Please explain a thing to me.
If I leave the office at 17:00 and get the first bus to the City, then it is entirely possible that I will arrive at Wynyard at 17:51. to get on a train to Blacktown and arrive at 16:29. It is 38 kilometres from Wynyard to Blacktown and exactly 7 kilometres from the bus stop at Spit Junction to the bus stop at Wynyard. Moving from Wynyard to Blacktown can be done at an average speed of 60km/h. Moving from Spit Junction to Wynyard is usually done at an average speed of less than 9km/h.
Yes, this is nonsense. Yes, this is stupid. But who to blame?
I blame the Lang, Bavin, Stevens, Mair, McKell, McGirr, Cahill, Heffron, Renshaw, Askin, Lewis, Willis, Wran, Unsworth, Greiner, Fahey, Carr, Iemma, Rees, Keneally, O'Farrell, Baird, Berejiklian, Perrottet, and now Minns Governments. I think that that qualifies as an unbiased opinion.
Way way way back in the 1920s when governments had the foresight to consider the possibility that there might possibly be a kosmos after they have left office, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened with way too many lanes for cars and provision for four railway tracks. When it was opened, two of those tracks were used by the new bright electric suburban trains and the other two of those tracks were used by trams which ran on proper heavy gauge railway. Wynyard Station which wasn't quite built to full operational intention, started out with six platforms; with 1 & 2 being used for Northern Beaches Trams, 3 & 4 by the North Shore line, and 5 & 6 by the Southern Line.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge was intended to have those two tram lines eventually converted into full-on proper railway lines but a little thing called The Depression got in the way. Then a little thing called World War II got in the way. After WW2, the McGirr government in an act of utter stupidity, decided to hire Rayethon Corp as consultants, and what should have been a proper legacy was forever stolen from the good and fair people of New South Wales forever. The biggest tram network in the world, was destroyed and would finally disappear in 1961.
It was the McGirr and Cahill Governments, which finally decided to permanently scar the North Shore with the massive act of civic vandalism called the Warringah Expressway. Not only was a golf course, a small cathedral, several cinemas, and thousands upon thousands of residential houses destroyed, by the scar would continue to throb and throb for decades, before the McGirr, Berejiklian Government decided to double down on the original act of stupidity by throwing many billions of dollars at an underwater Stupid Car Pipe.
Although the maths are not identical, they are broadly similar for all things that flow. Water, Electricity, and Traffic, can all be described by flow rates, pressure, resistance to that flow, size of the pipes through which they flow, and the potential difference between two points within the system. If we apply the same terminology of electricity to traffic flow, then the story becomes a bit easier to tell.
The Berejiklian Government in a classic Monkey-See Monkey-Do set of politics, after privatising the ferries and the buses and which made them both worse, decided to reward her criminal friends who operate toll-roads like a bunch of licensed bandits, with yet another government built tollroad. What a top idea. After already having mucked up Epping Road with the M2, Parramatta Road with the M4 East, Victoria Road with the M8, Gladys in her peanutted wisdom decided to "upgrade" the Warringah Expressway.
Now, you can improve the flow of stuff through the system, by increasing the size of the pipes which is what the underwater Stupid Car Pipe is intended to do but that is a very short-term solution and one which spending billions of dollars is almost a sunk-cost fallacy before the project was even started. The Gladys underwater Stupid Car Pipe might act as a Band-Aid over the throbbing scar that is the North Shore's traffic problems but it does nothing to reduce the potential difference between two points within the system.
If Voltage is the potential difference between two points within the system, and that is caused by the number of cars that want to drive on the road, then building more lanes does nothing to address the issue of what caused those cars in the first place. The way that you reduce the number of cars that want to drive on the road is by getting rid of the want.
Had the Northern Beaches had an Elevated Railway, or an Underground, then that would have taken maybe a hundred of thousands of cars off the road, because the people in those cars would have taken the train. As it currently stands, those people have no choice but to get in their cars which causes traffic, or to take the newly privatised and newly degraded bus service which also causes traffic.
And before you tell me that it's not technically possible to build an Underground Railway, let me remind you that the Gladys underwater Stupid Car Pipe is bigger than either the Sydney Metro which also goes underneath the harbour, or in fact the pipes which carry the Eastern Suburbs Railway.
For reasons that make no other sense to me, other than to enrich the pockets of a select few of Gladys' very tory friends, the underwater Stupid Car Pipe will be opened, will be a tollroad upon opening, will immediately fill to capacity because it doesn't solve the problem of what caused the traffic in the first place.
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