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Good Life In the Urban Jungle Posts

Media Release 2014-03-12 — Opal

North Western commuters will be slugged Opal transfer fee, but Eastern Suburbs commuters wont be.

It has been revealed that passengers travelling in the Eastern Suburbs will not pay the Opal transfer penalty when changing from their truncated bus routes to the new CBD & South East Light Rail.

However passengers in the North Western Suburbs will pay the Opal transfer penalty when the Government cuts bus routes to force passengers on to the new privately operated single deck North West Rail Link.

“In every other modern city that has introduced smart-card ticketing they have taken the opportunity to integrate fares and remove the transfer penalty. However the NSW Minister for Transport Gladys Berejiklian has shown that the government intends to use the Opal card to silently increase fares.” said Mathew Hounsell the co-convenor of Ecotransit Sydney.

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Media Release 2014-02-13 — Westconnex

Inner West Locals get organised to stop the WestConnex toll road.

On Wednesday 12 February 2014 at Herb Greedy Hall in Marrickville the community hosted a meeting to hear about the WestConnex from noted transport planner Michelle Zeibots and public transport advocate Gavin Gatenby.

Gavin Gatenby is the co-convenor of Ecotransit Sydney, a community-based transport advocacy group. Ecotransit Sydney grew out the city resident’s long running fight for sensible modern transport planning, and was instrumental in ensuring the construction of the Airport Rail Link and the Inner West Light Rail. Mr Gatenby delivered a detailed presentation on the proposal and its impacts on the Inner West.

“An unholy convergence of interests has gathered around WestConnex. The big construction companies want a multi-billion contract that’ll run for years, the developers want the government to resume whole slabs of the inner west and sell it to them for high-rise, and the tollway companies are trying to salvage a failed business model by generating another round of traffic growth with car-based redevelopment. It’s all backed by new planning laws stack the deck against local government, residents and small business. Sydney ‘s road traffic has been almost flatlining for a decade. The tragedy is that if we were to spend a fraction of the funds earmarked for WestConnex on public transport solutions it would fall dramatically.” EcoTransit Co-Convenor Gavin Gatenby said.

Dr Michelle Zeibots is a transport planner and research principle in transport at the Institute of Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney . Her research into road capacity, traffic speeds and volumes is widely respected and cited.

Dr Zeibots talked about her experience as an expert adviser on the transport panel during the drafting of the NSW Transport Masterplan. Working with the department and minister, the experts believed the state was ready to build the vital second harbour rail crossing, which would increase the Sydney rail network’s capacity by 50 per cent. Then just weeks before the master plan was released, WestConnex and other motorways motorways appeared in the plan and were given priority by the government.

Dr Zeibots refuted the argument that the motorway will reduce traffic and congestion, by citing the many examples of induced traffic; especially her research into the significant induced traffic caused last time the M4 was extended.

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Media Release 2013-07-26 – Opal

“The roll out of integrated ticket is one of the greatest debacles in the state’s history. Bureaucratic intransigence & incompetence combined with ministerial ineptitude to drain the state’s tax payer of over a billion dollars.” Said Mathew Hounsell co convenor of Ecotransit.

“A simple universal fare structure would have allowed integrated ticketing to be rolled out across the state quickly and at a reasonable price. Instead the previous Labor government was bullied by the bureaucracy, especially treasury, into wasting taxpayers funds in a pointless expensive exercise of fiddling fares to give the appearance of maximising revenue.”

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Media Release 2013-05-09 – Opal

Media Release 2013-05-09

Ecotransit is a member based, not-for-profit public and active transport community advocacy group.

“An integrated, consistent and reasonably priced ticketing system has already proved a winner for public transport users and reducing Sydney’s traffic problems. In the year after the Government removed Westpac’s gate fee on Green Square Station, the patronage doubled by over 1,600 people a day. “ Mathew Hounsell Co-Convenor of Ecotransit said.

“The Inner West Light Rail had a jump in passengers when the Government allowed them to use MyMulti weekly tickets. Ecotransit expects the integrated ticketing to make the Inner West Light Rail very popular once the new Leichardt and Haberfield stops are open to the public.”

“It is a shame that the government and bureaucracy have continued to pursue a bespoke, overpriced, outdated payment processing system creating another government mandated monopoly. Other cities have already rolled out next generation systems using contact less credit cards and near field communication from mobile phones.”

“While the type of payment technology determines the overall cost to tax payers, it alone can not make a good ticketing system; although it can make a bad one. “

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Media Release 2013-03-12 — City Rail

CityRail disruption: deferred maintenance to blame

This morning, Tuesday the 12th March 2013, the city’s railway network was brought down by a regime of underinvestment and deferred maintenance. Over the past decade Sydney ’s railway network has experienced repeated major incidents that have disrupted the lives of city’s residents and the centre of the state’s economy.

Some incidents like Strathfield’s dodgy air-conditioning fan-belt have shown that chronic underinvestment has left the city without redundant systems to ensure the continued operation of what should be a high availability network.

However, the repeated tangling of pantographs in the overhead wiring is an inexcusable example of maladministration by the NSW State Government.

“These incidents are usually very rare on the world’s railways. However, the state’s insistence on deferring essential maintenance to free funds for building motorways have left Sydney ’s most important asset in a troubled state.”

During the morning, commuters received confused and conflicting information about not only the nature of the incident but also the simple fact of its location. Ecotransit has since been told that this morning’s incident was caused when the pantograph at fault tangled in the catenary on the Northern Line.

“This morning I was standing at Chatswood, Minister Berejiklian’s local station, with hundreds of other passengers waiting for a shuttle to Macquarie Park . We were the lucky ones; others are reported to have been trapped on a train for two hours waiting for the state to respond” said EcoTransit Sydney Co-Convenor, Mat Hounsell.

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