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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
