Light Speeds

The plan to build a light rail link from Sydney’s eastern suburbs, starting at Randwick and travelling through Surry Hills, to the CBD, including closing off a stretch of George Street to traffic, is a good step forward, at least for the beach suburbs, up to a point, but isn’t going to do much beyond that.

The traffic sticking points aren’t limited to getting to and from work in peak hours along Anzac Parade or the airport. The real problems are coming in from the south, where you’re suddenly dumped into single-lane entries through Newtown, or from the West, where Parramatta Road becomes a bottleneck, or from the North, where the bridge traffic has to be funnelled into the streets of the CBD.

Light rail already exists in part of the inner west, but serves a limited community and is vastly underused in consequence. Extending that part of the system would make sense, but faced considerable community opposition because the planned extensions were so poor. (Residents in Ultimo and Pyrmont, for example, can walk faster anywhere they want to go in the CBD than waiting around for a tram was going to help with.)

So thank goodness the foresighted planners this time have also included another 33 kilometres of highway to dump cars into the city, and a truncation of bus service.

Three to five years before we take one step forward, two steps back, and three over to the side to wait until something better gets some funding.