Post by ferryfast admin on Feb 24, 2006 23:47:41 GMT -5
Put us on track and in motion
Anita Quigley
Columnist
Daily Telegraph - Sydney
dailytelegraph.news.com.au/
February 25, 2006
Beg, borrow, steal if necessary, but the State Government must fix our city's disgraceful public transport system. Sydney will never be the international city it purports to be until the trains, buses and ferries run efficiently on a properly designed and extensive network.
It is little wonder our roads are gridlocked as drivers choose to pay exorbitant tolls and choke on smog rather than endure a far more stressful battle with a woeful public transport system.
This week The Daily Telegraph reported how hundreds of stranded private bus commuters in the Hills District and on the Northern Beaches wait up to an hour on the roadside because over-crowded buses won't pick them up.
Then there is half of Sydney's most modern ferries, including most of the RiverCats, lying idle at the Balmain maintenance depot.
Yesterday about 1000 train commuters were thrown off the Eastern Suburbs line at Kings Cross in the height of morning peak hour because of a "signal failure" occurring at Martin Place.
Shunted up on to Bayswater Rd on the promise of buses -- only one turned up in the first 20 minutes -- many opted to walk because there was also barely a taxi in sight.
New train lines must be built -- and now. Not in 2017 as we were promised last week.
Announcing that two new "corridors" have been "reserved" for an
$8 billion rail line linking the city to Rouse Hill in the northwest and Leppington in the southwest, as Premier Morris Iemma did last week, is a joke.
I can't catch a "corridor" to work and going by his timeframe many of the current commuters will have retired by then.
I also wonder what odds the TAB is offering on it ever being actually completed. It has all the hallmarks of a desperate government making promises it has neither the intention nor the ability to meet.
The litany of excuses as to why our trains, buses and ferries don't run on time, or at all, is neverending. Yet figures show we are making fewer train journeys.
According to Rail Corp's last financial report CityRail commuters are making fewer journeys than they were three years ago. There were 270.3 million journeys for 2004-05 compared with 276.4 million in 2001-02. And still the system cannot cope.
Sydney is a growing city but our public transport "system" is resolutely going backwards.
While Premier Iemma says 5000 public service jobs will go, he also foreshadows an increase in spending on health, education and policing. But no mention of transport.
Some cities in developing countries have a better public transport network than ours, so why can't we seem to get it right?
The bottom line is Premier Iemma and his cabinet don't know where to begin. They have no solutions for the present, let alone vision for the future.
Over the past 11 years Labor has had no problems spending our taxes, but with little to show for it except poorer public services.
The Government has saved itself billions of dollars by getting private companies to build tollways across the city, but why hasn't some of that saved cash been poured back into improving public transport?
Instead, they have blocked off roads, forcing drivers through toll booths. The only winners out of this are tollway companies.
It's time for a government and a leader with the political courage to tackle this chronic problem.
Anita Quigley
Columnist
Daily Telegraph - Sydney
dailytelegraph.news.com.au/
February 25, 2006
Beg, borrow, steal if necessary, but the State Government must fix our city's disgraceful public transport system. Sydney will never be the international city it purports to be until the trains, buses and ferries run efficiently on a properly designed and extensive network.
It is little wonder our roads are gridlocked as drivers choose to pay exorbitant tolls and choke on smog rather than endure a far more stressful battle with a woeful public transport system.
This week The Daily Telegraph reported how hundreds of stranded private bus commuters in the Hills District and on the Northern Beaches wait up to an hour on the roadside because over-crowded buses won't pick them up.
Then there is half of Sydney's most modern ferries, including most of the RiverCats, lying idle at the Balmain maintenance depot.
Yesterday about 1000 train commuters were thrown off the Eastern Suburbs line at Kings Cross in the height of morning peak hour because of a "signal failure" occurring at Martin Place.
Shunted up on to Bayswater Rd on the promise of buses -- only one turned up in the first 20 minutes -- many opted to walk because there was also barely a taxi in sight.
New train lines must be built -- and now. Not in 2017 as we were promised last week.
Announcing that two new "corridors" have been "reserved" for an
$8 billion rail line linking the city to Rouse Hill in the northwest and Leppington in the southwest, as Premier Morris Iemma did last week, is a joke.
I can't catch a "corridor" to work and going by his timeframe many of the current commuters will have retired by then.
I also wonder what odds the TAB is offering on it ever being actually completed. It has all the hallmarks of a desperate government making promises it has neither the intention nor the ability to meet.
The litany of excuses as to why our trains, buses and ferries don't run on time, or at all, is neverending. Yet figures show we are making fewer train journeys.
According to Rail Corp's last financial report CityRail commuters are making fewer journeys than they were three years ago. There were 270.3 million journeys for 2004-05 compared with 276.4 million in 2001-02. And still the system cannot cope.
Sydney is a growing city but our public transport "system" is resolutely going backwards.
While Premier Iemma says 5000 public service jobs will go, he also foreshadows an increase in spending on health, education and policing. But no mention of transport.
Some cities in developing countries have a better public transport network than ours, so why can't we seem to get it right?
The bottom line is Premier Iemma and his cabinet don't know where to begin. They have no solutions for the present, let alone vision for the future.
Over the past 11 years Labor has had no problems spending our taxes, but with little to show for it except poorer public services.
The Government has saved itself billions of dollars by getting private companies to build tollways across the city, but why hasn't some of that saved cash been poured back into improving public transport?
Instead, they have blocked off roads, forcing drivers through toll booths. The only winners out of this are tollway companies.
It's time for a government and a leader with the political courage to tackle this chronic problem.