Over the last few days, thanks mainly to this excellent post by Andrew Kurjata, anyone excited by regional transit in British Columbia (ahem.) was sharing and discussing the premiere of the third season of ‘Race Across the World’, a British ‘Amazing Race’ style travel show.
This season features five pairs of British people attempting to make their way overland from Stanley Park in Downtown Vancouver to St John’s, Newfoundland, literally across the entirety of Canada. This is an incomprehensible long distance for your average archipelago-bound Brit.
In episode one, the five pairs attempt to complete the first leg of the journey; from Stanley Park to Tlell in Haida Gwaii, a remote island chain in the far north of the province that I hadn’t heard of but is (according to Wikipedia and the producers of Race Across the World) known as the Canadian Galapagos for its remoteness and biodiversity.
This handy map of Canada shows just how huge it is by European standards. I’ve marked the destination of episode one, Tlell, with a red cross. Prince Rupert, the staging point for the ferry to Haida Gwaii is the red circle. The blue line is the BC Ferries route via Vancouver island that three teams took, the brown lines are the bus + hitchhiking routes chosen by the remaining two teams. The yellow line is the unmentioned rail based route. More on that below!
Being a fairly standard format reality show, the first episode of Race Across the World S3 features introductions to each pair of characters and their motivations for doing the show (why we should care about their story) and the obligatory hyping of ‘Destination BC’.
For anyone who knows the province there are some unexpectedly hilarous moments including the narrator of the show referring to Merritt as a ‘tourism hotspot’ (I kept looping this 3 second bite and laughing my head off) and the ‘country music capital of Canada’ (the country music festival won’t be returning to the town in 2023), as well as one contestant complaining that Canada seems quite expensive, having only visited Downtown Vancouver and Whistler, two of the most expensive places in the world’s second largest country.
Aside from the inevitable reality show drama and the culture-clash humour of seeing a familiar place through foreign eyes, the real treasure of this episode is watching people from a place that has reasonable intercity and regional transport attempt to move through a place that does not.
A few caveats: the contestants have money and a camera crew, but can’t use phones, internet etc. They can ask friendly strangers to look things up for them, though. They also stop by pre-organised ‘work’ stays or side-trips where they do cute little Canadian activities such as visiting a bison farm, working in a ski gear shop or going bear-spotting.
I’m also aware that not all of the UK enjoys great regional transit, but until you’ve been to Canada, honestly you don’t know how bad it can get. I’ve spent most of the last four years living in regional NSW and I’m prone to complain about the state of things back home but even I’ve been caught by surprise. Similarly, most foreign visitors to North America are used to the United States being the more car-centric and hostile to transit users/cyclists/pedestrians of the pair. In general, this is true. Public transport (transit) in US cities and the pedestrian and cycling environment is almost universally worse than in Canadian cities. Once you leave the big cities (and medium sized towns) though, that quickly falls apart.
Canada has Via, a national passenger railway operator, which is generally similar in scope and operation to Amtrak. But otherwise, there is really no government subsidised intercity transport. What exists exists because the profit imperative makes it so. As I discussed in a previous blog, despite living in a town that is a major railway junction, I have no access to intercity passenger rail. The only road coaches that service the town are run entirely for profit and cost as much as a typical airfare or hiring a car. So they’re really only used by those with absolutely no alternative. Almost everyone visiting this part of the world comes with a car or hires one when they arrive.
The best intercity train in BC is operated and funded from the United States.
In the U.S, Amtrak operates not only long distance trains (similar to Via’s Transcanadian but generally 2 to 3x more frequent) but also provides shorter ‘inter-city’ style service subsidised by the relevant states. A great example is the Cascades route between Vancouver, BC and Eugene, Oregon which runs several times per day and is funded two thirds by fare recovery and one third split between the two U.S states. I guess BC gets a free ride!
The route of the Amtrak Cascades train. Frequent, reliable and useful intercity rail travel…American style!
For whatever reason this doesn’t occur in Canada and so aside from the totally tourist orientated, reliability unreliable and infrequent Transcanadian and the aforementioned Amtrak service heading to the States there is no regional rail service out of Vancouver.
Okay so that’s the context, back to the show.
The 5 groups set out from Stanley Park, asking people they meet along the way where on earth Haida Gwaii is and how they can get there. Most groups quickly figure out they need to get to Prince Rupert, the staging point for a ferry to the island chain, but there are a few different ideas about how to get from downtown Vancouver to the northern port town.
For backpacking Brits, the distances are impossibly far and their assumptions that wherever they end up there will just ‘be a bus’ are reliably proved wrong. One pair ends up taking a $500 taxi at one point to get to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island, while others find themselves stumped by the lack of information at bus stops and take to just flagging down any bus or coach that passes by; a strategy that proves surprisingly effective. I suspect having a camera crew in tow helps quite a bit in that regard.
lol.
All in all, three groups take the regular BC ferry service from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, a straightforward public transport journey, and make their way via ridesharing organised by the people they’re staying with or taxi to Port Hardy from where they board a ferry to Prince Rupert.
The other two groups attempt to make the trip overland. One pair heads to Whistler by bus while the other pair decides for some reason that is not at all clear (but I expect the small bison ranch they visit has something to do with it?) to head to Merritt, a small town in Interior BC that is not really a common destination, nor a particularly useful transit hub. Each group then hitches to Prince George and then Prince Rupert; journeys of several hundred kilometres each. The editing team sort of cuts over exactly how they do this, because one pair seem to get a ride all the way from Merritt to Prince George which just seems tremendously unlikely. I think you could wait around a gas station in Merritt for a week before finding someone heading all the way there. It’d make more sense to get to Kamloops or Cache Creek first, which I suspect is what actually happened. Or perhaps the film crew bus gave them a helping hand…
Either way, on the evening of Day 5, just in time for the thrice weekly ferry to Graham Island in the Haida Gwaii, all five groups descended on the port of Prince Rupert – how convenient!
What about the train?
You may well ask.
What struck me as interesting, about what is clearly an extremely produced and planned show, is that no one even makes mention of the train. Now we know passenger rail in BC is lacking, but it just so happens that Vancouver to Prince Rupert is actually the longest journey that can be made entirely by rail in the province!
The Via map makes Vancouver to Prince Rupert by train seem like the obvious choice.
By taking the twice-weekly Transcanadian from Vancouver to Jasper in the Alberta Rockies the contestants could then change onto the thrice-weekly Jasper to Prince Rupert train that connects with the ferry to Haida Gwaii!
Voila!
I had a quick look at short notice fares and they come in at about $750 CAD for two, which is about on-par or cheaper than the amount most groups spent on strings of buses, ferries, taxis and private rides.
Race Around the World doesn’t tell us exactly what day this is all occurring on which makes checking timetables tricky, but there is one big clue. On Day 5, one pair of contestants are trying to hitch a ride from Prince George to Prince Rupert. The legend who ends up taking them in his car (for $250 for an 8 hour trip…which is actually 16 hours by the time he drives home. I hope the production crew were a bit more generous than the stingy contestants!) tells us that he has an annual tradition of swimming in a nearby lake every May 1st, which, given that they then go swimming together, is presumably the current date. So, assuming that Day 5 is May 1st, 2022, the teams must have set off from Stanley Park on April 27th, 2022; a Wednesday.
I’m not sure how much Via timetables have changed between 2022 and 2023, but at the moment the Transcanadian is leaving on a Monday and a Friday at 3pm and arriving at Jasper the next day at 11am. The Jasper to Prince Rupert train (which definitely needs a cool new name…) leaves Jasper at 12:45pm on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. The train overnights in Prince George (where the Via website warns you that you need to book a hotel) before arriving the following day at 8:25pm in Prince Rupert (the towns along the way need cool new names too…there is some precedent in this regard, until 2010 Haida Gwaii was known as the Queen Charlotte Islands).
SO. According to my rough calculations, a group that left Stanley Park and made their way to Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station, would have been able to buy tickets onto the Friday Transcanadian, spent Saturday night in Jasper, boarded the Prince Rupert train the next day and arrived at Prince Rupert wharf on Monday evening. This would’ve given them 90 minutes to change onto the ferry. Sadly, they would’ve been one day behind the rest of the contestants who made it onto the Sunday evening ferry.
Okay, so the train didn’t turn out to be a winning strategy, but it still seems like a really sensible first port of call. After all, it’s really just a quirk of the timetable that it wasn’t the better option. If the race had started on Friday morning instead of Wednesday the train would’ve been a clear winner.
Despite some on-time reliability issues the train is probably going to, on average, work out better than relying on a once weekly ferry from the northern end of Vancouver Island or hitching along some very remote stretches of highway north of Whistler.
Of course the show is designed to give the appearance of reality rather than actually replicate it and the exact reasons for ignoring the existence of the train service in favour of promoting Merritt, of all places, is only clear to the powers that be.
All in all I really enjoyed this episode of a show I otherwise wouldn’t have watched and it’s a handy reminder to Canadians that your regional transit ‘system’ (I use the term loosely here) is honestly one of the worst in the world. And that’s coming from an Australian.
If you want to stream this episode of Race Across the World you can currently find it here.
It’s been almost a year since I last posted here, but my excuse is a good one. I’ve been flat out wrapping up Following the Flow, the documentary I’ve been producing for the past three years. You can watch the trailer and find out more on our website. We are also showing on SBS this Sunday September 25th at 4pm to celebrate World Rivers Day. If you missed that you might still be able to catch it OnDemand!
OK now to Marseille.
Spending a week in Marseille, on France’s Mediterranean Cote d’Azur, I couldn’t help but find myself constantly comparing its public transport and urban fabric with that of Sydney. Aside from the fact that I happened to find myself there, I think these two cities have some similarities that make such a comparison worthwhile.
Marseille as an administrative area has the 2nd largest population of any French city, around 900,000 people. The greater ‘Metro Marseille’ region has a population of around 1.9m people spread across 4,000 square kilometres, making it the 3rd most populous metro area in France after Paris and Lyon.
Marseille’s Vieux Port neighbourhood. Being a tourist, I spent a fair bit of time around here. Credit: Tia Monto
Greater Sydney, for comparison, as described by the Australian Bureau of Statistics spans some 12,000 square kilometres reaching from Bargo in the South, Blackheath in the West and as far as Wyong Shire in the North. Personally I would’ve drawn the boundaries a little closer in. This area is home to around 5.2 million people; Australia’s most populous metropolitan area (but perhaps not for much longer!).
At first glance these cities might appear to be on completely different scales, but the relative density of French cities (and also that of the inner and middle suburbs of Sydney), as well as the countless other significant urban agglomerations within a 1-2 hour commute of Marseille probably makes the size and makeup of these cities more similar than they first appear.
Comparing Sydney to Paris in this way would be less useful as Paris is on an altogether different scale with 13m people spread over 19,000 square kilometres. The vast bulk of them, 11 million, living in the 2,000 square kilometre urban area. Density and total size wise, Sydney has more in common with Marseille than Paris. Besides, I didn’t go to Paris so I can’t exactly write about it!
Metro
Until 2019 Sydney didn’t have a metro. This is more a quirk of definition than anything else. From a tourist or resident’s perspective much of the Sydney Trains network effectively functions as a metro. It is sometimes described as a mix between a European metro and suburban railway (or S-bahn in the Germanosphere).
Marseille built a more traditional metro system in the late 1970s and it now consists of 2 lines running short 4 car rubber tyred and driver operated trains.
A metro train pulling into Castellane Station on Line 1.
The scale of the system is pretty modest with 31 stations spread across 23km. Note the typically high European station density with an average of a station every 750m.
I really like the sleek simplicity of the over door map on-board the Marseille Metro.
Sydney’s Metro, as I’ve expressed elsewhere, is a different beast entirely. Using longer 6 car driverless trains in two years time it will span 65km from Tallawong to Bankstown, coincidently with the same number of stations as Marseille’s system: 31. In Sydney that’s a station on average every 2.1km.
I discussed the problem with the density of stations on Sydney’s Metro in detail in the context of the CBD and Southwest Metro and also in regard to Metro West. In short, there’s nothing inherently wrong with widely stopped stations but it does mean that more people are going to need to use another mode of transport to actually get there. It changes the dynamic of what a metro does. In Marseille, metro stations are close enough together that if you live anywhere near a metro line and are able, you can comfortably walk there.
Louis says ‘Sortie thataway —>!’
Tram
Like Sydney, Marseille has 3 tram lines – and two of them share a significant amount of track in the CBD. In fact, their network diagrams have a lot in common!
The Marseille tramway serves 32 stations across 16km of route while Sydney’s light rail serves 42 stops across a 25km system.
There’s some definitely network similarities going on here…
Next year, with the opening of the Parramatta Light Rail, Sydney’s major satellite city will feature it’s own modest tram system. So too, since 2014, has Aubagne, 20 minutes by train from Marseille’s main station, had its own 7 stop tram system.
In the urban core of Marseille the tram typically runs in streets that have had car traffic completely removed, so too with George Street in Sydney.
Rue de Rome is for trams, bikes and people.
In both cities as the tram leaves the CBD it tends to run in a median or kerb right of way next to mixed traffic lanes and in both cities there are some short sections of tunnel. Sydney’s L1 is a bit of an outlier here running along an old freight corridor.
One key difference in the systems when considering the urban fabric more broadly is the length of the trams. Thanks to some weird wrangling with the RMS, Sydney’s L2 and L3 are serviced by coupled pairs of Alstom trams totalling 67m long – enormous in an urban environment. This was essentially done to increase the total capacity of the line without increasing service frequency – ostensibly to avoid delaying motorists at busy intersections along the route.
The trams in Marseille are a more conventional 42.5m long.
People, trams and outdoor dining. Rue de Rome has some serious George Street vibes.
It turns out the similarity of the two systems goes way back. In 1876 Marseille opened its first horse drawn tramway. In 1899, its first electric tram. The system was slowly dismantled and replaced with buses and trolley buses starting in 1945 and finishing in 1960. Only one 3km line remained in operation through this period. The first service in the modern network ran in 2007, 47 years after the old system’s almost total closure.
For comparison, Sydney’s first horse drawn tramway began service in 1861 and its first electric tram in 1898. Sydney’s tramways began to be dismantled in the 1950s to be replaced by buses, a process that wound up in 1961. The first stage of Sydney’s current light rail network opened up in 1997, 36 years later.
Evidently the processes that drove the demise of Sydney’s tramways played out the world over.
Buses
Fixed line transport (trains, metro, trams) are the friend of the tourist. It’s easy to figure out where they go, typically straightforward to acquire tickets and you usually don’t have to press the button or pull the cord to alight. Buses offer a more varied experience and in many cities they are totally impenetrable to visitors.
In this regard Marseille is a revelation. Cash payment is accepted on board (2 euro for a 1 hour any mode transfer ticket), almost every stop has a shelter featuring a network map, timetable and often a live next-service display, every stop has an easy to remember name and, best of all, on-board displays that actually work let you know where the bus is and what stop is upcoming – plus you can see where to transfer to other routes, trams and metro. Can you tell I’m a big fan?
This is actually a tram stop, but the info at bus stops was just as comprehensive.
There are some downsides: the system is extremely popular and not frequent enough. Bus overcrowding is severe more often than not. Fare evasion seems rife, although periodic tickets weren’t particularly expensive so maybe a lot of people have annual passes and just don’t need to tap on. We were waved onto buses on multiple occasions without paying for some reason or other. The buses mostly operated in mixed traffic though I have to say, despite the narrow roads and haphazard parking, traffic never seemed to be too bad. I’ve definitely been stuck in a lot worse bus traffic in Sydney. This could be a bias of the routes I was travelling on, maybe things are worse in commuter neighbourhoods.
A short wheelbase bus plying a narrow road in the old part of town. Note the bollards in the foreground to stop cars blocking the footpath and a car (legally) parked obstructing the footpath on the far side.
As in Sydney, rear door boarding is discouraged by signage, but unlike in Sydney it often happens anyway, particularly when there are a lot of people trying to get onto an already crowded bus. Despite the crowding I didn’t ever see a bus driver not let someone on (although a few passengers elected to wait rather than scrum their way on) and only once did our driver completely skip a stop with waiting passengers. As opposed to Sydney it seems like the onus of safety falls more on the passengers than the driver.
Onboard displays showing accurate next stop information are on every bus and they actually work! It reminded me of the time when Sydney Buses started having these circa 2005, but they were either always off, showed static or ran ads…not so useful!
Another funny similarity with Sydney is the existence of a B1, although Marseille has a B2, B3A and B3B as well. Like in Sydney the B1 signifier meant an important and frequent route. The Marseille B1 runs from a downtown Metro station out to an isolated university campus and seemed to operate in a mix of bus-only lanes and mixed traffic. Also like the Sydney B1 the Marseille B1 has its own vehicles, articulated buses instead of double deckers. Sadly I didn’t manage a photo of one.
Ticketing
Buying a ticket from the machines at metro stations (and some tram stops) is extremely straightforward. Just click on the photo of the British flag to swap it into English and select the duration of your ticket. 1 hour starts at 2 euro, 24 hours is 5.20 and as far as I’m aware you can go as high as an annual ticket. Options!
Buying the ticket on the bus is a little bit trickier, without French I’m not sure if the whole gamut of tickets was available onboard but we had no trouble buying 1 hour tickets from the driver.
Contrast to Sydney where we lack time based fares which, despite some shortcomings, are very, very tourist friendly. On the plus side all opal services (pretty much all services) allow tap on/off with a credit card which is obscenely tourist friendly – at least if you aren’t price sensitive and have a credit card! The flip side of that is that paying cash fares is all but impossible in Sydney and to do so you’d have to figure out that you need to go to a convenience store and buy an opal card with cash there – tricky!
Suburban Trains
I didn’t take any suburban trains in Marseille so I’m going to refrain from commenting on them but I’m fairly sure they exist in some capacity.
Intercity Trains
Marseille St Charles is a terminus station along the same lines as the ‘Sydney Terminal’ intercity platforms at Central. From here high speed ‘TGV’ trains, express ‘Intercitie’ trains and local/regional ‘TER’ trains extend out across Provance, France and even to a handful of international destinations.
Figuring out which trains require pre-purchased tickets and how to nab the best fare isn’t super easy, but compared to schlepping to an airport, travelling through French stations is a breeze. In the past few weeks I’ve taken all 3 kinds of trains a bunch of times and as anyone who has trained around Europe can attest, the whole thing works remarkably well.
Marseille St Charles is at a junction point of the 2 Metro lines making it an easy connection to the rest of the city.
Sydney’s Central Station has roughly hourly departures on what are now called NSW Trainlink Intercity services – the equivalent of French TER trains – in 3 directions: North to Newcastle, South to Wollongong and West to the Blue Mountains. Our NSW Trainlink XPT and Xplorer trains are roughly equivalent to the French Intercitie trains, offering First and Second Class seats and requiring a reservation to travel. The frequency from Sydney is much lower than Marseille as you might expect and there is sadly no antipodean analogue for the French TGV.
Seaport
Getting a bit off topic from the realm of urban transport here but there’s an interesting comparison to be made between the two cities’ harbours. Both Sydney and Marseille have beautiful old harbours surrounded by historic architecture, luxury hotels and tourist orientated attractions. In both cities huge new container terminals have been built away from the old harbours, taking the necessary nuisance of global trade away from the panoramic views of the old port and freeing up much needed space for parking luxury yachts.
Both cities are both well and truly on cruise ship itineraries although Marseille is notable for also being a hub for enormous ferries that connect the French mainland with Corsica and also across to old colonial possessions in Algeria and Tunisia.
Sydney’s last ocean going long distance ferry left some 15 years ago when the Spirit of Tasmania axed their Sydney-bound service.
Urban fabric
Marseille has been continuously occupied since 600BC when it was founded from the sea. Culturally the city seems to be just as connected across the Mediterranean as it is to the French mainland.
Because of this long and varied history, much of the city was built well before automobiles were a consideration. On the positive side, the human scale of so much of the city is a pleasure to explore. On the negative side, people have surely asserted cars into this environment in which they don’t really fit and it is basically a clusterfuck.
In the more commercially orientated parts of the city bollards do the heavy lifting of stopping cars obstructing footpaths. In older and wealthier residential neighbourhoods cars are EVERYWHERE. They’re parked blocking the tiny footpaths and they’re parked partially obstructing intersections. The only saving grace is that thankfully the disease of the ever larger all American vehicle is (mostly) yet to infect Europe, so most cars are 2 door hatches or the size of a Mazda 3. Ten years ago this was true of Sydney, alas no longer.
The surest way to keep cars out of a street is with bollards, just ask the French.
Pedestrian environment
Given all the things I’ve outlined so far you won’t be surprised to hear that being on foot in Marseille is a mixed bag. Neighbourhoods are so dense that if you walk for an hour across the city you will without doubt encounter many interesting goings-on. This really makes it the perfect city to visit as a tourist.
In the Old Port and other central areas pedestrian amenity is amazing. Large boulevards and plazas are given over to people and restaurants and bars spill out into these enormously popular public spaces.
A typical street in the Vieux Port neighbourhood of Marseille.
This trend caught my eye as in much of Australia if a business wants to occupy part of the footpath they need a permit and they’re up against other footpath users for that right. All sorts of people require access to the footpath so in some respects it isn’t an ideal place to sprawl a commercial undertaking. But it’s a shame that like so many debates in Australia, this conversation pits different groups that want to use our (relatively wide) streets for anything that isn’t moving and storing cars against one another.
More Vieux Port. Contraflow bike lanes are pretty common and help make the city heaps more accessible on bike than it is in a car. They also make streets busier and less predictable which encourages people to drive more carefully and go slower. The speed limit here is either 20 or 30, but you’d be hard pressed (safely) going any faster than that anyway.
It’s wonderful to see a city that has reclaimed so much streetspace that a restaurant’s 20 outdoor tables can coexist with street vendors, people sitting around or waiting for the tram, people whizzing by on e-scooters and walkers of all speeds, ages and mobilities.
Micromobility
I spent my week in Marseille telling anyone who would listen (read: my friends) that the micromobility revolution was underway! It was exciting to see and not just when we doubled up on hirable e-scooters for the post-midnight run home one night.
E-scooters and e-bikes with buzzy one syllable names and distinctive colour schemes hang around on street corners, in plazas and occasionally en masse in designated storage areas. Unlike in Sydney, they are extremely popular. When your correspondent went to hire one (well not me actually, I didn’t have the requisite internet to download the app with) the first 5 or so we checked were all out of battery. On several occasions I saw people contracting to these international tech companies out there moving the scooters around and replacing their batteries.
There are millions more of these things about, but I’m not much of a photographer…
But it isn’t just the start-ups making this type of mobility seem like a bigger deal. Personal e-scooters and e-bikes seem to be just as common as the humble pushie in Marseille. The great thing is that because of the flexible use of public space for transport, the city is ready for it.
In Sydney we like to carefully delineate roadspace for specific uses. This means that the roads work very well for cars, okay for buses and pedestrians and quite poorly for cyclists. They aren’t really welcome on the footpath or the road.
In Marseille on the other hand, except in the parts of the city where cars are explicitly excluded, the road is for everyone. Pedestrians (old and young), cars, buses, motorbikes, pushbikes, scooters, wheelchairs, whatever. This definitely isn’t ideal, particularly for wheelchair users and the less mobile who have to navigate this treacherous landscape, but it does mean that when something that has the potential to totally change how we get around cities for the better comes along, society doesn’t freak out. E-scooters? No worries, I already have to dodge the motorised variety!
The pedestrian environment can be pretty hostile in Marseille, but at least you aren’t about to get run over by a 3 tonne ute!
Instead of waging war on e-scooters, as we are in Sydney, they are being embraced by the Marseillaise like no doubt so many other changes over the 2600 years they’ve been there.
Lessons for Sydney
This post is much longer than I intended (I never have been one for brevity) and I’m aware that I’m a transport and planning enthusiast who spent a grand total of eight nights in a foreign city. My insights might be interesting but they probably aren’t profound.
That said, I did want to end on a sort of summary of some of the transport/urban design wins from Marseille that Sydney could relatively easily adopt and a couple of other thoughts that comparing the two cities brought up for me.
We need to start taking steps to limit the growth in size of passenger vehicles in Australia immediately. Marseille is car strewn, but it works(ish) because the cars are at least relatively compact. If we replaced all of them with Ford Rangers and SUVs the streets would be so cluttered that no one else, be they on foot or driving a bus, could get passed and the consequences would be deadly. In 99% of cases there is no need for people to drive such large vehicles, they do because it’s convenient, comfortable and you can. Our cities and states can take steps to stop this trend because we know where it leads: just take a look across the Pacific (from Sydney!) or the Atlantic (from Marseille!)
We need to urgently build a network of dedicated micromobility lanes and low speed shared streets. In Sydney the roads belong to cars. That isn’t going to change anytime soon. People want to get out of cars for health reasons and because it’s more fun, cheaper and often faster. But we need safe spaces to encourage that. That means building a lot more dedicated bike/micromobility lanes that are wide enough for all kinds of users; I’m looking at you old guy going 30km/h down the footpath in your electric wheelchair. These lanes need to actually connect all the way to where someone wants to go. Enough with the piecemeal bike lanes that get tacked on when there’s spare space in the roadway. Enough with the chevrons and green paint on a 6 lane highway and calling it bike infrastructure. We need lanes that are separated from traffic or we need 30km/h maximum speed limits and streets that are designed to make going any faster than this completely unviable (see: the backstreets of Newtown).
Frequency is freedom. If you are reliably running your public transport service at a minimum 10 minute frequency all day and into the evening people will use it. We need to stop freaking out about travel time in every conversation about improving transit in Sydney (which cost us several really useful infill stations on Metro West) and start making as many of our trains, trams, ferries, buses and metro as frequent as possible for as long as possible. This is already well underway.
We can and should reclaim as much of the roadway from cars as possible. The standard street in Sydney is one chain wide, that’s just over 20 metres. In so much of the city that means 2 lanes of traffic, 2 lanes of parked cars and maybe 2m on either side for a footpath, trees, bins, cafe seating, bus stops, utility boxes and everything else. We need to take what’s been going on in the city and spread it to our inner suburbs by reducing the number of vehicle lanes, reducing the number of on-street parking spaces and creating more space for all the stuff that is currently crammed onto the footpath. I’m sure it seemed like a huge ask in Marseille and it definitely ruffled a few feathers when George Street was pedestrianised but in both instances no one is looking back. It’s just so much better now for everyone.
Prior to the launch of L2 in December 2019, the last big piece of public transport infrastructure to open was the Hills Metro line in May of that year. The accompanying bus network redesign was fairly underwhelming and so I wasn’t expecting much from TfNSW this time around.
I was pleasantly surprised!
The plan focused on doing more with what they had, with no announcement of any significant increase in rolling stock or labour hours. Instead, they seem to be rejigging allocations to operate more efficiently.
The existing bus network (until December 5th) is based on the original tramlines that criss-crossed the Eastern Suburbs and much of Sydney until mid-century. From there, it’s been added to over the years to become the sprawling mess that it is today.
Does this map of the Eastern Suburbs’ original tramways look familiar at all? Source: wikimedia.
That original tram network was designed to get people (men) from their homes in the suburbs to their workplaces in the Central Business District. The transport-speak for this design is called a ‘radial network’. It’s great if you want to go in and out, not so great if you want to go in-between or round-about.
The new network (from December 5th) has been designed to foster the so-called ‘network effect’ of a large public transport system. In practice this means a smaller number of more frequent and more reliable routes connect with each other at key destinations like universities, shopping centres and train stations. This system links passengers to important local hubs from where they can change service to access a wide variety of destinations.
While the old network gave almost everyone in the Eastern Suburbs a frequent and reliable one seat ride to Central Station or Circular Quay, the new network opens new pathways connecting places that were not readily accessible by public transport.
The high-frequency network map around Green Square.
Take note of high frequency (10 minutes or better) services heading towards busy train stations that weren’t really an important part of the old network like Green Square, Redfern and (soon to be) Waterloo.
Every line on that map represents a bus, tram or train service that runs at least every 10 minutes all day. If we’d had a look at that same area just a couple of years ago the only lines present would have been the train lines. An aggregation of routes along Anzac Parade and Crown Street might have combined to provide a frequent service in some places, but there was no clarity or consistency.
This new network design allows anyone to quickly determine where and how they can readily access public transport.
The Changes
By and large, the network that will commence operation next month reflects the changes proposed back in May, but despite the recent turmoil the state government has been embroiled in, they have managed to make a few revisions.
Restoring the 373
The most significant alteration between the May and November announcements is the return of the 373. The Coogee to City bus was axed completely in the May redesign, leaving residents of the bourgeois beachside bubble forced to interchange in unsavoury Randwick outside of peak hours. Of course the reverse was also true, leaving Sydney’s troves of backpackers unable to get to the beach quite so seamlessly.
An Eastern Suburbs icon.
Some residents groups, and local Labor MP Majorie O’Neill, have been particularly outspoken in the battle to save the one seat ride. Their campaign focuses on the number of bus routes being axed, rather than the number of services in operation. This seems like a miss to me, since the performance of a bus network surely shouldn’t be measured in the sheer number of bus routes it has. I suppose the simple narrative of a Coalition government axing bus routes is straightforward and easy to understand.
Thankfully, the backlash was responded to in a fairly sensible manner of compromise, returning the 373 as a high frequency service (every 10 minutes all day, every day) while generally sticking to the planned network design. Aside from restoring direct beach access from the CBD, this has the added benefit of resolving the shortage of buses operating along Flinders Street to Taylor Square, a problem I pointed out in May.
In that original iteration of the changes, only the 396 would have run from the South East to Taylor Square every 10 to 20 minutes. This represented a huge cut in service. With the 373 restored and the 396 also increased to high frequency, there will be a bus every 5 minutes down Oxford Street to Anzac Parade.
I also can’t really imagine a 370 every 10 minutes being anywhere near enough to meet beach travel demand on weekends in Summer. I think a high-frequency 373 is a good idea until the L2 is extended to Coogee Beach via the Havelock Street tram right-of-way as it should have been originally.
Of course this is a zero sum game and all those 373s are going to have to come from somewhere. A few cuts that jumped out at me were the removal of the 305 outside of peak hours, limiting access to the Alexandria industrial area and cutting the 350 at Domestic, meaning a change to the 420 to get to International.
Extending the 370 to Glebe Point
In May I pointed out that the 370 is the thorn in the side of good public transport in the Inner South. The addition of the 373 will reduce the pressure on the 370 at the Coogee Beach end and its extension down Glebe Point Road is a boon for hipsters neighbourhood hoping the Inner West. It’s also good news for Darlington, which was never a good choice for a bus layover.
I think TfNSW could’ve gone a lot further here. The Western half of what was the 370, between Leichardt and Glebe, now just ends on Glebe Point Road. It’s hard to see what value this bus route brings, when most of its route is duplicated by the very frequent 470 that runs to Broadway and Central as well.
The high-frequency network fades out fast once you get to Newtown and the more familiar tangle of bus routes resumes. It’s hard not to read this totally bizarre terminus for the ‘469’ (as it has been dubbed) as temporary.
I could see the 469 being extended East down Bridge Road through Pyrmont/Ultimo to the CBD and perhaps down William Street to terminate at Edgecliff, or even operating as the 373 to Coogee as another cross-town alternative. With the 370 running a high frequency connection to Broadway, the L1 and 433 connecting to Central and the improved 469 running over the Western Distributor to Town Hall, the slow and inefficient 431 would no longer be needed, freeing up lots of buses to be deployed elsewhere.
This whole part of the network redesign feels like a bit of a band-aid until the Inner West region is given the frequent-network treatment that is no doubt underway.
The 307: The Campbell Street Connection
Now you seem me…
In May I suggested that the 307 from Mascot to Marrickville Metro would quickly be canned/altered. TfNSW has opted for the latter. It’s a shame, because East/West connections have always been a weak point and this plan doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to improve them. There is potential here, but a dinky low frequency bus that kind of skirts the Inner West to terminate at Marrickville Metro wasn’t really ever going to take off.
…now you don’t!
Looking towards the next round of network improvements, I’d love to see a high frequency route connecting Sydenham-Mascot-Kingsford-UNSW along the Gardeners Road corridor and another running the length of Cleveland Street from Newtown to Moore Park.
One way to achieve this would be by moving the 370 to Erskineville Road as I suggested in May, combining the 352/355 to run Enmore Road-King Street-Cleveland Street-Cook Road-Oxford Street and diverting the 308 to serve Waterloo. As for the Gardeners Road corridor, there’s nothing wrong with the 358 except its frequency.
Swapping the 303 and 306
This change isn’t of much relevance outside of Mascot, but the 303 and 306 have switched over their routes around Eastlakes. This is good news for UNSW students living in the Brighton area who can get to uni without going down every back street in Eastlakes. I still think the 303 is a massively missed opportunity for a more frequent, more direct connection between Rockdale-Brighton-Mascot-UNSW.
Too many ways through Surry Hills
The last questionable choice I want to rehash is the decision to run the 339 and 374 down different corridors through Surry Hills. The 2 buses serve different parts of the Eastern Suburbs, but a lot of people in Randwick, Coogee or Clovelly live close to either route, so there’s some value having them call at the same stops around Surry Hills. Living near two 20-minute bus routes becomes much appealing if you can board them from the same stop.
With the 373 now running down Flinders, I just don’t see the need to have the 339 serving Albion/Foveaux. Better to move it to Cleveland Street and maintain a decent service through there.
There would still be at least 8 buses per hour in each direction on Elizabeth, Crown and Flinders Streets, so no one in the Albion/Foveaux area would be wanting for buses.
Maybe next time.
Onward and Upward
There’s a bunch of other changes that are either smaller or don’t directly relate to my interests. The good news is TfNSW published a fairly comprehensive community submission report that explains what the feedback said and what they’ve done to address it.
Ultimately, I think it’s a shame that the L2 wasn’t built all the way to Coogee along the existing Havelock Street right-of-way in the first place. If that had been done, the 373 really wouldn’t be necessary and the 396 could do the job of connecting Darlinghurst with the South East. This would free up a lot of rolling stock and labour that could be used to bolster the weaker East/West connections.
That said, it is great to see the state government produce a forward looking bus network redesign.
First the Northern Beaches and now the Eastern Suburbs, in years to come Sydney just might be a pleasure to traverse by bus, if not by light rail.
