Is being able to drive freely actually improve 'quality of life'? Having more than one option of how to get someplace is an improvement in quality of life, whether it be driving or taking the tram. However, consider the growth in housing development out Kellyville way following the opening of the M2. Affordable housing plus ready access to the city provided by the M2 has been beneficial to the people and families who moved there - now all they need is a train line...

And you're not exactly doing anything to reduce your ecological footprint. Also we've got to look long term - oil is an infinite resource, petrol is not going to be around forever, we need to start planning solutions for this now. Bring on antimatter technology! In the meantime, I think a bunch of cars travelling 80km/h in the M4 East tunnel would use much less petrol and produce less polution than sitting stationary on Parrammatta Road - induced demand arguments aside.

Auckland has a worse public transport system is even more shocking. The fact that the public transport is abysmal encouraging ppl to drive. That's why their freeways suffer congestion.
I think Auckland had about 5 buses and 3 train carriages in its entire PT arsenal at last count. :) The big trouble is spaghetti junction in the CBD where there is only four lanes of fwy to service the entire North Auckland and top of the North Island - over 100,000 behicles a day. The 2nd harbour crossing should help alleviate the burden but what they really need is a couple more train carriages.

Actually population growth occurs when people grow up and make babies, more than one per person to be exact, plus the dozen or so immigrants Howard lets into the country.

And the babies of 17 years ago become the drivers of tomorrow.

If you looked at population research you would see that the population is projected to peak once baby boomers start to die. Roads and PT infrastructure should be built with this figure in mind.

After an 18 year lag. And of course, the Government will surely open the floodgates again at some point in the next decade or two should we still have some semblance of a growth economy.

Don’t be so quick to assume people will automatically jump into their cars.

Don't be so quick to assume that people in Sydney have much choice but to drive part of the way already. Once they are in their car, if they can get further without stepping out of their car, they will. That will have a knock-on effect overall, which will not be at all desirable.

The upgrade I speak of includes, as I said, a “comprehensive PT system” which would help minimise induced traffic growth and keep people in trains.

Doesn't work that way. Sorry. There is no such thing as balanced transport investment and I don't believe there ever has been in living memory. The status quo (90%+ car/truck, <10% other) is proof of that.

If anything, balanced transport should involve massive investment in PT and some closure of roads to get freight and passenger traffic closer to 50-50. However, the status quo is not sustainable now, adding more car traffic by building more roads is insane and despicable policy.

I dont favour one over the other, but think there should be huge investment in BOTH.

No thanks.

That's why businesses need decent roads to stay in business.

Wrong. We're talking about businesses that do not exist yet, or that already get by quite well in better locations. They can't stay in business because they are not yet in business. Those who moved there in anticipation of a road being built are leeching on the public purse and deserve to go bust. As for dealing with growth, there are far better options, not that growth is an option for much longer.

A classic example is Auckland, where some companies are considering shifting their Asia-Pac operations to Australia because the city’s shocking fwy system is costing them time and money.

Auckland's freeway system is far superior to Sydney's. They don't even pretend to run useful Public Transport services in Auckland. They could close it all tomorrow, Britomart and all, and there would be no discernable effect.

Not sure who appointed you god over people’s free will, but as far as I’m concerned, people should have options to choose from in order to maximise the quality of their short lives on this earth.

Quality of life has nothing to do with free flowing long distance traffic. If you think it is, I think you need to evaluate whether you are in fact addicted to oil. As for planning societies based on depleting and insecure resources, well, that is more than a tad unwise.

That may be so, on the other hand, it might have made a handy rail/light rail/busway/anything else corridor too.

No way. There are six tracks not far to the south that carry less people than double track subways all over the world.

"Third Harbour Crossing", 10 years maximum.

Peak Oil excluded.

That is true, on the other hand it is also a loss to anyone who could think of another use for the corridor, as undoubtedly it still wouldn't be developed, governments unable to built any sort of infrastructure at a reasonable pace in this country.

When prices are extremely high, even politicians can find it easier to make the right decisions.

The current proposal is 0.5 - start at Strathfield, split at Ashfield with half the tunnel going to surface at Parramatta Road (and one day connect with the RTAs latest invention, a motorway tunnel to Port Botany) [quote]

Perhaps the inner ring road will be a bit further out than I had thought.

[QUOTE=hornetfig]The government is all ready to sell if off as housing. It's kind of disgusting, they may as well build the freeway through it as turn it into millions of terminate mounds.

To be fair, building a genuine freeway there would overwhelm the Anzac Bridge. Building housing in the rail yard is probably preferable, as it would prevent the need to double stack the Anzac Bridge and Western Distributor. Those four sets of lights will help to moderate the traffic flow.

However, Parramatta Road already does a very good job of this, so the purpose of the M4 East still remains unclear.

Grade separation would go down, the City-West Link is built over or beside and above the Goods Yard. No more goods yard = "great" place for roadway

Sydney Light Rail would get in the way, would it not? It's immediately under the City West Link.

But even more people drive through the city (hence Cross City Tunnel in the first place).

Weekend traffic through the city would not by any stretch of the imagination overwhelm the capacity of the city streets themselves. What was the purpose of the CCT again?

After an 18 year lag. And of course, the Government will surely open the floodgates again at some point in the next decade or two should we still have some semblance of a growth economy.
ok so lets not do any further development just in case theres a change in immigration policy in 20 years time in your pretend world.

Auckland's freeway system is far superior to Sydney's.
LOL thanks for that - I needed a good laugh. If you call one 4-6 lane fwy servicing the entire length of the city with >1 million people 'superior', you need to buy a new dictionary. That fwy is absolute crap, jammed full of cars - even outside peak times - because of poor planning and bottlenecks, meaning it can take hours to travel a distance of 40km. But still far superior to Sydney if you say so. The NZ govt is slowly fixing it but is strapped for cash, which is why it spends so much less on roads and infrastructure than other OECD countries.

Quality of life has nothing to do with free flowing long distance traffic. If you think it is, I think you need to evaluate whether you are in fact addicted to oil.
You cant impose your own definition of quality of life on the entire population. If quicker travel times dont do it for you, you obviously dont place a high value value on your time. One thing I do know is that if a father has the option of getting home from work half-an-hour earlier to see his kids before they go to bed, thats quality. If you can jump on the fwy to drive your pregnant wife to a private hospital to give birth, thats quality. In your world she'd be giving birth on the train.

Auckland has two freeways serving the city, much like Perth in such respects I'd imagine. Population is reasonably similar. Perth still suffers congestion problems, despite having reputedly the best (or 2nd best) roads in Australia.

And in my world we would be living less than 10 minutes drive from the hospital - without the use of freeways.

ok so lets not do any further development just in case theres a change in immigration policy in 20 years time in your pretend world.

Huh? I've still not seen any serious evidence that there will be a significant drop in our population either here or elsewhere. Yes, the boomers die out. That doesn't result in much of a drop, if any, it's just a demographic glut.

Heck, just a few years ago we had 18 million people in Australia, now there is more than 20.

LOL thanks for that - I needed a good laugh. If you call one 4-6 lane fwy servicing the entire length of the city with >1 million people 'superior', you need to buy a new dictionary.

LOL! Sydney has more, however relative to the population and accounting for the fact that Sydney's freeways are basically half way through the salami tactics phase whereas Auckland's made it all the way downtown, Auckland's are superior to Sydney's.

That fwy is absolute crap, jammed full of cars - even outside peak times

So is the M5, so is the M4, so is the F3, what's your point?

because of poor planning and bottlenecks, meaning it can take hours to travel a distance of 40km.

Good. You don't want to encourage people to drive long distances by making it easy. You discourage it by letting usage growth negatively affect the users directly in a perfectly equitable and painful way until it affects underlying social trends.

The NZ govt is slowly fixing it but is strapped for cash, which is why it spends so much less on roads and infrastructure than other OECD countries.

LOL! How many thousands of homes are planned to be demolished for the current silly plan? And won't world oil have peaked before it opens?

You cant impose your own definition of quality of life on the entire population. If quicker travel times dont do it for you, you obviously dont place a high value value on your time.

OK, let's look at this another way. People can live without injecting heroin into their blood. However, if you ask anyone who regularly injects heroin into their blood whether heroin should be free and plentiful, of course they will say it should be. Then if you ask them why, you might get something about how it's just better. Or perhaps an admission that it's not healthy but that there is no alternative, because that might mean going through withdrawal symptoms. After a while of using it, you need to use more and more and you want that supply to increase and the cost of buying and/or using it to decrease ideally because you are addicted and you need more.

Would someone who is not addicted or who uses it occasionally or very sparingly saying that perhaps you should get off the drugs be unacceptably "imposing their own definition of quality of life" onto the addict? How about someone suggesting that perhaps four shots of heroin a week is enough? Even if all the medical evidence says that none is best, how would you approach an addict or a large number of addicts?

And more particularly, how do you approach addicts who are harming their own children by raising them into an addict's culture, setting a rite of passage when they can buy their own stash (get their license), shoot up themselves (buy a car), when the results of using it can result in kids dying, being serious injury or at best growing up stunted (being run over outside school or anywhere really, crash risk, general lack of activity, pollution)? And it also negatively affects the quality of life for non-addicts who have to walk around in a land of addicts or deal with the effects of growing up into the addict's culture.

One thing I do know is that if a father has the option of getting home from work half-an-hour earlier to see his kids before they go to bed, thats quality.

And yet he's working long hours to pay off the car, right?

If you can jump on the fwy to drive your pregnant wife to a private hospital to give birth, thats quality. In your world she'd be giving birth on the train.

No, she'd probably check in earlier, or gone to a local hospital since they wouldn't have been abolished and merged into larger hospitals thanks to freeways. And besides, Ambulances can generally get around traffic. They drive up and down on the tram tracks around here all the time.

Unless everyone turns catholic, population WILL start to decrease when boomers start dying. This is a fact that governments worldwide are increasingly incorporating into their superannuation and old age pension models. Take the avg child per couple ratio and do the math. Dont forget to adjust for peak oil.

So is the M5, so is the M4, so is the F3, what's your point?The M5, M4 and F3 DO NOT consistently get jammed up outside of peak times. My point is that Akl fwy is worse than every Australian capital city with avg peak speeds of only 36km/h. An example of the poor planning is where the nthbound carriageway goes from five lanes at Newmarket to two lanes within the space of 800m, prior to entering spaghetti junction in the CBD. If you had actually lived there and worked in the Akl CBD you would fully understand how bad it really is and why it needs urgent rectification.

LOL! How many thousands of homes are planned to be demolished for the current silly plan? And won't world oil have peaked before it opens? It now stands at $90m worth of housing demolishment, down from the original $1b, primarily due to funding constraints rather than the pathetic lobby groups comprised of rich folk who themselves live within stones throw of the CBD. Investment in new roading in Auckland would generate up to $6.50 per dollar invested - that's a fact, and incremental economic gains will remain significantly positive even if peak oil doomsday prophecies do materialise. And who cares if homes get demolished – should 1 million people put their lives on hold just because 100 people don’t want to move house? Most residents are happy to be getting paid 125% fair value given current market conditions, but it’s always the isolated sob stories that get the publicity.

No, she'd probably check in earlier, or gone to a local hospital since they wouldn't have been abolished and merged into larger hospitals thanks to freeways.Check in earlier? ROFL ! That's the most amusing comment yet... Obviously possible in your world where where women can predict the exact time of their child birth? And if forcing women to give birth in local public hospitals is a by-product of your road map for a better world then I’ll go with the heroin thanks.

Sydney Light Rail would get in the way, would it not? It's immediately under the City West Link.

That is is not, except at Catherine Street. It could easily be "moved"

Weekend traffic through the city would not by any stretch of the imagination overwhelm the capacity of the city streets themselves. What was the purpose of the CCT again?

Weekday traffic through (but not into - your most-hosted long commutes) the CBD. But Weekend traffic does in fact overwhelm the capacity of city streets, particularly Park/College, Park/George, Druitt/Sussex, Bathurst/Elizabeth and Elizabeth/Liverpool Streets intersections.

The M5, M4 and F3 DO NOT consistently get jammed up outside of peak times. My point is that Akl fwy is worse than every Australian capital city with avg peak speeds of only 36km/h.
That's the average peak hour speed for Sydney's 7 major routes (2002-03) is just 34 kmh in Am peak and 40kmh in PM peak, this is despite a big motorway contruction boom since 1990 when traffic speeds were only some 5kmh less. Additionally, growth in traffic volumes by 40% 1990-2002/03 mitigated any significant increase in traffic speed that increasing freeway cpaacity may have had.

It now stands at $90m worth of housing demolishment, down from the original $1b, primarily due to funding constraints rather than the pathetic lobby groups comprised of rich folk who themselves live within stones throw of the CBD. Investment in new roading in Auckland would generate up to $6.50 per dollar invested - that's a fact, and incremental economic gains will remain significantly positive even if peak oil doomsday prophecies do materialise.

Look out for cost overruns and budget blowouts. BTW, most studies have proven that more freeways construction would bring less economic bebefit that the same level of investment in Public transport. The RTA was exposed recently for hiding some of the documents that hid the economic costs of the m4 east proposal and ignored public transport options.

I have some news on the Spit Bridge Expansion which has been regulated to the backburner.

Were one step closer to the expansion going ahead. Mosman and Manly Councils have 40 days to give consent to the expansion which will see the bridge widened to contain six lanes. The bridge is four lanes at present.

If approved, construction will begin in 2006 and cost $35 million dollars.

Locals on both sides of the bridge are spewing over the lack of consultation.

begin in 2006? work was done on the approach on the southern side and quite a significant amount of money has been allocated in 2 state budgets to the project and its start date is 2006?

Locals on both sides of the bridge are spewing over the lack of consultation.

A few noisy individuals most likely...most would be glad that one of Sydney's worst bottle necks is being eliminated - the ones I know sure are. Now to get rid of the speed cameras...

The need for widening the spit bridge could be eliminated if the govt would just go ahead and build the Mosman tunnel and Northern Beaches train line - would also get all the Northern Beaches traffic off the heavily congested Military Road. And I may as well throw in a second Central Coast link while I'm at it.

begin in 2006? work was done on the approach on the southern side and quite a significant amount of money has been allocated in 2 state budgets to the project and its start date is 2006?

According a report in the SMH back in August 2002, work was supposed to start in mid 2003, which was over a year ago. What have these guys been up too?

I also found a graphic from the same report which I posted on the old ozscrapers forum showing the bridge with six lanes. The two lanes will be on the western side of the bridge. It would of been appropriate to make the lanes bus only.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffxMedia/urlmedia_id_1028157820198_/media/2002/08/02/Variables.type/spitter.jpg

A few noisy individuals most likely...most would be glad that one of Sydney's worst bottle necks is being eliminated - the ones I know sure are. Now to get rid of the speed cameras...

Nothing wrong with the congestion at the Spit. Congestion is a fact of life, it should never be accomodated for otherwise it just gets worse.

Besides, if it's as bad as you say it is, why is there a problem with having speed cameras there?

Nothing wrong with the congestion at the Spit. Congestion is a fact of life, it should never be accomodated for otherwise it just gets worse.

Besides, if it's as bad as you say it is, why is there a problem with having speed cameras there?

MrPC I understand your arguments regarding building new fwys and induced traffic etc - even if I dont agree, I still understand what you are trying to say. But the spit congestion is ridiculous. Going from 3 lanes to 1 lane then back to 3 is illogical and does not benefit anyone. For one thing it creates a hell of a lot more pollution from the carpark it creates. And elimination of a bottleneck does not necessarily create more traffic, there are may instances that demonstrate this.

The problem with the speed cameras, other than being revenue raising devices, is that they create more accidents than they prevent - the accident statistics pre and post cameras prove this. Dont get me wrong - speed cameras have their place, but having three of them within a space of 600m is unecessary at the spit bridge.

MrPC I understand your arguments regarding building new fwys and induced traffic etc - even if I dont agree, I still understand what you are trying to say. But the spit congestion is ridiculous. Going from 3 lanes to 1 lane then back to 3 is illogical and does not benefit anyone. For one thing it creates a hell of a lot more pollution from the carpark it creates.

The marginal increase in pollution is negligible relative to the pollution generated by the overall trip, and it's preferable to the pollution that would be generated by a modal shift away from buses.

And elimination of a bottleneck does not necessarily create more traffic, there are may instances that demonstrate this.

Name six

Anyway, for the most part there will still be bottlenecks, up at that shopping centre at the top of the hill and towards North Sydney. Thus far the Spit Bridge helps make it a bit more amenable, but after this it would be hit by the full force of existing traffic plus a fair whack of induced traffic.

Anyway, why do you think so many people who own cars and are usually willing to use them up in that part of town ride buses? If the goal posts are moved, of course there will be a shift away from them.

Name six
And if I do, what? You'll change your mind? The third sthbound lane on the WD for one. I'm sure you can think of five others all by yourself.

Anyway, for the most part there will still be bottlenecks, up at that shopping centre at the top of the hill and towards North Sydney. Thus far the Spit Bridge helps make it a bit more amenable, but after this it would be hit by the full force of existing traffic plus a fair whack of induced traffic.
Ahh yes you are saying the peak congestion will be transferred further up Military Road and hence the problem will not be solved. I've heard all these arguments before and so has the council. However, if you stopped for one second and thought about it, most of the benefit will go to cars travelling in non-peak direction - unless the lanes are set up in a 5-1 configuration. These are the cars that are currently forced to squeeze into one lane and must bank up unnecessarily for kms in each direction for this reason only. There will be no extra flood of cars onto Military road, but simply more even traffic movement in BOTH directions. So the jury is still out on your induced traffic theory, unless you think that two extra northbound lanes in the morning will suddenly induce everyone to go to Palm Beach for the day.

guys... this is a projuct thread, not a agruement thread. and dont mass quote please...

THREAD #2 (http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=130860)
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