cities, only compares us to San Francisco and Vancouver.
But the George St bike lane is a good idea, although doesn't link that well to SydH Bridge so would need one on Clarence and York too, which might be possible if the light rail somehow removes the need for buses coming in from the north, or at least frees up a bit of space.
Tags: CBD, George St, global sydney
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by David B on -
Has to be done, something, but what ever it is it will be a mess by the time it is finished. People cannot help but fiddle.
My daughter had to do a transport plan for Sydney as part of her school work. She came up with an interesting idea. She looked at the population centres and defined her own major hubs Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle (possibly extended to Brisbane), Lithgow, Goulbourn, Canberra (possibly extended to Melbourne). Then her secondary hubs, Sydney, Hurstville, Sutherland, Riverwood, Liverpool, Campbelltown, Strathfield, Parramatta, Mt Druit, Penrith, Kellyville, Windsor, St Leonards, North Ryde, West Pennant Hills, Hornsby, Mona Vale, Dee Why, Seaforth. And then suburban stations in circles around the secondary hubs.
So this is where I like her idea, she would go underground and create three levels of platforms and tracks. The trains on the lowest level would be high speed trains that only do major stops. The second level would be high speed trains that only went between Secondary hubs, and the top level would be the suburban circles. The train would pull in with a platform on either side and passengers would get on one side and off the other side. When the build the stations that also build car parking and shopping.
The old train tracks in Sydney would be converted into green space and bike paths between the secondary hubs.
Not bad for a 15 yo.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Moore on -
Brilliant! I tend to agree on the existing heavy train tracks, they occupy a lot of valuable land, particularly in the Inner City, and generally split communities, much like freeways. Maybe in the future that space will be returned to parks and some residential too, linked by bike paths and light rail. No need for so many people to commute to a central point ( the CBD) in the future, they should be able to find a job closer to home, at one of those hubs your daughter has identified, or move closer to the CBD to new housing where freeways and railways once stood.
Anyway, the GlobalSydney plan starts off fairly modestly, just has light rail from Central to Town Hall as a first step, and no cars entering from Broadway, which would be given over to a transport interchange. Also proposes charging for cars to enter the CBD, to encourage use of X city tunnel.
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Permalink Reply by Martin Geliot on -
The S-Bahnen und U-Bahnen are a bit like that in Germany- often stacked vertically.
Electric train tracks can be covered over without an exhaust problem with ease- by comparison with roads needing pollution stacks. Lots of parks like that in Paris, with Metro below. Imagine the existing rail line covered over from Parra to CBD, with parks, trams and a f'off cycleway on top?
When you have done that Parra Rd could be one traffic lane and one bus lane only in each direction, with urban amenity people space in the rest of it. No need for M4 east, the peeps without tools and cranes can use train, tram, bus or bike all with a cheeky short journey time.
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Permalink Reply by Jason B on
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Having a full capacity surface train network is not much of a drama space wise.
The 6 lines strathfield through to central flow 18000 people an hour each, so in the inbound peak, the 3 inbound tracks, flow the equivalent of 45 free flowing at capacity single occupant motor vehicle lanes - which rarely even occurs in practice. This is also why the inner city railway has so many overbridges, because the railway network can be relatively sparse compared to a motorway network, the cost of crossing it repeatedly is less, so usually they have less of a divisive effect on communities, and the stations tend to be surrounded with shops and the like, where as motorways only really support car accessible only service stations.
Incidently, nearly every street in Sydney is actually a 4 lane road, its just that 2 of the lanes are blocked by private transport devices that are nearly never in use.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Moore on
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I guess I was a bit OTT about train tracks taking up space cf. with roads, but there are huge areas around Central to Redfern that could be built over for housing, which everyone has been recommending for years.
Also, trying to get across the railway is not that easy at Stanmore and Lewisham, and other places, need some better underpasses. One of the benefits of the Greenway was the path under the main western railway, and over Parramatta Rd, at Hawthorne Canal. But one of the benefits of railways is all the Railway Sts, which run alongside and don't have many cross streets.
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Permalink Reply by Aaron K on
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David B, Nice work indeed, she must be a real Smarty!
If you wish you could mention PRT to your daughter, no tunneling needed (cost of tunneling will never meet a CBA by GOVT)
Sydney could be retrofitted with this (PRT/POD car) technology in 5-10 years, at a fraction of the cost of heavy rail tunnels.
All space underneath would then be used for Pedestrians and Cycling.
See here for Wiki and Heathrow PRT page:
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