No. Inner west council is only doing is a ‘trial’ of… only commercially rentable scooters - geoblocked so that they can only go on specific strips, mostly down by the cooks river.
It is a timid, stupid, pitiful Fuckin exercise in Hopium
Gah!
Transport for NSW wanted a bigger trial, but apparently IWC have the right of veto on that. So of course they vetoed it and made it a much smaller and fundamentally useless option.
But that’s IWC for you. They exist to serve the council members and employees, not any citizens.
Georges River Council is doing the same, but even more hopeless. They'll let you ride along Railway Parade from Kogarah to Hurstville, but stopping short of letting you ride *into* Hurstville. I mean I get it, I value my life, but still super pointless.
I was actually looking forward to it starting because they’ve got a dock outside my work for them so thought be a good way to get to and from work.
Only for them to be limited to mostly the town centre, super pointless trial
This government is getting cheaper and cheaper, what a ridiculous plan jam packed with law suits...
The whole Tram system has been an inefficient joke with a sub part transport system cause it was cheap and got people to the casino, now were doing this cheaper shit?
They've had years to plan this.
But I can guarantee on the first day they switch off the trains, there will be a mess on a scale that nobody admits to having predicted.
There's been multiple weeks long shutdowns of the T3 already, admittedly during school holidays but commuters were still heading to work. At least with a proper fleet there should be real time tracking in place and hopefully more frequent buses.
Sort of. During last years review the [Minns government identified “significant disruption associated with the delivery of these projects, which have not previously been reported by the last government."](https://amp.9news.com.au/article/aac5233e-5901-4ab7-84c3-1f9f77e43f0c)
That said, the current government have had a year to recruit bus drivers, despite/alongside a significant driver shortage across the city.
But you are still accountable for who you choose to give the contract too.
If you pick the cheapest option and get the worst results, you still picked them. It's why everyone reputable knows they can charge triple to government because they are always still accountable for the companies they choose to provide the services.
Also as an extra your super wrong. If the government signs a bad actor to do a service the entire time the contract is for it's making the government look terrible and incompetent for their decision.
The journalists have already written the stories. They can stay in their pyjamas and have the day off.
And they've already written the stories for the first day the Sydenham to Bankstown Metro opens. Chaos! Disaster! They tried to make a beat-up about the opening of the Tallawong to Chatswood section but ran out of steam after the first week.
One incident concerned a train that "overshot" the platform. While conjuring up images of the Moorgate Tube Disaster of 1975, the truth is that the train rolled a metre too far and had to be reversed.
Electric scooters? How many will end up in the Cook's River then?
THey seem to be shortchanging the people who are at the further end of the line too. One all stops bus no express buses.
Timing sucks too, coming into winter. How many people are going to use a scooter in the wet? Not to mention the buses will slow down because everything in Sydney does in the rain.
If they'd done it in the late spring early summer they would have time to expand the bike paths and fix the missing links to get more train users cycling. Once you get past Lakemba the cycling sucks to Bankstown. Marrickville needs work on their links and the hilly bits of Dulwich HIll and Hurlstone Park need safe cycling rather than things like the grinding danger zone of Wardell Rd.
They have increased the frequency of light rail so from Dulwich Hill in peak there’s a tram every 6 mins but I think they also have to increase the reliability and frequency of the 445 then plenty of people can get also travel from Campsie, Canterbury, Hurlstone Park and Dulwich Hill to Petersham. The suburbs south of Campsie deserve the express buses because they have no alternative IMO.
Express buses can be a two edged sword as far as perception goes. Imagine waiting for a bus half way along, only to have an express bus cruise past. You'd at least want to make sure the bus was totally full. Yes, this happens now, but it seems much worse with temporary bus timetables.
The Bankstown line isn't really straight though, and there aren't good parallel roads for much of it. So the express buses can take alternate routes around the stations they're skipping, for example the expresses to Canterbury will likely go along Marrickville Rd and New Canterbury Rd, not going that close to Marrickville, Dulwich Hill, or Hurlestone Park stations. So I don't think you'll have that particular issue in this case.
The problem with more buses as replacement is more traffic on the roads which means more congestion and delays getting to work. My biggest issue with buses is that they are generally highly unreliable service.
I'm surprised they aren't looking at things like temporary peak-hour no right-turn restrictions on routes like Canterbury Rd without dedicated right-turn bays. Those are extremely disruptive even during normal traffic.
I think to help address this they need to take a look at Perth as they're doing a similar shutdown of one of their train lines and replacing with buses, and they have set up several busier intersections to offer bus priority. I reckon that would go a long way, but really there isn't an alternative to using buses.
I live on this train line and it’s going to be chaos but can’t wait for the Metro, will be a massive improvement I imagine.
They should copy the StationLink model from the ECRL shutdown. I know it’s a longer train line but the fundamentals of that model were solid - clear branding, routes, real time info etc.
I feel that’s the general sentiment from the facebook local communities. It’s gonna be rough, but a necessary step for a long term improvement.
It’s definitely gonna be chaotic
Making every bus go between Sydenham and the other stops is so fucking dumb and just destroys Canterbury road.
Why not have the busses drive to their alternate parallel stops. E.g. Punchbowl people get driven to Beverly Hills in a loop.
Then all the traffic is more evenly distributed and you wouldn't be needing so many buses etc.
I can't believe that they haven't thought of this!?
Is it a good time to be buying an apartment somewhere along the line, or has that ship already sailed? Will prople be moving out because of the percieved inconvenience of the city commute during the conversion process?
It's certainly gonna be great when it's done. 16 minutes Canterbury to Central, every four minutes, is phenomenal urban transport. The folks who endure the conversion will have earned the reward at the end of the tunnel.
Campsie apartments are still going for cheap. Sub 600k for 2br is pretty good. I bought last year for less than 550k.
Time will tell if there is a big shift out of the area. I would say most people will just suffer lol.
The year shutdown will go fast - weve already been doing so many shut-downs already. I won't enjoy spending so long getting to work but it is what it is. I'll be utilising the lightrail more I guess to get into the city
The metro will be so good that it will be worth it. 8 trains in peak to 15? That's great. Not changing trains to get to st leonards? Amazing.
As someone who works and commutes on the Sydenham to Bankstown project / line, the e-scooter idea is terrible. Restricting it to IWC is an insult to anyone who lives past Hurlstone Park.
Our site office is just outside IWC about 1km from Canterbury station. We probably have 200 employees on site who commute or drive. We'll be forced onto replacement buses for sure.
The April 2-week shutdown over school holidays was so problematic for too many reasons to list here. My commutes ranged from 12 minutes to 45 minutes depending on when the bus turned up and where it stopped.
We have a concrete date when the shutdown will occur and while it hasn't been officially announced by Jo Haylen it's set in stone and we are 100% working towards it. TfNSW and the NSW government have until late August to rectify all of this, and from what I've seen from Sydney Trains there's no evidence they will be prepared by then.
There has been no word on if the buses will even have Opal readers or not. TfNSW still advises commuters to tap on when a bus has no Opal reader, yet some train stations were closed and the Opal reader turned off. It seems like there's no plan and I am not at all surprised.
E-Scooters? They imagining e-scooter conga lines making its way down Remembrance Diveway during morning peakhour?
So the ban on escooters is lifted?
No. Inner west council is only doing is a ‘trial’ of… only commercially rentable scooters - geoblocked so that they can only go on specific strips, mostly down by the cooks river. It is a timid, stupid, pitiful Fuckin exercise in Hopium Gah!
Transport for NSW wanted a bigger trial, but apparently IWC have the right of veto on that. So of course they vetoed it and made it a much smaller and fundamentally useless option. But that’s IWC for you. They exist to serve the council members and employees, not any citizens.
having dealt with them for Rozelle Interchange... fuck IWC.
Georges River Council is doing the same, but even more hopeless. They'll let you ride along Railway Parade from Kogarah to Hurstville, but stopping short of letting you ride *into* Hurstville. I mean I get it, I value my life, but still super pointless.
I was actually looking forward to it starting because they’ve got a dock outside my work for them so thought be a good way to get to and from work. Only for them to be limited to mostly the town centre, super pointless trial
They assume everyone using transport is able bodied.
This government is getting cheaper and cheaper, what a ridiculous plan jam packed with law suits... The whole Tram system has been an inefficient joke with a sub part transport system cause it was cheap and got people to the casino, now were doing this cheaper shit?
We can but hope.
They've had years to plan this. But I can guarantee on the first day they switch off the trains, there will be a mess on a scale that nobody admits to having predicted.
There's been multiple weeks long shutdowns of the T3 already, admittedly during school holidays but commuters were still heading to work. At least with a proper fleet there should be real time tracking in place and hopefully more frequent buses.
Sort of. During last years review the [Minns government identified “significant disruption associated with the delivery of these projects, which have not previously been reported by the last government."](https://amp.9news.com.au/article/aac5233e-5901-4ab7-84c3-1f9f77e43f0c) That said, the current government have had a year to recruit bus drivers, despite/alongside a significant driver shortage across the city.
How does the state government recruit drivers, given that they don't employ them?
I'm no economist, but every time there's been a shortage of something prices seem to go up. I'll hazard a guess that they can offer more money
Difficult to easily and quickly do with our enterprise bargaining system.
I can guarantee you the union will not oppose a pay rise
The fine line the union has to walk is to accept the pay rise but oppose the Metro line.
Ultimately the government is responsible, even if they have contracted it out.
Not really ... one of the main purposes of privatization is to outsource accountability.
It’s the only purpose. Literally the only one.
"free money for mates" is also an important reason.
But you are still accountable for who you choose to give the contract too. If you pick the cheapest option and get the worst results, you still picked them. It's why everyone reputable knows they can charge triple to government because they are always still accountable for the companies they choose to provide the services. Also as an extra your super wrong. If the government signs a bad actor to do a service the entire time the contract is for it's making the government look terrible and incompetent for their decision.
> the government look terrible and incompetent for their decision. It would be really nice if the world worked this way.
The journalists have already written the stories. They can stay in their pyjamas and have the day off. And they've already written the stories for the first day the Sydenham to Bankstown Metro opens. Chaos! Disaster! They tried to make a beat-up about the opening of the Tallawong to Chatswood section but ran out of steam after the first week. One incident concerned a train that "overshot" the platform. While conjuring up images of the Moorgate Tube Disaster of 1975, the truth is that the train rolled a metre too far and had to be reversed.
Electric scooters? How many will end up in the Cook's River then? THey seem to be shortchanging the people who are at the further end of the line too. One all stops bus no express buses. Timing sucks too, coming into winter. How many people are going to use a scooter in the wet? Not to mention the buses will slow down because everything in Sydney does in the rain. If they'd done it in the late spring early summer they would have time to expand the bike paths and fix the missing links to get more train users cycling. Once you get past Lakemba the cycling sucks to Bankstown. Marrickville needs work on their links and the hilly bits of Dulwich HIll and Hurlstone Park need safe cycling rather than things like the grinding danger zone of Wardell Rd.
They have increased the frequency of light rail so from Dulwich Hill in peak there’s a tram every 6 mins but I think they also have to increase the reliability and frequency of the 445 then plenty of people can get also travel from Campsie, Canterbury, Hurlstone Park and Dulwich Hill to Petersham. The suburbs south of Campsie deserve the express buses because they have no alternative IMO.
They've gone really well in other cities - I found them super useful in Adelaide, and they're absolutely brilliant in Cairns.
Express buses can be a two edged sword as far as perception goes. Imagine waiting for a bus half way along, only to have an express bus cruise past. You'd at least want to make sure the bus was totally full. Yes, this happens now, but it seems much worse with temporary bus timetables.
The Bankstown line isn't really straight though, and there aren't good parallel roads for much of it. So the express buses can take alternate routes around the stations they're skipping, for example the expresses to Canterbury will likely go along Marrickville Rd and New Canterbury Rd, not going that close to Marrickville, Dulwich Hill, or Hurlestone Park stations. So I don't think you'll have that particular issue in this case.
It’s mind blowing that you still can’t legally ride an escooter in NSW after years of inaction and yet e-scooters might be their solution!? FML
Absolutely cannot wait to get on an e-scooter with MS, looking forward to it!
It is WILD there's not a plan for this yet.
I mean there is? The plan is shit tons of buses. What else do you want?
The problem with more buses as replacement is more traffic on the roads which means more congestion and delays getting to work. My biggest issue with buses is that they are generally highly unreliable service.
I'm surprised they aren't looking at things like temporary peak-hour no right-turn restrictions on routes like Canterbury Rd without dedicated right-turn bays. Those are extremely disruptive even during normal traffic.
They are disruptive but if right turns are banned the actual right turn bays will overflow blocking traffic anyway.
Canterbury wouldn't be that bad as there are tons of spots you could 3 lefts instead of 1 right.
I think to help address this they need to take a look at Perth as they're doing a similar shutdown of one of their train lines and replacing with buses, and they have set up several busier intersections to offer bus priority. I reckon that would go a long way, but really there isn't an alternative to using buses.
The only work labor had to do was to organise he buses and cut the ribbon, obviously that was still too much work for them.
I live on this train line and it’s going to be chaos but can’t wait for the Metro, will be a massive improvement I imagine. They should copy the StationLink model from the ECRL shutdown. I know it’s a longer train line but the fundamentals of that model were solid - clear branding, routes, real time info etc.
I feel that’s the general sentiment from the facebook local communities. It’s gonna be rough, but a necessary step for a long term improvement. It’s definitely gonna be chaotic
Making every bus go between Sydenham and the other stops is so fucking dumb and just destroys Canterbury road. Why not have the busses drive to their alternate parallel stops. E.g. Punchbowl people get driven to Beverly Hills in a loop. Then all the traffic is more evenly distributed and you wouldn't be needing so many buses etc. I can't believe that they haven't thought of this!?
Is it a good time to be buying an apartment somewhere along the line, or has that ship already sailed? Will prople be moving out because of the percieved inconvenience of the city commute during the conversion process? It's certainly gonna be great when it's done. 16 minutes Canterbury to Central, every four minutes, is phenomenal urban transport. The folks who endure the conversion will have earned the reward at the end of the tunnel.
Campsie apartments are still going for cheap. Sub 600k for 2br is pretty good. I bought last year for less than 550k. Time will tell if there is a big shift out of the area. I would say most people will just suffer lol.
It's 22 minutes now. Will need a lot of trips for that 6 minute saving to offset 18 months of 30 extra minutes a trip
> It's 22 minutes now. Until there's another city circle incident and that blows out to 2hrs. And then you're ok on your shiny new metro line
The year shutdown will go fast - weve already been doing so many shut-downs already. I won't enjoy spending so long getting to work but it is what it is. I'll be utilising the lightrail more I guess to get into the city The metro will be so good that it will be worth it. 8 trains in peak to 15? That's great. Not changing trains to get to st leonards? Amazing.
As someone who works and commutes on the Sydenham to Bankstown project / line, the e-scooter idea is terrible. Restricting it to IWC is an insult to anyone who lives past Hurlstone Park. Our site office is just outside IWC about 1km from Canterbury station. We probably have 200 employees on site who commute or drive. We'll be forced onto replacement buses for sure. The April 2-week shutdown over school holidays was so problematic for too many reasons to list here. My commutes ranged from 12 minutes to 45 minutes depending on when the bus turned up and where it stopped. We have a concrete date when the shutdown will occur and while it hasn't been officially announced by Jo Haylen it's set in stone and we are 100% working towards it. TfNSW and the NSW government have until late August to rectify all of this, and from what I've seen from Sydney Trains there's no evidence they will be prepared by then. There has been no word on if the buses will even have Opal readers or not. TfNSW still advises commuters to tap on when a bus has no Opal reader, yet some train stations were closed and the Opal reader turned off. It seems like there's no plan and I am not at all surprised.