Light rail opportunity left idling on the track

[MHTransport]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/ ... 00657.html

A FREIGHT line in Sydney's inner west is soon to lie idle, but the NSW Government will not commit to allowing light rail to use it.

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&hl=e ... &z=17&om=1

A shame it is a brilliant idea.

As you can see the spare railway goes right under Lewisham Station.

It goes from Dulwich Hill through to the light rail line in Lierchart and thus onto Pyrmont and then to Central.

[TheGrew]

welcome to the poltics us british have had for years, no one can be bothered to pay for it

[Parkey]

It's the bottom line again. If it doesn't return a large operating profit the acountants think it's not worth running. The net benefit to society is hard to quantify and so it doesn't appear on the books.

In the UK my understanding of the Sheffield and Birmingham trams is that they were apparently "failing" because they needed operating subsidy when they were first opened. They were built through deprived areas to encourage urban regeneration, but as regeneration takes a little while it was some time before they started turning a financial profit. However, looking at the benefits of the regeneration to the local communities brought by the tram one could argue that they were running at a social profit from the very beginning. Unfortunately this didn't stop the British government only looking at the numbers and turning away from light rail, cancelling further tram schemes in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Gosport a couple of years ago.

@*%£!#& bean counters.

Despite this, in Nottingham the trams somehow got built and have actually run at a profit from day one, even running through a run-down area, mostly because of the numerous park & ride facilities they connect to.

[doktorhonig]

Jep.. somehow I wish that fuel becomes much more expensive, because for many people that's the only reason to use public transport.
It's hard enough to find routes through residential areas - if they sell the land, it's lost forever.

[MHTransport]

welcome to the poltics us british have had for years, no one can be bothered to pay for it

In this case the private operator wants it. They are willing to pay for it. And it will be profitable.

The state government hates light-rail. And they can't close the only one because of contracts.

[Parkey]

Unfortunately some politicians are just generally anti-public transport. Margaret Thatcher apparently once said something like "any person who has to take a bus over the age of twenty six should consider themself a failure".

We are lucky to have some politicians, like Ken Livingstone, who understand what significant benefits a good public transport system will bring to a city.

Do you have NIMBYs* in Australia? Or the motoring lobby who hysterically oppose any investment in public transport even though a scheme to remove thousands of car journeys from the roads is to their advantage?

There's a prime example of that particular kind of incoherent "what I reckon" arguing from UK motorists here in a letter about the proposed tram extension in Nottingham, to be found both in the letter and from one of the commentors (guess which one).

*Not In My Back Yard

[doktorhonig]

Unfortunately some politicians are just generally anti-public transport. Margaret Thatcher apparently once said something like "any person who has to take a bus over the age of twenty six should consider themself a failure".

Wow, this woman is probably the worst thing that comes to my mind, when I think about Britain. Rank 2 goes to the Mad Cow Disease.

[Parkey]

You've obviously never heard of morris dancing.

[Ploes]

Unfortunately some politicians are just generally anti-public transport. Margaret Thatcher apparently once said something like "any person who has to take a bus over the age of twenty six should consider themself a failure".

Wow, this woman is probably the worst thing that comes to my mind, when I think about Britain. Rank 2 goes to the Mad Cow Disease.

Margaret Thatcher and Mad Cow Disease are one in the same.


If a Tram can run from Day 1 at a profit when used in conjunction with Park and Ride, doesn't that suggest that we should have more P+R and not less Trams!

[Parkey]

If a Tram can run from Day 1 at a profit when used in conjunction with Park and Ride, doesn't that suggest that we should have more P+R and not less Trams!

You'd think so...

[Kevo00]

Transport to people's door is way better than P&R though as P&R encourages more car journeys. Local councils in the UK are P&Revangalists; yet for the same price they could probably sponsor 10 minute frequency bus routes with £1 fares that would stop car journeys at source.

[Parkey]

Transport to people's door is way better than P&R though as P&R encourages more car journeys. Local councils in the UK are P&Revangalists; yet for the same price they could probably sponsor 10 minute frequency bus routes with £1 fares that would stop car journeys at source.

I think you're right in saying that public transport to people's door is better than P&R, but the trouble is that a lot of the population don't live in towns and cities but dispersed over large areas of countryside where regular public transport links are impractical because the demand is spread too thinly. P&R gives people who have to drive to access cities an alternative to trying to squeeze down congested roads all the way into the city centres.

A mix of solutions is needed and I think Nottingham Express Transit has the best recipe. The line (soon to be lines) has a good catchment area in itself, it has feeder buses and interchanges, but it also has P&R facilities which have contributed a lot to its popularity. If that financial success means that lines 2 & 3 get built so much the better.

[doktorhonig]

Exactly! I live in a rather rural area, with villages of about 1k to 2k inhabitants. There's one station where express trains stop, and it is nearly impossible to get a parking space on solid ground after 8 a.m.
If I take a bus to the station and wait 10 minutes for the train to Vienna, I'm faster with a bus to Vienna.

In Austria we have a funny tram line, the Badner Bahn. It's nearly 30 km long and goes from the center of Vienna to a city (Baden) with about 25k people. I always wondered how it could be profitable, but the area along the tram is very popular, and many people use it. It's a classic suburban line, probably similar to the one in Australia. I wish, we had more of these trams.

[Ploes]

Transport to people's door is way better than P&R though as P&R encourages more car journeys. Local councils in the UK are P&Revangalists; yet for the same price they could probably sponsor 10 minute frequency bus routes with £1 fares that would stop car journeys at source.

I wouldn't say that! It would have the same number of journeys... just shorter as they stop at the P&R site, not the center of town!

Of course door to door transit is better in an ideal world, but as is mentioned the distribution of people is the problem.

[Parkey]

I think public transport campaigners do their cause a lot of damage by appearing "anti-car" and advocating public transport as the solution to every journey. The best policy is to make a sensible decision on what mode to use depending on the journey.

The areas that are likely to have severely congested roads, such as city centres, are generally the ideal high-demand environment for public transport. Conversely, Nowhere-in-the-sticks village green is not likely to have a congestion problem, so car usage really isn't a problem there.

[Kevo00]

The reason for my P&R comment is that in my hometown, Durham City the Local Authority has poured a fortune into P&R with subsidised bus routes while Arriva bus routes in the area are left to decline with dwindling subsidy and high fares. Most of the villages people are coming from are actually pretty big and are in effect suburbs that have fields between them and the city centre. I suspect this is probably the case with many UK cities that have large dormitory towns near them. Hence it would be better just to have affordable frequent buses (or even light rail) to where people live rather than tarmacing up the fields around the city which make it so attractive.

By the way, driving to these carparks and simply walking into town is strictly discouraged. So much for the green and public health agenda!!!

[Ploes]

By the way, driving to these carparks and simply walking into town is strictly discouraged. So much for the green and public health agenda!!!

Well its not Park and Ride then is it! That would be Park and Walk.... Cant have false advertising now can we!

[Dave]

Don't knock Margaret Thatcher.

Without her, your avatar wouldn't be possible, Parkey.

EDIT: There are other reasons why you shouldn't immediately write off Thatcher.

[Parkey]

The only good thing I can think of about Thatcher, apart from conceding the bit about the ECML electrification to Dave (grrr), was that for her the railways were a privatisation too far. As I understand it she pretty much left them alone. More than can be said for the prime minister who followed her.

The main reason I'm so averse to hearing about her is that I once ended up sat next to some guy on a FGW train out of Paddington who JUST WOULDN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT HER. It was also an even date with a full moon in June of the year of the hamster so course there massive delays on the FGW HSTs. I had to get the stopping service and this guy talked and talked all the way to Didcot. OH GOD IT HURTS!

[Kevo00]

Ironically Thatch was the best PM to run nationalised industries because she had to make them profitable to sell-off.

Without her bold economic policies its likely that the current growth in rail demand would never have materialised, thus denying Parkey the opportunity to rant about the need to increase capacity.