Diversion of some AM peak Harbour Bridge buses via the Cahill Expressway

As of Monday 18th February, 2013, selected M2 routes (620, 642, 650, 652) will enter the CBD in the morning via the Cahill Expressway, Transport for NSW has announced.

This is a several years overdue move.  Anecdotal evidence is that this has made an impact on the queues leading in to the York St bottleneck.

The inference I read from this is that these routes will not be removed after the NWRL is implemented.  Given that they would not feed an NWRL station anyway, more like Pennant Hills and Beecroft they are planned to stay and hence a solution needs to be found for them.

So what of the other routes in the North West?  Why would they become feeder routes?

NWRL justification

The justification for the North West Rail Link, contains a couple of interesting points in objective 4 in section 22.3.1:
(a) 29 million trips within 5 years of its opening, which is about half the number of trips currently using the bus system in the relevant region, region 4.  Obviously, people will still continue to use buses into Parramatta and other locations but I expect more than half of bus users are going to or from the CBD-Macquarie Park area.
(b) almost 160 buses are to be removed from the CBD in the morning peak.  This is approximately the amount of buses which enter the CBD in the morning peak from the North West.

I have little doubt that point (b) would not actually happen within the next decade, particularly while the rail-rail interchange at Chatswood remains.

Basically, the justification does not suggest an increase in the public transport usage in the North West.

Morning peak bus congestion on George St

In my opinion, bus congestion on George St is a bigger problem than on York St.  The difference is that it has come on much slower: congestion here has been problematic for over a decade.  This problem is significantly more difficult to solve than York St.  George St is where buses from Parramatta Rd, Victoria Rd and Glebe Point Rd and Newtown ultimately end up.


This morning, Clover Moore has again called for trams on George St.  It is not entirely clear why people who could easily interchange for Cityrail now and get a faster trip but don't would want to bother with doing this.  Perhaps the tram will be free or there will be a reasonable fare structure in the future?  Even if so, it is likely that such a move will encourage commuters to drive in to the CBD, the exact opposite of sustainability and good policy outcomes.


George St can be improved a little in the morning peak though.  Upgrading the bus lane between King St and Hunter St to a bus only lane would prevent taxis from blocking buses.  However, buses need to be able to get off George St relatively easily also.  One possibility is turning up Margaret Street, however it would be quite tight when a car is waiting to turn left out of Margaret St lane 2.  You could close this lane to eastbound traffic, but that is probably overkill.  An option is moving the stop line back, a la Cribb St, Milton, Qld.  These options largely depend on increasing Margaret St's westbound capacity between Clarence and York Sts.  Another option is increasing the Grosvenor/Harington Sts move a la L37, X04, 502.


There are a few options for buses from Victoria Rd:

1. Turning left from Druitt St up Clarence St
2. Using Bathurst St and turning left on to Elizabeth St
3. Serving the southern end of town instead.
4. Continuing along Park St.

Late last year, STA re-routed some buses via Bathurst St however, it is not entirely clear what possible advantage this had as they still join the George St bus jam.  Perhaps the original idea was to turn right at George St and serve the universities as well as businesses from Town Hall to Central, but it got mangled.  I think either that happens which would help quite a bit for some, or the peak only Victoria Rd buses should turn up Victoria Rd.

One other change which will help enormously is to increase the amount of interchange.  A number of commuters would benefit from getting off the bus at Newtown and then continuing their trip in to town on Cityrail.  This would allow less buses to come in to town, even if the routes still continue as the routes could see their seats/spaces filled more than one time per trip.  Fares are a large obstacle to achieving this.

De-bottlenecking York St

Yesterday I blogged that the NWRL cannot be relied on to fix this problem.  So what other fixes are possible?

1. The southbound M40 would benefit from using the Cahill Expressway to Elizabeth St.  This will avoid the Park St interchange, but who cares?
2. The Pacific Highway is over serviced and IMO the best solution is chopping off the northern part of the M20
3. STA routes E86-9 have been removed from York St to use Grosvenor and George Sts in the AM peak.  This treatment should be spread to all AM peak only Hillsbus routes - 613, 614, 616, 617.
4. A double decker bus meeting all ADRs (Australian Design Rules) has come on to the market.  Yet this has not been ordered by any NSW operator to the knowledge of the author.
5. Carrington St is not used as a drop off for Wynyard terminating buses.  This is presumably due to the difficulty of accessing Clarence St via Margaret St.  The fix for this problem would be to reverse an eastbound lane of Margaret St between Clarence and York Sts.  This would allow these buses to return to their depots more quickly or perhaps in time to make another peak run.

Put simply, there are a number of relatively simple fixes, just not actioned.