Whoopsie! Sydney's road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.
For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney's Central Business District.
It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it's turned into a giant car park:
"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.
"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.
"Those travel delays have now blown out."
So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?
'Dude! Just one more lane!'
From the article:
"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.
"That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks."
@fuck_cars@sydneytrains@urbanism@ajsadauskas That is about the right level of freeway for a city (entire MSA) of about a million people. I believe that the picture is for a city population of 7 million.
You really need to put a sarcasm tag on that. I almost got whiplash.
My city is doing the same thing. They let developers build out exclaves around the city and then ask the city to annex it. There seems to be no limit to how stupid the city council is about this. The latest one is on a hill with no water, police, fire, or school services that got annexed. Now the city has to build out everything. The ROI to the city is in the range of centuries based on the tax revenues. Add in that it’s 100% commercial district free and now we’ve added an eternal car snake on a tiny two lane road into town.
We’ve gotta start building some mixed use density or all of this infrastructure is going to collapse.
They probably assumed this is like a theme park or something and not an actual city that people actually live in year round. Cities having nice, people friendly places away from cars? Who’s ever heard of that?
TL;DR: Norway subsidised electric cars a lot, that money went to the rich more than the poor, and left them with less money to spend on transit which delivers better outcomes for cities.
New York City’s congestion pricing program is moving forward with a $15 fee on passenger vehicles, reports Stephen Nessen in Gothamist, after the MTA board voted to approve it. The program now enters a 60-day public comment period before a final vote....
My two cents on the topic is that HSR from Melbourne to Sydney should implemented as a series of incremental upgrades, rather than a single megaproject.
It wasn't done as single megaproject. Instead, it was done in small segments. A bypass around a town. A section of road between two town upgraded to dual carriageway. Eventually, over 40 years, the whole road was upgraded.
We should be doing the same thing with the train line from Melbourne to Sydney.
Hey @RM_Transit not sure if you're aware but nsw trainlink who run the syd-Melb xpt have placed an order to replace the xpts and it doesn't include sleeper carriages. I think that would've been worth including in your vid because it really kicks the can on expanding sleeper service another 30 years down the road. It's not insurmountable, but it's difficult to see expanding sleeper service as a viable way fwd when we have brand new carriages that don't have that function.
I think a bit of advocacy and awareness around that issue would be helpful!
@ajsadauskas@RM_Transit@fuck_cars totally agree. there is no excuse for work not to start immediately on upgrading the tracks between Campbelltown and Mittagong. That will have significant benefits for freight and passenger services to both Canberra and Melbourne
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