transport- past losses and future planning

[Nathanael]

saw this article on 'the Indepdendent Weekly' website (not sure if posted elsewhere). Thought it was interesting reading, (although didn't propose any real solutions)

"
Traffic tragedies
DON RIDDELL
12/08/2008 12:22:00 PM
Let’s take a simple proposition: Adelaide and SA transport systems are a mess.

That may be a bit unkind and some pieces here and there work quite well. But overall, we’re not living within a perfect plan. If we started off now we’d do so many things so very differently. We wouldn’t have two rail gauges and we wouldn’t have torn up the network we once had.

We wouldn’t thunder great B-double trucks through our genteel suburbs. (That’s not just a swelling of sympathy for the trammelled burghers of Burnside along over-worked Portrush Road.

Big trucks shouldn’t go through anyone’s suburb.) We wouldn’t have chucked out almost all of our trams.

We wouldn’t have built roads on our sensitive dunes. We wouldn’t have made the motor car almost compulsory. We wouldn’t have systems like O-Bahns on only one line and we certainly wouldn’t have a part-time expressway. The Britannia roundabout? Never heard of it.

On the other hand, we would have sorted out our balance of road and rail. We would have extended our state rail network and electrified the expanded suburban systems. We would have arranged clear traffic routes between the north and south of the city.

We would have kept the bits of the fabled 1968 MATS (Metropolitan Adelaide Transportation Study) Plan that weren’t over the top. (It had through routes and rail tunnels under the city that were great, but it also had an enormous spaghetti of roadway engineering roadworks that, taken as a whole, would have turned us into a little and lamentable Los Angeles.) We would have looked after the south of the city as well as fiddling about in the north. And while we were at it, we would have done something sensible or even exciting with Victoria Square. Please add or delete your own transport dreams or nightmares.

Sadly, we don’t have the chance to go back to scratch. But it looks as though over the next couple of years at least some people are going to try. In the state government advertisements buried in the back of the ’Tiser a week or so ago, was a call for interested members of industry to be briefed on what were called Major Transport Planning Studies 2008-2010.

Members of industry should be interested, all right. They’re the people who will build anything that emerges from the studies – well, those bits the government likes and can afford. The briefing, by the Department for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure, was held yesterday. The first item was a gem: Future Public Transport Network – rail, tram and bus initiatives.

The real problem is that Adelaide is the wrong shape, long and thin, with its own tyranny of distance between north and south. It’s why, however well we look after the outer suburbs, we have to keep those facilities we can’t afford to duplicate in the centre where we can all get to them – and serve them well with public transport. These facilities range from the major hospital, theatre, concert hall, art gallery and museum to cricket and football ovals and aquatic centre. West Lakes is absurd for football and Marion for swimming.

In recent months we’ve heard a lot about extending our one glorious tram line to the Entertainment Centre where, presumably, people will be able to park and take the tram back to the city and any other place on a direct line to Glenelg. It would then seem to supplant or co-exist with the heavy rail line down to Outer Harbor with, sadly, a peel-off to the serve AAMI Stadium. The O-Bahn still stands alone. Surely it should be a connected tram line.

The southern suburbs still seem to be enveloped by the car. However, the planning studies do include a couple of positives. The first is a Park’n’Ride Interchange and Transport Oriented

Development on an extended Tonsley Rail Line. This one has got up to the design stage a couple of times, with the last one settling on buses with a walkway over South Road to Flinders Medical Centre and University.

The second one would answer a lot of southern prayers – Extension of the Noarlunga rail line to

Seaford and Aldinga over the Onkaparinga (and why not to McLaren Vale?). This is one the government has been trying to avoid, mainly because of the cost of a bridge over the Onkaparinga at a point where, unobligingly, it swells out to a wide flood plain.

Two South Road upgrades are in the studies – South Road / Sturt Road and the part from the Port River Expressway to Grand Junction Road. These would seem to be items that will depend on budgets.

But the truly intriguing one is the Adelaide Hills Rail Study. This is as wide as you like. It must include finally restoring the passenger service beyond Belair to the rapidly growing Mount Barker. The rail gauges are a curse. Belair to Mount Barker is now standard gauge and our suburban passenger trains use a wider track. Would we duplicate the lines or use special standard gauge trains for this service?

At the same time we should work out whether to change the remnants of our country networks to standard gauge. If we could add in some national thinking, it would be wonderful to divert the main line to Melbourne at the River Murray and take the freight trains across the bottom of the Barossa Valley to meet the Adelaide to Darwin/Perth/Sydney line north of Adelaide. A special rail-road centre would promise all sorts of short-run advantages. Taking it further, a major road could run beside this rail diversion to take the B-doubles. The Burnside battlers would be free again.

There’s a hint that a little bit of this thinking is going on. A grade separation of the national and domestic rail lines at Torrens Junction is down for special study. It would have been so much easier to do half a century ago before someone thought it would be cheaper to buy buses than relay the tram tracks and someone else declared war on our country rail services"

[Somebody]

Yawn @ park and ride.

Whoever wrote that is an idiot - if they had ever travelled over the freight line past Belair they wouldn't be such a massive fan of the idea of it being a useful public transport corridor, lol.

[Waewick]

Personally I think we are on the right track (sort of) in terms of intrastrucutre

If it was me in charge I would be a lot more agressive - if we can't afford it cut back on non-essential serivces until we have a trnasport system that serves public and privately alot better (for example a tram network that actually exists)

[monotonehell]

Some of what they say is true, but it's mostly wide general stuff that's news to no one. They also make several ignorant statements that show they know very little about transport patterns and use around certain areas of the city.

Oh and ... Suggesting that the OBahn should be a tram line is just WRONG WRONG WRONG! *has tanty*

By the way you might want to hit the edit button and replace all the non-HTML characters.
(swap all the left and right quotes and left and right inverted commas for straight " and ' - replace the em dashes with normal hyphens etc. That'll get rid of all wobbly bits)

Hey and welcome to the forum!

[frank1]

Oh and ... Suggesting that the OBahn should be a tram line is just WRONG WRONG WRONG! *has tanty*

yeah true, but like i said ages ago, it should be converted in rail that turns into an underground line through the city and eventually connects with the existing city station. This new rail line could also be extended further north towards elizabeth on the already set aside land (land planned for future OBahn extension when first built).

[Düsseldorfer]

a lot of what was mentioned has already been planned in the 08/09 state budget which should be finished by 2018, and obviously fixing Adelaide's transportation won't magically happen overnight, it will take years. But my thoughts on future planning and what needs to be done has been discussed below::

With the road system, it is adequate for the needs of Adelaide at present, but in the future if our population increases to 2million we will see massive problems on many of our main roads, i think all the major intersections just need to be converted into underpasses/overpasses which should make traffic flow a lot better. Also bicycle transport needs to be encouraged a lot more, the bike lanes need to be replaced with separate bicycle roads, also in city and suburban areas, bike lanes need to be on the footpaths and not on the road (a bike hitting a pedestrian would cause minor injuries, but a car/truck hitting a cyclist could be deadly only for the person on the bike).

The bus network is pretty much ok, just need to install automated stop announcements on all buses with electronic displays (i also hope Adelaide metro get rid of that gay stopping chime that is currently used, which on some buses is almost deafening and serves no real purpose), bus stops could also do with a bit of a tidy up with; shelters, timetables, stop names instead of numbers...

The Train network needs rebuilding completely, new track, electrification, new trains, new stations, underground city loop, new lines, and trains to regional areas, and i wish they would install PA systems at all railway stations like in Sydney instead of that talking box that either never works or never shuts up (hopefully in 10 years this will all be done).

The Tram network or should i say, the tram line (singular), needs better signaling in the city and quicker access to Mosley Sq, traffic lights in Adelaide need to be adjusted so trams aren't constantly stopping and starting it is really bad when it takes 20 min just to travel from south terrace to north tce, tram stops need electronic displays showing the exact amount of time until the next tram, more trams are also needed (which are apparently ordered and second hand ones are on the way), more tram lines should also be expected in the near future.

and i've probably said all this b4 in other threads

[DM8]

We would have kept the bits of the fabled 1968 MATS (Metropolitan Adelaide Transportation Study) Plan that weren't over the top. (It had through routes and rail tunnels under the city that were great, but it also had an enormous spaghetti of roadway engineering roadworks that, taken as a whole, would have turned us into a little and lamentable Los Angeles.)

It gives me the shits when I hear people come out with this crap. After actually having looked at the MATS plan and the design drawings, it would have made Adelaide more like Perth. Los Angeles is a ridiculous comparison.

[Shuz]

Perth or Melbourne is a better comparison to make regarding the scale of the MATS plan today, however at the time it was concieved - Adelaide was only a city of about 7 or 8 hundred thousand inhabitants, it hadn't a million people yet - and the scale of the plan at the time comparitive to the city's size was very comparable to Los Angeles, for it exceeded the capacity to which it needed to serve (bearing in mind it was to cater for a 1.3m city by 2000).

I wonderif another large-scale transport plan proposed today- similar or different would be approached with welcomed vision and excitement, or fierce opposition?

[frank1]

I wonderif another large-scale transport plan proposed today- similar or different would be approached with welcomed vision and excitement, or fierce opposition?

It wouldn't happen. Political parties now days are only interested in the next election, not long term planning. Plus think of the outcry from the nimby's for such a proposal ' we need more hospitals.....'.

[monotonehell]

I wonderif another large-scale transport plan proposed today- similar or different would be approached with welcomed vision and excitement, or fierce opposition?

It wouldn't happen. Political parties now days are only interested in the next election, not long term planning. Plus think of the outcry from the nimby's for such a proposal ' we need more hospitals.....'.

But we do need more hospitals... along with transport infrastructure.

[frank1]

I wonderif another large-scale transport plan proposed today- similar or different would be approached with welcomed vision and excitement, or fierce opposition?

It wouldn't happen. Political parties now days are only interested in the next election, not long term planning. Plus think of the outcry from the nimby's for such a proposal ' we need more hospitals.....'.

But we do need more hospitals... along with transport infrastructure.

I think you will find that adelaide city and the metro area has enough hospitals to serve our population. If you mean adelaide hospitals need better equipment, facilities, more staff, etc, yeah then i agree with you.

[Norman]

OK Herr Dusseldorfer, here is my direct reply to you. I wrote this at Uni today already but it all went kaput. So here I go again...

EDIT: The system doesn't seem to like Umlauts

Dusseldorfer said:
With the road system, it is adequate for the needs of Adelaide at present, but in the future if our population increases to 2million we will see massive problems on many of our main roads, i think all the major intersections just need to be converted into underpasses/overpasses which should make traffic flow a lot better. Also bicycle transport needs to be encouraged a lot more, the bike lanes need to be replaced with separate bicycle roads, also in city and suburban areas, bike lanes need to be on the footpaths and not on the road (a bike hitting a pedestrian would cause minor injuries, but a car/truck hitting a cyclist could be deadly only for the person on the bike).

I agree with the underpasses/overpasses idea, this should be done all down South Road and Anzac Highway, as well as at the Oaklands Interchange. I can't comment on any other intersections because these are the only ones I'm familiar with.


Dusseldorfer said:
The bus network is pretty much ok, just need to install automated stop announcements on all buses with electronic displays (i also hope Adelaide metro get rid of that gay stopping chime that is currently used, which on some buses is almost deafening and serves no real purpose), bus stops could also do with a bit of a tidy up with; shelters, timetables, stop names instead of numbers...[/quote]
I personally think the bus network is pretty much perfect. It's evolved to be at a good standard. Still a few things that can be improved, but other than that, it's just right. I don't think the stop numbers should be converted to names, there are simply not enough names that can be used to describe every stop, especially when suburban sprawl is prevalent here. Smart Stops should also be more widespread, but not at every stop. maybe all the timed stops (which there should be more of) and more in the inner suburbs, but what's the point of a smart stop out in whoop-whoop. Maybe more express buses in the hills, that would be good.

But what's wrong with the chime? I don't see any problems with it... I think the faint "Ding" used on other buses is far too faint for our ageing population.


Dusseldorfer said:
The Train network needs rebuilding completely, new track, electrification, new trains, new stations, underground city loop, new lines, and trains to regional areas, and i wish they would install PA systems at all railway stations like in Sydney instead of that talking box that either never works or never shuts up (hopefully in 10 years this will all be done).

Well, electrification is coming, along with new sleepers and many sections re-railed (the tram is almost completely re-sleepered and re-railed now for example, and it's smooth as hell now). This is what we can expect with the train system. In terms of PA announcers and displays, while they do need more displays at more stations, they shouldn't be used at all of them. Places like Kudla, Belair and Lonsdale would have theirs graffitied in no time. I think about 1/2 of the stations is sufficient. The voice announcers should be replaced by something better, that I have to agree with. I do wonder how the old system lasted so much longer and aged far more gracefully. Rail Real Time, to be frank, is shit.


Dusseldorfer said:
The Tram network or should i say, the tram line (singular), needs better signaling in the city and quicker access to Mosley Sq, traffic lights in Adelaide need to be adjusted so trams aren't constantly stopping and starting it is really bad when it takes 20 min just to travel from south terrace to north tce, tram stops need electronic displays showing the exact amount of time until the next tram, more trams are also needed (which are apparently ordered and second hand ones are on the way), more tram lines should also be expected in the near future.

Signalling should be improved, yes. Things they can do include building more overpasses at major intersections (Marion Road, Goodwood Road, Greenhill Road, Morphett Road). Display information should also be introduced at all tram stops. This would make relaying information and delays much easier and efficient.

[Düsseldorfer]

EDIT: The system doesn't seem to like Umlauts

hahaha wow that made me laugh "FATAL ERROR" (Wahrscheinlich etwas zu tun mit dem neuen Server)

but thanks for your direct reply Herr Norman.

[Norman]

EDIT: The system doesn't seem to like Umlauts

hahaha wow that made me laugh "FATAL ERROR" (Wahrscheinlich etwas zu tun mit dem neuen Server)

but thanks for your direct reply Herr Norman.

I'll just nickname you Dummkopfer

[jk1237]

the traffic light sequence at King William/Franklin, K W/Grote, and K W/Gouger, give the last priority for trams, and this makes me so annoyed. It should be the other way around. Its ridiculous