Over at Auckland Trains Jon C notes: “the Western Line performance stats for January were 36.1% punctionality. Southern was only 73%.”
In other words on the Western Line 2 in every 3 trains is late. And on the Southern it is better but still 1 in every 4 trains is late. How can this be even remotely acceptable performance?
I did a quick check of the Sydney train performance stats, for January they had a 97.4% on time performance. 1 train in every 40 is late. That is 10x better performance than the best that Auckland can deliver. And yet people in Sydney are constantly moaning about the poor performance of the rail network.
A major shakeup needs to happen with Auckland’s rail network. Being electrified by 2013 is too far away, by then no one will be left to use the service.
Jon at Auckland Trains covers from a New Zealand perspective the release of the new transport plan for Sydney.
The main features of her plan:
The $4.5 billion Western Express CityRail Service to slash travelling times from western Sydney to the city. It will achieve faster and more frequent services with a goal of up to 50 per cent more services and 17 per cent more passengers on the CityRail network on an average weekday. This will occur through: Separating a dedicated track from all other traffic;
Construction of a new five kilometre priority tunnel –City Relief Line – will be built from 2015 in the city to separate western services from inner-city trains to provide shorter journey times;
Construction of eight new platforms to increase capacity at Redfern, Central, Town Hall and Wynyard to relieve congestion;
New express train services will be introduced for the Blue Mountains, Richmond, Penrith, Blacktown and Parramatta; and Increase CityRail’s capacity on all lines and allow the introduction of express rail services to western Sydney.
Start of work on the $6.7 billion North West rail link from Epping to Rouse Hill with six stations at Franklin Road, Castle Hill, Hills Centre, Norwest, Burns Road and Rouse Hill in 2017;
A $500 million expansion of the current light rail system – bringing its total length to 16.9 kilometres with up to 20 new stations and almost 10 kilometres of new track – a more than doubling of the distance of the existing route.
I added my two cents to the discussion on his blog:
Having just moved to Sydney from Auckland only three weeks ago I have had to quickly adjust from using a car on a daily basis to having to use a bus on a daily basis and a train about twice a week.
The public transport system here is a lot bigger than Auckland and is a lot better in same ways, having said that at rush hour it is a nightmare.
There are two key problems. The first is the centralisation of all routes at the city centre, there needs to be a lot more cross town services both buses and trains. Second a lot of major bus routes need to be replaced by high capacity trains or light rail.
The shelving of the metro is a good idea. However they need to get all buses off the central CBD and replace them with trams/light rail like Melbourne, they also need to extend the train from Bondi Junction down to the South Sydney Beaches and then back up ANZAC parade to Central, this would reduce massive congestion through this area of Sydney which has been left out of this new plan.
As far as the west and north go I haven’t been there much but the investment needs to go in rail not roads and not buses.
And there you have it, my first blog on Australian politics, albeit a bit of cut and paste.
I have now been in Sydney for 11 days and every night I have planned to blog about the first few days here and every day I have been too tired or too busy. Tonight I am in the too tired camp but have decided to force myself to give an update and get over and done with it.
I arrived in Sydney two Saturdays ago at 8.30 in the morning, after leaving Auckland at 7am (which meant a 3am get up time for the flight). We arrived into Sydney at the same time as about 10 other flights which meant it was chaos trying to get our bags and get through customs. In the end it took close to an hour and a half to get out and into the rental car hire queue. The rental car I got was a 2009 Toyota Corolla and by far the smoothest and nicest car I have ever driven.
The first few days in Sydney were spent getting my new flat/apartment set up. It is amazing how much money you can spend in just getting the basics – like food, cooking equipment, and basic furniture. In between all this chaos I also managed to do a few things that got me to see a bit of my new home these included:
Going to Opera in the Domain with a friend who I had not seen in 9 years.
Going to Hillsong Church
Going to Penrith – driving at a speed limit of 110kmh is a new experience.
The second part of my first week here was spent sorting out things like insurance and the like. The most interesting part of this was sorting out Medicare where I had to make a signed legal declaration that I had moved from NZ for good and was living in Australia for the next few years – the guy at the office didn’t seem to believe me even though I had all my uni forms with me! Thought I was some crazy kid on holiday. I also managed to get a cellphone and internet set up. After terrible customer service from Optus I went to Vodafone who set me up with this awesome mobile broadband USB stick which is faster than my old wired broadband in NZ. Although a much smaller data cap so I have to take care about how much data I use.
My second weekend in Sydney was spent having fun in the rain as some of the heaviest rainfall in years hit the city. On Saturday I went out to Bondi Junction shopping mall. Bondi Junction is massive. Imagine the Albany Mall and times it by 2 just for the ground floor, and then make it seven stories high. There is something like 450 shops in the mall. And you know what. I walked through the entire mall and only went into 2 of them! They were nearly all clothes shops – the last thing I need when I am trying to get set up for uni on a budget. On the Sunday I decided to look through town and found this most amazing hobby store in the QVB mall called Hobbyco.
Monday and today was spent at Uni. There is nothing that exciting to report here about my course – Mostly what I was expecting with a few minor hiccups around enrolment. What is amazing though is the size of the campus. Having come from Massey Albany with only around 6000 – 7000 students it is so weird to be on campus with close to 50,000. There is a sign at the front gate that welcomes the 9,000 new first year students! Almost twice the numbers of the entire Massey Albany campus.
The one thing that I will get sick of very quickly, and already am, is having to catch the bus to campus. I have not had to use public transport in years and while the Sydney transport network is far better than Auckland – I love the underground trains, the buses remain as noisy, as crowded, as bumpy, as slow, and as annoying as ever. Given that I have no plans, or money for a car for around a year I guess it is something that I am going to get used to – I just wish there was a train to campus rather than a bus!
P.S. I may have used to complain about the humidity during summer in Auckland but it is nothing compared to heat here. Last night was 25c overnight it makes it so hard to sleep!
I have arrived in Sydney and getting set up before starting university next week.
After four days of being in the 90s (aka the stone age) I now have a mobile phone and mobile broadband internet – it is quick too:
I have many photos to sort through and put online at some point as well as that a much larger blog to write detailing the first few days of my new life. In the meantime I will leave you to wonder how I managed to drive 600km in a rental car in 3 days without leaving Sydney.
I have just arrived back in Auckland, too tired to really blog, will hopefully later tomorrow. But here are today’s photos showing the lesser dust storm that hit Sydney this morning. The last two photos are of my car parked at Auckland Airport with dust on the windscreen from when the storm hit Auckland yesterday.
Randwick during the Dust Storm
A very tired Brad, around 6.50am during the Dust Storm
Sydney Airport during the Dust Storm
This is the sun, not the moon during the Dust Storm
Okay so I woke at 5am AEST this morning because it was 7am in NZST. I used my computer for a bit, had breakfast and then walked down to Coogee Beach, what a stunning morning, not a cloud in the sky. Warm but not boiling hot, almost no breeze and for 730 in the morning a huge number of people about, in coffee shops, walking on the beach, and going to work and school. Also there is still a lot of cars with dust on them from the other day. They look like everyone has gone for the weekend in the bush/outback.
