2014 – The End Result

January, 2015Posted by Chris

 

On December 13th the Government announced the “NSW Long Term Transport Plan” with $17b of projects in Sydney that substantially adopted the Sydney Integrated Transport Strategy [SITS]. I prepared SITS during 2005-6, the work was recognised in 2007 as the “Achievement of the Year” by Chartered Institute of Logistical Engineers; at the same time as I became “National Achiever of the Year”.

The new government strategy contains ten major infrastructure projects for Sydney all taken from SITS including road, rail, Metro, BRT and Light Rail projects; some of the costs are direct quotes from SITS.

What a moment in one’s career, seriously to be enjoyed! Of course there is some tidying up to do; parts are out of date, priorities have changed, more integration between the modes is needed (repeat more integration between the modes). And; some urgent elements are not included, in particular a viable bus network to feed and supplement the trunk public transport routes. For further comments see Questions about SITS and SITS and the Government Strategy.

Our ambition is to bring improvements to urban amenity, not simply a better transport system, but a better place to be, at the best price possible. And there’s been an extraordinary amount of action during 2014 thanks to two graduates, Jinnie Li (Urban Design/Architect) and Elena Abraira (Engineer) who worked tirelessly through our research program.

Our successful work for Singleton included the aim to connect all local parts of the town to the centre and schools walking in comfort and safety, for young and old. This developed into ‘guidelines’ for walk networks, combined with bike-paths, and was presented, somewhat chaotically, at the Sydney Walk21 conference (See Walk 21 Paper) The presentation illustrated how pedestrian amenity had been lost between the 1920s and 1970’s and is slowly being regained. Shortly thereafter, in a moment of clarity, we released a poster showing the sequence on how City Form has been led by business over time – and not necessarily as planners intended. This chronology was projected forward to hypothesise on the formation of intellectual clusters (in SW Sydney) and the impact of automated vehicles (See Research), exciting stuff.

Somewhere in amongst all this we earned our keep.

Thank you.