Speaking up for public transport

Commenting on the story: Adelaide’s public transport users need a more powerful voice

David Washington makes an important point about the lack of resourced advocacy for public transport. 

Good on the RAA for doing a very effective job of lobbying for car drivers, but we need a similarly effective process to allow a strong voice for public transport.  

As in the electricity sector where the Australian Energy Regulator makes funds available via Energy Consumers Australia to facilitate consultation with user groups, why can’t we have something similar for public transport?

It would need some creative thinking around how such a mechanism would be funded in order for it not to be a further drain on the public purse. – Michael Leane

By coincidence today we whiled away time spent waiting for the bus on East Ave Clarence Park, counting the cars which had more than one person in them.

Perhaps eight minutes later the number was still at zero. – Cathy Chua

An observation as a bus user. Front a straw count I’ve done from time to time, an estimate of traffic on Payneham Road in the mornings would have about 90% of vehicles with just one person in it.

Each worker in the city driving a car to work also has a daily parking cost of at least $11 and the car does exactly nothing during the day except take up space somewhere.

Perhaps a toll on vehicles that only have a single occupant?

I’m sure face recognition software is sufficiently advance to determine if there is more that one occupant, and number plate recognition software is sufficiently mature to target those clogging the roads. – Trevor Greenfield

A big inducement to travel on any public transport service is simply to make the journey faster.

We were told when the new Seaford line came in to being that it would take only 35 minutes to get into the city.

Dream on! The majority of the services seem to stop at every station.

Surely the system could cater to going express from Oaklands on alternate trains, as stations after Oaklands can be utilised by the Tonsley line.

After a 20 minute drive to Seaford and time to park, plus a train time just under an hour, I find I need to allow two hours for this journey.

Surely scheduling of train services can do better than this. It is not only peak hour travellers that need express services. – Jenny Esots

Congratulations to David Washington for an excellent article about the lack of interest by the RAA and the State Government in improving public transport.

On March 2 the NSW Coalition Government announced that if it wins the state election, 14,000 bus trips per week will be added to bus routes in and around Sydney.  What a difference in attitude to that of our State Government!

As David reported, the general view promoted in Adelaide seems to be that any improvements in public transport must not impinge on the smooth flow of cars.

It appears that some of the proposals coming out of the AdeLINK Tram Project before the last election were even being modified by traffic engineers on that assumption.

Take the example of a tramline to the eastern suburbs, where it was proposed that a tramline along The Parade couldn’t go through the intersection of The Parade and Portrush Road – probably because of the geometry of the intersection which might have meant that cars would have to slow down to allow trams through. 

Yet trams, including the large Glenelg-type trams, passed through that intersection for many years before 1957.

Allowing a lot of tram movements at King William St-North Tce might cause traffic delays – yet experience has shown that motorists soon find alternative routes. Plenty of European cities now have tram and pedestrian-only streets.

Perhaps to demonstrate that the State Government isn’t biased towards cars over public transport, if it decides to put South Road into a long tunnel, then that project should be coupled with the underground rail link under the City that has been promised since the 1950s.

Perhaps the tunnelling machines imported for the job could first be used on the much shorter tunnel needed for the rail link, which would allow our suburban railways to finally properly serve the CBD rather than depositing passengers at its edge on North Terrace.

Car parks are allowed in Grenfell Street – the railway should go near there as well!  – Tom Wilson

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