Northern Beaches BRT study released

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has recently been studied for the Northern Beaches.  Long story short, it finds that none of the studied concepts is cost effective.  Why might this be? 

1. 24 hour bus lanes are a bit wasted if off peak services are to be kept mediocre.  I mean, for crying out loud, 20 minute weekend frequency on the L90 (to Palm Beach) dropping back to half hourly evenings and early mornings, with the L88 (to Avalon) not operating is mediocre at best.  In general, 15 minute frequency is what is needed to boost patronage as a 14 minute wait is far more acceptable than a 19 minute one.  Similarly, the L80 (to Collaroy Plateau) reverts to a half hourly 180 on Saturday and the L85 (to Mona Vale via North Narrabeen) is also half hourly.  Those heading beyond Burnt Creek Deviation are best off to avoid the all stopping services as they are about 8 minutes slower from Wynyard to Condamine and King Sts, so effectively there are only 5 buses an hour on this corridor Saturday daytimes with 20 minute service gaps, speaking generally.
2. A 6 lane Spit Bridge is hard to justify as there are already 3 lanes for the peak direction.  This does prevent the limitation of needing to reduce to a single lane counter peak, but it is easy to see that not being justified.  The Roseville Bridge is a reasonable alternative for counter peak travel for half of the Northern Beaches.
3. Option One seems to include the removal of the tidal flow arrangements on the Spit Bridge, with a single lane for cars in both directions.  This is not made clear however.
4. The suggestion of removing the L60 (Chatswood-Mona Vale via Dee Why) is bizarre.

What are alternative proposals? 

1. Have a counter peak bus lane along Spit Rd, preferably extending all the way back to the Warringah Freeway.  This likely would need to be combined with pushing trucks into lane 3 from the start of the Truck and Bus Speed Limit shortly before Medusa St.  There are no right turns until the end of the current speed limit, even if there is one immediately after its end.  This bus lane is important as it allows buses to queue jump the counter peak traffic letting them both serve the counter peak demand better and return for another peak run without requiring more buses to provide the same service.
2. Upgrading the peak direction Transit Lane to a Bus Lane between the Spit Bridge and the Warringah Freeway.
3. Actually establishing some sort of PM peak priority north of Ourimbah Rd.
4. Increase off peak services.  BUZ in Brisbane and Smartbus in Melbourne have both seen high take up of their services.  Metrobus in Sydney has been less successful, even if there are good services in there.  Services stopping at 9pm is no doubt a factor in the lack of success of Metrobus.  This would do much to reduce traffic congestion on the beaches and also help justify 24hr bus lane proposals.
5. More limited stop services outside of peak hour.  It is unclear why the L80 should downgrade to a 180 on weekends, for example.
6. Free transfers.  This will improve the service for all in that people can use a feeder and trunk model to get faster journeys.  Some will prefer a slower single seat, of course.

More generally, it is not entirely clear why median stations would be preferred over kerbside stations, nor is it clear why North Sydney termination with interchange to what are already reasonably full trains would even be proposed.

None of the options in the report break down the costs into their components, largely leaving the reader guessing.

Is Western Fast Rail back on the agenda?

As I previously blogged, the current government has made a number of apparently ill thought through and half baked announcements, firstly Richmond to Campbelltown then single deck metro from the North West to Chatswood.  The questions seems to be why?  I suggest that they have been softening up the voters for something they may not like.  What that might be is a revitalisation of the Western Fast Rail privatised project.  Reports from when the Liberals were still in opposition quoted the current transport minister as saying that the project should be looked at more seriously.

This is complete supposition; but you heard it here first!

Use of the Lane Cove Tunnel

There was recently a consultation period about removing the 613, 614, 615 and 616 bus routes from Epping Rd and sending them via Lane Cove Tunnel (which would append X to their number).  This is a welcome and overdue change. 

This also represents the last of M2 to City services going to the Lane Cove Tunnel in peak hour.  However, outside of peak there is still the half hourly 610 which goes via Epping Rd.  The best solution here is to merely extend the M61 to Rouse Hill along the 610 route and run the 612 outside of peak where justified.  Perhaps this will eventually happen.  Without the M61 it seems like there would be little in the way of service outside of peak hour between Castle Hill and the CBD.

A related question is what of STA services to the Macquarie area?  Currently the peak only 293 and 297 services are the only services which use the Lane Cove Tunnel.  Why is the 288 (QVB to Epping via Coxs Rd and Macquarie) not in this list?  The whole part along Epping Rd through Lane Cove would still be served by the 292 which has similar operating hours, and trips could be added to the latter with the money saved by the faster operation of sending the 288 via Lane Cove Tunnel.  Even the Epping to Lane Cove service is provided by the 290.

The service planning does seem to have a lot of inertia.

CBD Enhancement dropped!

Unfortunately, it seems from recent documentation that the previously planned CBD enhancement from Eveleigh to Wynyard and beyond is to not proceed.  This is a decision which means that there will not be much improvement in Cityrail for decades, particularly for the Western and Northern Lines.

Giving the Western Line its own path through the CBD would be best practice.  It's the busiest line on the network, and busier than the North Shore line (counting the upper Northern Line), Illawarra Line and Eastern Suburbs Line all of which have their own path through the CBD.  So why not separate the network out further which will help with allowing more and stricter sectorisation?  That would get these passengers out of the current Town Hall and Wynyard significantly easing platform congestion and the new platforms should be able to be built wider than the existing platforms. Alternatively with what is known as bifurcation which means that there would be 4 additional platforms per station to reduce/remove dwell time in the CBD from being the capacity restriction.  This would leave Parramatta dwell times as the limitation.

The above linked documentation mentions some restrictions which are either soon to be removed or can be.  Numbers 3, 4 and 9 can be easily removed, they just choose not to.  In the case of number 9 which the document details removing this does mean trains need to take a slower path, however, this limitation is solved by the CBD enhancement (formerly called the Western Express) as described above, as is number 7.

Such an unceremonious dumping deserves an explanation, however the linked document above seems to be an attempt to deflect the criticism rather than explain it.  It does not refer at all to the plan to increase CBD capacity along the "Metro West" alignment as originally planned, but an alternative plan which had never been publicly proposed involving a Cityrail expansion along the "Metro Pitt" alignment, which would not help the Western Line.

I just wonder if they are pushing some agenda, and if so then what?  Perhaps it is just to be different from the Keneally government's sensible Western Express plan.

Cityrail timetable proposals in recent news - Part 3

An official video shows that the second phase of this plan involves:

1. A new harbour crossing, connecting to the Metro Pitt alignment.
2. Metro connecting to the Bankstown line and part of the Illawarra line.
3. Removal of Campbelltown via Sydenham. 
4. No increased capacity for the Western, South or North lines beyond what is possible now.
5. Some Western line trains to take the slower path around the city circle.

Almost every aspect of this plan is daft.

1. Sending metro trains down the Illawarra line to Hurstville means that some Railcorp passengers will be taken away from the Eastern Suburbs Railway, to be replaced by no one.
2. Overtaking manoeuvres will no longer be possible.  All trains will likely need to run with the same stopping pattern, presumably Redfern, Sydenham, Wolli Creek, Rockdale, Kogarah, Hurstville and then all stations to Waterfall or Cronulla.  A capacity reducing skip stop is also possible.  It will be exceedingly difficult to operate the South Coast trains with only one pair of tracks the whole distance.
3. Removing the Bankstown line from the city circle removes what is the only swing player between the Town Hall and Museum legs.  This will not be helpful.
4. Removing Campbelltown via Sydenham will result in slower journeys and be less competitive with road transport, particularly with the planned M5 widening.  I do not think that additional frequency through the Airport line adds nearly as much value.
5. Additional Western line paths into the city circle requires them to either add a conflicting move at Macdonaldtown or traverse Strathfield platforms 7 and 8.  The latter will increase journey times, the former would reduce reliability.  There is a good reason why every inquiry has recommended a new CBD path, to prevent such trades from being made.  This new path is being done in such a way as most of the benefit which should be realised is completely wasted.  You might as well run in to the Wynyard platform 1 and 2 dead end as the trams used to.

If a crossing under the harbour is to be done, it really should increase capacity for the other side of Central.  This plan does not achieve that at all.  It wastes some of the presently available capacity.

I hope that we hear nothing further about this plan.

Cityrail timetable proposals in recent news - Part 2

It has recently been announced that the promised plans of double deck services from the North West all the way to the CBD are to be revised.  They are going back to a North West metro, single deck, and only running as far as Chatswood as a first phase.

Firstly, this means that the upper Northern Line will need to revert to running via Strathfield.  Unless it is going to take paths through Town Hall platform 3 from the Western Line it will also mean that the upper Northern Line will terminate at Sydney Terminal.  The only question raised with this is if there is enough capacity between Redfern, Central and Town Hall.  Well in the AM peak 4/6 Bankstown line trains add to this capacity.  This should be relatively simple to expand to the other two with a timetable review.  This capacity should be relatively easy to provide in the AM peak, and the PM peak is far less congested.  Reversing the direction of the Bankstown line around the city circle full time may well be a reasonable option, as might Melbourne weekend style Bankstown-Town Hall-Museum-Bankstown full time.

Secondly, it means no expansion to Railcorp and in fact a slight contraction as they will be removed from the Epping-Chatswood Rail Link.  In my opinion, this is real positive to the proposal.  I'm really not sure how long we can go having Railcorp consume $3 billion per year and rapidly rising.

Thirdly it means an interchange at Chatswood for trains which are allegedly already full.  However, they aren't as full as trains on other lines and the upper Northern Line passengers are to be removed from this patronage.  It will also be possible to increase the numbers of trains on the North Shore by up to 6 per hour.  There will be plenty of capacity for passengers from the North West who will have a cross platform interchange at Chatswood, much like Glen Waverley line peak hour passengers in Melbourne who need to interchange at Richmond to reach city loop stations.  Hardly the end of the world.

All in all the first phase of these changes is quite good, which is something I will not say about the second phase in my next blog post.

Cityrail timetable proposals in recent news - Part 1

A Sydney Morning Herald article has reported that it is being suggested for a number of stations to lose their access to Town Hall, but the Cumberland Line is to be given an upgraded service and run through to Richmond.  These changes are sure to be unpopular and reduce the effectiveness of Cityrail, so the question is why would it even be considered?  One word: sectorisation.  This means that parts of Cityrail can function independently of the whole, as has been all but achieved with the Illawarra and Eastern Suburbs lines.  Cityrail branded this concept clearways a number of years back.

Basically, to have a strict sectorisation the Cumberland line would need to either be completely removed, or pushed into what is known as sector 2, meaning lines accessing the City Circle.  This means that lines through Parramatta platforms 3 and 4 need to go to sector 2, and given that it is not possible to come from the Richmond line without accessing these lines, the Richmond line needs to go along for that ride.  Since trains serving Harris Park, Wentworthville, Toongabbie and Pendle Hill normally only use Parramatta platforms 3 and 4, these trains would no longer be able to reach Central.  Similarly, Clyde, Auburn, Lidcombe and Burwood would no longer have a single seat service to Parramatta.  Clyde stops would need to be added to selected south line trains.  The most popular peak pattern - All to Redfern/Parramatta/Blacktown/Mt Druitt all to Penrith would need to be slowed down significantly with probably 6 more stops.  It's not entirely clear why the lower Northern line cannot run through Town Hall with sectorisation however, even with the conflicting move* between outbound interurbans and inbound suburbans north of Strathfield.  It is also unclear how Blue Mountains line trains would operate at all if this is done.

This is sectorisation becoming the enemy of Cityrail doing a good job, rather than its friend, which it usually is. I feel this is being leaked now to soften up users of Cityrail for a timetable which isn't going to be liked.  It is certainly true that the Western Line needs its own path through the CBD though, which should have been built before the Epping Chatswood Rail Link was.

What alternatives are there for 2013?
Alternative One:
Increase running into Sydney Terminal for the Western Line.  It is unclear why there are still 3 (both directions combined) Springwood trains per day crossing the Harbour Bridge.  This was done before the ECRL freed up a few paths across the Harbour Bridge so there is precedent.

Altenative Two:
Run additional lower Northern Line trains into Sydney Terminal. This is a satisfactory option for increasing the Northern Line which is incredibly overcrowded but does nothing for the Western Line, which is nearly as bad.

Alternative Three:
Run all lower northern line trains into Sydney Terminal. The existing trains should not be damaged in this way, even if increased in frequency.  Varied stopping patterns cannot reasonably apply for the Western Line between Redfern and Parramatta so all my comments above would apply in that zone and about the Blue Mountains Line trains being virtually unable to run.

Alternative Four:
Connect the lower Northern line the City Circle, moving some or all of the inbound AM Bankstown line trains to the Museum.  This has a conflicting move* at Macdonaldtown and thus would surely reduce reliability to pre-2005 levels so has a snowballs' chance of proceeding.

* A conflicting move is where one train needs to get in the way of a train on another track, blocking its progress.  While it can be timetabled, things don't always run to timetabling.  It ultimately reduces reliability.

UPDATE 22/6/2012: Or here's a better idea: Terminate the Cumberland line at Parramatta from the south.  This means that Parramatta platforms 3 and 4 can become part of sector 2 and Harris Park commuters need to backtrack to Parramatta to reach the CBD.  This is not really a big problem as they are likely to have a faster trip to the city by doing this in any event.  This means that all tracks and platforms at Westmead and west are available to sector 3 trains without violating sectorisation and it also means Cumberland trains don't run relatively uselessly all the way to Blacktown.