jedsetter

ajsadauskas, 6 months ago to fuck_cars

There's a new RMTransit (@RM_Transit) video up about high-speed rail from Melbourne to Sydney.

It's definitely worth checking out. Reece makes the case that more overnight sleeper services and electrification are an important first step: https://youtu.be/IMUcV_nxsWY?si=8reQjPjsrwVTcecx

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.

Between the 1970s and 2010s, the Hume Highway between Melbourne and Sydney was incrementally upgraded to a freeway-standard continuous dual carriageway road: https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/operations/roads-and-waterways/environment-and-heritage/heritage/hume-highway-duplication/history

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.

Not as a multi-billion-dollar megaproject, but as a series of discrete projects to upgrade sections of track to electrified HSR standard: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/24/start-building-now-to-fulfil-sydney-melbourne-high-speed-rail-ambition-labor-urged

That means faster train journeys from Melbourne to Sydney today, with full HSR rolled out incrementally over the longer term.

@fuck_cars #trains #HSR

ajsadauskas, 7 months ago to fuck_cars

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."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/how-planners-got-rozelle-traffic-modelling-horribly-wrong-20231129-p5ensa.html

#roads #traffic #cars @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #motorways #fuckcars