Why $110 billion is not enough to fix Sydney’s transport woes

Updated

The NSW Government has $110 billion worth of plans for Sydney's transport — but that's a fraction of what's needed to fix Sydney's congestion problems, one of the city's leading transport expert says.

Key points: No major transport projects will be completed before the election

The Government has still done well to play catch-up after Labor's "lacklustre" efforts, a transport expert claims

Expert says the Government should have built dedicated bus corridors on its new motorways

With transport shaping up as a critical issue at next month's state election, Professor David Hensher said the investment "just buys a few years of growth before we are back to where we started".

"The amount of money we would need to put in to make a really significant difference in reducing the traffic on our roads and avoiding crowding on our trains should be in the hundreds of billions — not in the billions that we're currently investing," he said.

This state government has long boasted it has the largest transport infrastructure program in the nation.

Since 2011, it has spent $58.3 billion on road and rail projects to ease congestion and get people from A to B faster, and has allocated another $52.9 billion for transport.

Professor Hensher, the founding director of Sydney University's Institute of Transport and Logistics, said the Berejiklian Government "has been doing an extremely good job" and had to play catch-up after a "lacklustre" approach from the state's previous Labor administration.

Some things, however, have not gone to plan.

When voters head to the polls on March 23, none of the ribbons will have been cut on the major projects that Ms Berejiklian spruiked as Transport Minister and later as Premier.

The country's first driverless turn-up-and-go train service, Metro North West, will open a few months after the election.

Another part of the WestConnex motorway will also open this year and NorthConnex will open next year.

The trouble-plagued CBD light rail should also open in 2020 — more than a year late and $1 billion over budget.

Meanwhile, the city's stressed heavy-rail network is still susceptible to meltdowns, the most high-profile of which happened last summer.

"To suggest we haven't delivered anything is just wrong," Transport Minister Andrew Constance told ABC Radio Sydney yesterday.

"These things can't be built in a month."

If Labor wins next month's vote, the F6 extension, Western Harbour Tunnel and Beaches Link will all be scrapped.

The conversion of the Bankstown to Sydenham rail line into a Metro system will also be also off the table.

Instead, Labor plans to fast track the new Metro rail line from the CBD to Parramatta and Westmead.

"We see public transport as the priority," Opposition Transport spokeswoman Jodi McKay said.

The solution is not very 'sexy'

But while the political fighting continues, Professor Hensher has offered an alternative solution.

He admitted it was not very sexy.

"We have so many missed opportunities of building corridors dedicated to buses in this state," he said.

"There's the old adage that buses are boring, trains are sexy.

"Trains might be more comfortable, but they come at a much higher cost of construction and a limited number of corridors in which we can justify them."

Professor Hensher labelled it a "real failing" and "disappointment" that Sydney's new motorways did not have specified bus lanes and said the NSW Government should have insisted on them before contracts were signed.

He pointed to WestConnex as an example of a project where a bus corridor should have been incorporated.

Professor Hensher said the world's toll road operators were "dead against" bus lanes because "there's more money in moving cars than moving public transport".

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University of Technology Sydney transport sociologist, Dr Claudine Moutou, agreed that motorways should incorporate bus lanes.

"It would be great to have more frequent bus routes," she said.

"But that really involves prioritising buses over cars."

She said there was scope for a lot more public transport projects in the Government's infrastructure spend.

Aside from increasing buses to reduce congestion, Professor Hensher suggested introducing a distance-based pricing scheme for road users during peak times.

That suggestion will be a hard political pill to swallow in a city with sky-high cost of living.

Another option is to get people to move out of Sydney and live in the regions.

Dr Moutou said the NSW Government needed to work out better ways of getting people around their local communities, to stop major thoroughfares becoming choked.

"Peoples' sense of where they want to travel is often within a five- to eight-kilometre radius," she said.

And even if all those measures are done — which is highly unlikely — congestion will be reduced not eliminated.

Topics: government-and-politics, elections, state-elections, sydney-2000, nsw

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