CBD & South East Light Rail

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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

"Maintenance work" on the LR would be nowhere near as complex or demanding as on the heavy rail network, especially considering its current age.

Sure the short north is booked out every June, but is about 150 km long so obviously has to be done in stages. Probably like painting the Harbour Bridge, by the time they get to the end, they would have to come back and start again. There would be 12 months work in planning workforces, materials, equipment, timetables, etc for each closure.

The CBD shutdown of the LR seems to have been based around the paving works at the southern end of George St, with a few cosmetic track repairs fitted in. There was a similar shutdown at the end of November last year, again IIRC with no obvious work beyond Chalmers St. At least back then, there was a full complement of bus services to pick up the slack.
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Glen
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Glen »

My impression is that trackwork disruptions on a grand scale is a very British way of doing things.

I did some research about 15 years ago that found that approach much lesson common in Europe and even North America.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by hornetfig »

boronia wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 5:50 pmComing back home about 5 pm I noticed a couple of trams near the Lang Rd crossover.
There was some more work happening on Saturday. eg they did work on the overhead on the Lang Rd crossover.

There was also some stuff on the Randwick branch. eg they're replacing some of the red "bus lane" acrylic render on the concrete surface near Doncaster Ave which didn't adhere properly and was flaking. That takes all weekend because it has to be blasted, cleaned, primed and then painted.
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gilberations
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by gilberations »

Glen wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:54 pm My impression is that trackwork disruptions on a grand scale is a very British way of doing things.

I did some research about 15 years ago that found that approach much lesson common in Europe and even North America.
Look at the quality of track and frequency of derailments in North America… it’s not a good comparison :p
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by gilberations »

boronia wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:57 pm "Maintenance work" on the LR would be nowhere near as complex or demanding as on the heavy rail network,
A railway is a railway is a railway. No matter how big or how small the work done is the same. Tracks, OHW, stations. It’s just in a smaller scale.

I’ll say it one more time. Just because you can’t see the work being done doesn’t mean it isn’t, and if it little bits here and there, you’d rather have one bus or one bus then tram, rather than Bus to tram to bus to tram to bus to tram.

Would you prefer tram from Circular quay to Wynyard, bus to Town hall, tram to central, bus to Moore park, tram to… do you get the point?
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by lunchbox »

MOORE PARK PROBLEMS, AGAIN.....
Saturday, 26.2.22 - both lifts out of service..........water ponding on every one of the stairs and landings. Someone in design, construction, and/or contract management should be held accountable, but no, all we get is platitudes. Even the State Opposition is hopeless.
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hornetfig
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by hornetfig »

The stair nosing causes the ponding. Should have been designed with this in mind, but it's also possible the nosing treatment was changed late in the piece.
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

I notice from service alerts that the CSE lines are on permanent "Sunday timetables" until the end of this year.

Perhaps a result of some of the fleet (at least 4 sets) now on loan to L1?
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Swift »

Utterly stupid. All for politics, desperate to avoid the projected prolonged closure of L1 which exposed what happens when you cheap out on the choice of vehicles.
NSW, the state that embraces mediocrity.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by gilberations »

Can anyone explain why the lightrail speed limit is so painfully slow through the city? 20! What a joke!
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by moa999 »

gilberations wrote:Can anyone explain why the lightrail speed limit is so painfully slow through the city? 20! What a joke!
Pedestrian v Tram incidents.
Believe Melbourne has an even slower speed (15) in Bourke St mall
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

Also, it seems to better fit in with the traffic light cycles. Faster trams will simply sit longer at the next intersection red light.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

gilberations wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 12:01 pm Can anyone explain why the lightrail speed limit is so painfully slow through the city? 20! What a joke!
If I can take us back to a quarter-century ago, while I was on the inter-departmental planning committee for the IWLR, I sat there one day listening to the Police representative telling us that it was too long since most Sydney pedestrians had had experience of trams in the street and that a "temporary" speed limit of 20 km/h would be applied to the CBD until people got used to the trams. Since then, a pedestrian was run down at 11 km/h. We should count our blessings that the limit hasn't been reduced to 10 km/h. Are we used to trams yet I wonder?

In most European city centres it is 50 km/h, though obviously drivers drive to the conditions and environment. Anyway, acceleration and deceleration and maintaining line speed for as long as possible (average speed) are far more important than maximum speed. Australian tram operations (except Canberra) are nowadays very sluggish on the go and whoa, partly down to the driving style, partly down to these modern fixed bogie trams with only two powered bogies having only about 66% adhesion.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Randomness »

boronia wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 1:00 pm Also, it seems to better fit in with the traffic light cycles. Faster trams will simply sit longer at the next intersection red light.
Or they could’ve done the right thing from the start and give trams priority like in more open minded places. I’m of the belief that faster speeds will make people more aware of the danger of trams.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Passenger 57 »

I would have just chosen to not run trams through a pedestrian mall, Does the pedestrian mall only exist because the council advocated running trams down it? I can't recall whether there were any traffic free proposals prior. In light of the experience of the project and the current bias, if there was a chance at a do-over it probably would be implemented as a metro line.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Linto63 »

Passenger 57 wrote: In light of the experience of the project and the current bias, if there was a chance at a do-over it probably would be implemented as a metro line.
With the benefit of hindsight yes, while more expensive, a metro would have been more beneficial.
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

The NSW Road Safety policies do not include encouraging pedestrians to contribute to their own safety.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Route548 »

boronia wrote: Tue Mar 01, 2022 6:41 am I notice from service alerts that the CSE lines are on permanent "Sunday timetables" until the end of this year.

Perhaps a result of some of the fleet (at least 4 sets) now on loan to L1?
I lodged feedback about that issue and Transdev got back to me saying they are still running Sunday TTs due to staff shortages due to the p word but that normal timetables are back on the 14th of March.

Wonder why they dont bother making that known on the Transport Info site but probably plays into the reason why UNSW paid for a set of buses to run an express Central-Gate 8 High St service for the first two weeks of semester 1.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Linto63 wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 7:41 pm With the benefit of hindsight yes, while more expensive, a metro would have been more beneficial.
No it wouldn't. A metro wouldn't provide the detailed coverage and convenience on two corridors that the light rail does. The light rail was targetted at Moore Park, the racecourse, two frontages of UNSW, POWH complex plus some intermediate stops. A metro couldn't possibly have done that. Due to the cost of stations, a metro would likely have had stations only at halfway between Moore Park and the racecourse, with a long walk to either, UNSW lower campus and Maroubra Junction. No other intermediate stops and no Randwick connection serving UNSW upper campus and the huge (and growing) POWH complex.

In any case, in the future there should be a metro line in addition, serving the SE beyond Kingsford.
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boronia
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

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Route548 wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 8:19 pm Wonder why they dont bother making that known on the Transport Info site but probably plays into the reason why UNSW paid for a set of buses to run an express Central-Gate 8 High St service for the first two weeks of semester 1.
UNSW has been doing this for years, supplementing the 89x services during the first couple of weeks.

And the reductions are showing on service alerts for the line, "from 12/2/22 01:00 to 1/1/23 00:00"
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Linto63
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Linto63 »

Intermediate stops could quite easily have continued to been served by buses with a metro doing the heavy lifting. Of course the pro-tram lobby will have nothing bad said of it said, but reality is that so far the L2/L3 hasn't delivered a viable alternative to the peak hour bus network as demonstrated by the large number of peak bus services that were to have ceased, having had to be retained.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

IIRC, it was always intended that the peak hour X services would be retained and expanded if necessary.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Passenger 57 »

tonyp wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 8:31 pm
Linto63 wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 7:41 pm With the benefit of hindsight yes, while more expensive, a metro would have been more beneficial.
No it wouldn't. A metro wouldn't provide the detailed coverage and convenience on two corridors that the light rail does.
The spacing of LR stops isn't great either. Heavy rail is almost competitive down George St and I can't understand why both Town Hall and QVB stops are needed as well as a stop between Wynyard and Circular Quay. However, I think it might have closer stop spacing than the bus stops that preceded it. Bus stops in the city have really been winnowed out over the years.
Linto63 wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:22 pm Intermediate stops could quite easily have continued to been served by buses with a metro doing the heavy lifting.
Or a tramway or moving foot paths. Unfortunately, we've gone from tram/bus stops every 200m to as much as 1km for frequent services. Tram platforms are all very nice but but I'm sure people would prefer closer road level stops and an ultra low floor accessible tram.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Linto63 wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:22 pm Intermediate stops could quite easily have continued to been served by buses with a metro doing the heavy lifting. Of course the pro-tram lobby will have nothing bad said of it said, but reality is that so far the L2/L3 hasn't delivered a viable alternative to the peak hour bus network as demonstrated by the large number of peak bus services that were to have ceased, having had to be retained.
And the bus lobby has a blind spot when it comes to capacity. CSELR, even with its sub-par execution, can move up to about 6,700 people per hour per direction compared to even the most intense bus routes at similar headways that would optimistically move 1,500 people per hour per direction. Then there's the issue of getting all those buses through light cycles and the vastly greater number of drivers who have to be employed, increasing operating costs.

The main reasons that X bus routes have been retained are because TfNSW didn't know how to design for a faster tram journey (should be 25 minutes) and to serve the NE of the CBD which is a little bit far from the light rail route. In terms of capacity, the X services are a drop in the bucket on top of the trams, rather than a major augmentation of the light rail which is quite capable of doing the whole job itself.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Passenger 57 »

tonyp wrote: Fri Mar 04, 2022 1:36 am The main reasons that X bus routes have been retained are because TfNSW didn't know how to design for a faster tram journey (should be 25 minutes) and to serve the NE of the CBD which is a little bit far from the light rail route.
Fewer buses could be used if transfer was made as frictionless and possible. The refusal of the government to implement full fare integration across modes does not help and neither does the introduction of peak/off-peak pricing to trams and buses together with an increase in the 0-3km fare, making it a minimum surcharge of $1.20 for an adult to change modes in the peak.
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