CBD & South East Light Rail

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
simonl
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by simonl »

Semantics. It is just different presentation of the timetable information.
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

Services suspended today from around 11.30 today due to OHW down at Chalmers St.

Still out at 16:30
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Glen
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Glen »

Fleet Lists wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 8:19 am So actually not a timetable but a departure list which is grouped.
I think most punters use apps these days so they will group services if you select a journey within common stops.

For example right now Trip View tells me that on Sunday trams ex CQ will run every 5 minutes (or 4 & 6 actually) until 7.00pm then every 7 & 8 minutes in the evening.
Scott4570
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Scott4570 »

Fleet Lists wrote: Mon May 24, 2021 7:44 pm simonl.
Can you provide a URL of a grouped timetable?
Would this be an example of a Grouped Timetable, for L2 and L3, between Circular Quay and Moore Park (both directions) ?

L2 Timetable shows all trips: https://www.railmaps.com.au/routedetail ... 2020-01-22
L3 Timetable shows all trips: https://railmaps.com.au/routedetails.ph ... 2020-10-13
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

They appear to be separate timetables for each line.

I think you'd need to use a trip-finder app to get the two lines fully merged.
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tonyp
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

From a tweet by the local member, apparently these are buses lined up to take passengers off a tram due to power failure today at Alison and Anzac.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3USjlTVkAI ... name=large
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

More likely they are regular buses held up by the power failure, unable to get through the junction?
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

boronia wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:18 pm More likely they are regular buses held up by the power failure, unable to get through the junction?
Dr Indignation, the local Member, seemed to think they were picking up tram passengers. There are some people crossing the busway in that photo. A later report suggests a signal failure.
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

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Another disruption tonight "due to vandalism at Surry Hills".
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by J_Busworth »

Apparently signal issues were causing some delays earlier this afternoon. Its been a bad run this week
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Jurassic_Joke
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Jurassic_Joke »

To anyone else wondering if manual door operation is coming back after Covid, its unfortunately looking less likely…

I sent in negative feedback regarding boarding a service at Circular Quay that had a dwell time of several minutes, and of course as per Covid procedure, all the doors are just left open, except we’re in the middle of a winter cold snap where its actually pretty cold and windy outside especially late at night, certainly not very pleasant or comfortable inside the tram and absolutely not when you’re sat there not moving! Plus also factor in the Citadis has several more doors than L1’s CAFs and the doors still have stickers denoting push to open, it surely it can’t be too much of an ask to leave the doors closed at termini stops. I still see some people pressing the button at stops out of impulse before they open automatically.

I got a lengthy response back initially saying what I expected, doors are set to open automatically on release as a Covid safe measure since March 2020 to minimise Covid transmission, and the measure still stands today. However, please also take note that doors opening automatically aligns operational procedures with L1 Dulwich Hill Line where doors have been opening automatically since the line opened, and also, before March 2020, we received feedback from disability advocate groups saying disabled passengers can’t press the door button and they felt excluded, therefore automatic door opening makes our service more inclusive and accessible for everyone.

So big RIP to bringing back passenger operated doors, it wasn’t completely Covid related.

That kinda struck me as interesting, if not, with a little disbelief. Are there no disabled passengers in Canberra, Gold Coast and Adelaide where currently doors are manually activated on their light rail systems? Or is it just really another instance of Sydney needing to do something different?
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Swift »

More like Sydney needing to conform to practice they're familiar with because that's what they've always done and coupled with risk averse culture and just a generally staid and boring mindset, it's little surprise.

Thanks for sharing your rather predictable experience dealing with the bureaucracy.
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Jurassic_Joke
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Jurassic_Joke »

Yeah its pretty disappointing to be honest. I was always wondering why health advice says its safe to press door buttons to open for light rail systems in other states but not here, and sure enough yep, found out half of is just people who complained. At the end of the day, its eroding passenger comfort, for whats surely a minority of users, also, can’t the platform staff that are there all day just press the button then? As for their comment on also aligning operational procedures with L1 Dulwich Hill Line - you know what, i actually agree, you should have a common system, but then why not just change L1’s door operation to match L2/L3? It’s very regressive.

I wonder what they’ll end up doing the same for the Parramatta Light Rail (L4?), but it could also be like L1’s CAFs where there are a lack of doors, then it might be fine, but Sydneys Citadis with its 6 double doors per tram - you just simply can’t escape the cold draft
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Swift »

Not to mention letting cool escape and the heat and humidity in during Sydney's tropical summers.
It's in their own interest as well as commuter's as it conserves costly energy over time. There's also the environmental angle of that.
Surely they don't think a fellow commuter won't happily press the button for them should a disabled find themselves the only one at a given door?

This is a cop out. They are just putting expedience before practical running and making the users pay for it all.
Nothing unusual in Sydney's way of doing things.

Quite poetic that we have the ACT like an oasis from the staid practises of the state that surrounds it.
Whatever the execs at TNSW are earning p/a, we're not getting our money's worth.
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tonyp
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

On that everlasting question of why is CSELR so slow, I had occasion to dig out this cab video of a ride on line 5 in Prague for another discussion about tramways and, while watching it (noting that it seemed for the most part a rather slow and fussy journey), I did a tally on the trip time. The equivalent of CSELR's 8.5 km of route (either L2 or L3) is from Barrandov on line 5 to Vodičkova in the city centre which is at 25:40 minutes in the video. This is traversed in 24 minutes with 15 intermediate stops, compared with 33-34 minutes with 12 (L2) or 13 (L3) intermediate stops on CSELR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN83_EqvlN8&t

It's not easy to fully appreciate exactly how excessively slow is CSELR until you see something like this. CSELR runs entirely in its own exclusive lanes, which is something they would absolutely envy in Prague which runs a lot in mixed traffic with mostly non-prioritised traffic lights (again in contrast to CSELR). There are also quite a few curves and corners on the Prague line, but they use proper bogie trams that can deal with these well (Sydney's CAFs and Citadis couldn't run on those Prague tracks, they'd derail). Incidentally, these Prague trips are at a maximum speed of 50 km/h, except on a couple of outer "light rail" sections where the maximum is 60 km/h.

This is a huge difference in journey time for this distance, considering it makes a direct difference between a faster or a slower tram-bus interchange journey in Sydney, an issue that has inflamed Sydney bus users who will have to interchange with the tram. That controversy could most likely be almost extinguished if the CSELR trams could do the journey in 25 minutes or less which, as can be seen, is quite within the capabilities of a normal, competently-run tram system.

I won't post a video of the section of another Prague route that covers that same distance in 17 minutes with 12 intermediate stops (same distance as L2 but half the journey time). That would be rubbing it in too far....
lyjjimmy
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by lyjjimmy »

for the sake of dumb pedestrians in city, snail down to 20 km/h is what they believe the right way.
From my usual commute trips from Central to UN$W, the journey time is pretty much on par to L94 or just a few minutes quicker than 39x series which have more stops and traffic lights.
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

Won't matter how much more the CSE is sped up now, the public mindset is that "it is too slow"; usually comments from people who have not actually ridden on it.
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tonyp
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

The comparison issue isn't with bus journey times within the CSELR catchment, it's about journey times beyond the catchment when commuters have to interchange between bus and tram, using both modes for their journey.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Linto63 »

There are so many variables between Sydney and Prague systems to make any conclusions drawn meaningless.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Cazza »

In the case of the CSELR, end to end journey times don’t really matter. Sure, it’s slow and needs some of the speed limits increased, but you’re missing the big picture by just looking at the end to end travel time.

Who is going to take the light rail from Randwick or Kingsford to circular quay? The bus is faster and will continue to be that way, the light rail is not supposed to replace this journey. You should be comparing the key journeys between bus and tram IN SYDNEY, not some city halfway across the world with so many different factors playing an influence on both.

Look at a comparison of Randwick, Kingsford and UNSW to Central, town hall and Wynyard and Central to the heart of the CBD. That way, you will get a better indication of whether commuters journeys are quicker or not.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Cazza wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:42 pm In the case of the CSELR, end to end journey times don’t really matter. Sure, it’s slow and needs some of the speed limits increased, but you’re missing the big picture by just looking at the end to end travel time.

Who is going to take the light rail from Randwick or Kingsford to circular quay? The bus is faster and will continue to be that way, the light rail is not supposed to replace this journey. You should be comparing the key journeys between bus and tram IN SYDNEY, not some city halfway across the world with so many different factors playing an influence on both.

Look at a comparison of Randwick, Kingsford and UNSW to Central, town hall and Wynyard and Central to the heart of the CBD. That way, you will get a better indication of whether commuters journeys are quicker or not.
Again, that's not the point. The issue is journey times from beyond the light rail catchment involving transfer between bus and tram. That issue is there regardless of whether the city destination is CQ, Town Hall or Central.
In Transit
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by In Transit »

Someone mentioned perception, and that's really important. It'll take years for the common view that CSELR is slow to disappear, regardless of the speed it actually operates at. Obviously there were political pressures to get it finally opened after delays and endless bad press, but the consequence of a half baked initial service continues to affect both current and future thinking in Sydney.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

In Transit wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 2:21 pm Someone mentioned perception, and that's really important. It'll take years for the common view that CSELR is slow to disappear, regardless of the speed it actually operates at. Obviously there were political pressures to get it finally opened after delays and endless bad press, but the consequence of a half baked initial service continues to affect both current and future thinking in Sydney.
And it's a shame because it negatively affects perception of trams as a transport solution, which in turn affects whether new lines have a chance of being built or not, which in turn, if they're not, eliminates the possibility of the only solution for the capacity gap between buses and trains that we need on certain corridors. That leaves us with the situation that we've been in for the last 60 years - bus services overstressed because they can't provide enough capacity, yet the corridors don't rise above the benefit-cost threshold for building heavy rail.

The issue is that it doesn't have to be like this. It's been bungled in this state but, besides all those excellent Central European systems, there are good outcomes right here in Australia - Canberra and Gold Coast specifically. Operating environments may be a little different, but the principles of good operation are the same everywhere.
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

Cazza wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:42 pm I
Who is going to take the light rail from Randwick or Kingsford to circular quay? The bus is faster and will continue to be that way, the light rail is not supposed to replace this journey. You should be comparing the key journeys between bus and tram IN SYDNEY, not some city halfway across the world with so many different factors playing an influence on both.
A lot of people along the LR line prefer the tram. Lots of passengers wait at the tram stops, very few at the adjacent bus stop.

People beyond may not have the option of direct services. They will have to change to the LR or another bus service to get to the CBD and CQ.
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tonyp
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Linto63 wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:38 pm There are so many variables between Sydney and Prague systems to make any conclusions drawn meaningless.
There's only one fundamental difference - the Prague system exists in a tougher operating environment. CSELR runs on a red carpet, with by now a significant degree of traffic light priority, vastly less patronage and vastly less other trams (let alone general traffic) on the lines to operate amongst. The differences lie in the skillsets in designing the system and its safeworking, choosing the most appropriate trams and in general day to day operation and maintenance of the system. The best skillsets are available for hire but TfNSW doesn't know what they are, let alone have the nouse to hire them. If they'd deigned to talk to Melbourne, they might have got good advice to set them off to a good start, but I sat in an internal meeting some years ago in which we were told that NSW had nothing to learn from Melbourne as we were building modern light rail and Melbourne was only an old tram system (like Prague). They really have no idea. And Transdev, whatever skills they might have, are only going to do what TfNSW gives them to do, nothing more.
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