tonyp wrote:
If you read my post I was talking about short distance work. There's no spin, just some facts and in my case actual lived experience in a number of cities. Trains vs street transport is a complex equation of pluses and minuses dependent on specific situations. Sometimes it's faster on the surface over short distances if train stations are a couple of km apart, if their frequency is less, if the stations are underground etc etc. Otherwise, for example, the city circle would have replaced all buses; people wouldn't stay on the bus at Bondi Jct and Edgecliff etc etc. People soon work out which option is best for them, with trains becoming the stronger choice as distance increases.
The reason why trains have not replaced buses in the CBD area, is the historic fare system.
You could have terminated all the buses approaching the CBD via Oxford Street years ago, at Museum, and forced all the passengers to get on the train at Museum. That would have been faster, for many of them. And the reason people didn't, is the high fares.
It used to be an argument that buses were more convenient for people who could walk 200 metres to a bus stop instead of 400 metres to a train stop. But that rationale in favour of buses has been defeated by the abolition of half of the bus stops which used to exist along Elizabeth Street.
If you changed from a bus to a train at Museum, you might have to wait 12 minutes for a train, which would negate the speed advantage over the bus travelling along Elizabeth St in the traffic jam.
It's all very well to say that if metro stations are 3 km apart, then slower public transport such as buses running parallel are more convenient. But the reality is that the Sydney cbd city circle stations are not 3 km apart. And are not going to become 3 km apart.
In the scenario I was discussing, a metro to Kensington cutting the travel time to the CBD from 30 minutes to 8 minutes, there is no way that the burden of going down the escalator is going to make a bus more attractive.
And guess what, if you want to go to the Taylor Square area, well the bus isn't going to be any better because they are abolishing the buses.