What cobblers!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/subway-would-make-bridge-plan-obsolete/2008/03/11/1205125911499.html
Linton Besser Transport Reporter
CONTROVERSIAL plans to duplicate the Iron Cove Bridge have been rendered obsolete by secret State Government proposals for a metro-style subway under Victoria Road, a local group says.
Plans released by the Roads and Traffic Authority provide little quantifiable justification for the $150 million upgrade of Victoria Road, said Alex Elliot, from the Victoria Road Community Committee. "The Government and the RTA refuse to release any traffic modelling or analysis," he said.
Late last year the RTA lodged a preliminary environmental assessment for the project with the Department of Planning. As well as a new bridge, it plans new bus lanes and bus bays along the congested artery.
In its submission, the group suggests the $150 million budget for the project be transferred instead to the Ministry of Transport, because "Sydney Buses will be accountable for reliability and efficiency of bus services not the RTA".
They claim the entire proposal no longer makes sense, with revelations the Government is considering a high-frequency underground train which "will replace buses on the Victoria Road corridor".
"The current RTA proposal has no knowledge of this new direction and therefore will become a 'stranded' investment, bypassed by a different strategy," it says.
The group has even suggested a number of alternative scenarios, including a "clip-on lane" for pedestrians and cyclists, and sacrifice the existing walkway for a dedicated bus lane.
The document it has presented to Planning criticises the RTA application for having "little analytical support" and lacking a study of future traffic demand.
"The traffic modelling claimed to have been done covers only existing demand and not future," it says. "Traffic modelling needs to support 25- to 30-year forecasts in residential and employment activity … [and] needs to be available to the community.
"[We] believe the proposal so lacks supporting objectives that the RTA should … go back and start the whole process again."
Alec Brown, a spokesman for the RTA, said yesterday that modelling had been done, but that it "will be further refined through the environmental assessment process and, when finalised, will be made publicly available during the display of these documents".
Earlier this year the RTA was forced to release a 2006 report under freedom-of-information laws that revealed motorists could expect only a 50-second improvement in their journey to the city.
The report was based on an earlier version of the project, estimated to cost $44.8 million. It has since been expanded with new traffic arrangements in those suburbs, bus bays and an outbound bus lane, and the project budget tripled.
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