Right, I’m off on a quick holiday to Sydney for the next few days!
I look forward to riding a few trains and learning a bit more about how both political parties in the upcoming NSW state election appear to be outbidding each other in their promises to expand Sydney’s rail system.
There should be internet where I’m staying so I hope to keep updating the blog – with a few Sydney specific posts I imagine!
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“I look forward to riding a few trains and learning a bit more about how both political parties in the upcoming NSW state election appear to be outbidding each other in their promises to expand Auckland’s rail system.”
Auckland’s rail system????
Is that a typo “expand Aucklands”
There’s a number of big sexy projects the poly’s like to talk up and the retalk up then kill off. State politics is a waste of space and money
On the less sexy side of things many smaller projects and less news worthy. Double tracking. Station upgrades. New signaling ETCS level 1 roll out. Extended rolling stock orders to the Oscars and improvements to train pathways/clairways.
And also the southern Sydney freight line being built to separate freight from passenger.
So there’s plenty to see
Have fun
By the way have a good trip
Wow, that’s incredibly generous of them 😛
Mrs Keneally will apparently do anything to retain her seat even if there’s absolutely no way that she’ll retain government. Maybe, at long last, she’s decided to extend the Bondi Junction line to Bondi itself, a sort of west Auckland station, if you will.
Bondi Junction is at an altitude of about 85m and it is about 1.5km to the beach. The Junction station is underground so not actually at 85m, and you wouldn’t terminate at the beach itself. But that means you don’t have the full 1.5km… maybe 50 vertical meters over 1.2km or so. That sounds pretty steep for rail. How does she intent to build it? Underground spirals?
Did she promise that? First time I have heard of it. Do you have a link?
Extension (if it could be done) sounds convenient.
It’s annoying that you can’t get to the beach on the Bondi/Eastern Suburbs line.
Sydney has a decent rail system, well designed from Dr John Bradfield’s days.
It’s at least 2.6km from Bondi Junction to the Campbell Parade, and see my other comments below.
You’re right… I remeasured it on Google Earth and I’m getting a figure around 2.3km. The station is on the corner of Grafton and Grosvenor isn’t it? Not sure what went wrong first time but that is a more reasonable grade for rail.
It’s of little importance since Labor are due to be absolutely slaughtered… But I’m curious as to where you’d locate a station at the beach. If you’re too far away from the beach itself then you’ve replaced one almost-at-the-beach station with another. I can’t imagine the locals being too happy with an above-ground station detracting from their multi-million dollar apartments. And there isn’t anywhere obvious to dig out an underground station.
One block back from there, Grafton and Harkness.
The site proposed back in the 60s when they first planned the route was at the southern end of Campbell Parade between Lamrock and Hall Sts. Pretty straightforward to get a two track station under a main road.
If you look around the street view here you can see that even this first road up from the beach is quite far above sea level due to the steep foreshore. Google Earth says the street here is 22m above sea level.
http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=bondi+beach&aq=&sll=-37.059561,146.653748&sspn=1.656975,2.469177&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Bondi+Beach+New+South+Wales&ll=-33.89222,151.273348&spn=0.003366,0.004823&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=-33.892114,151.273173&panoid=IqfC6m6XSPf_zXnkdmU1zQ&cbp=12,57.62,,0,-0.11.
The main resistance is from the locals, they fear even more massive hordes of people descending on sunny days and predict pressure to develop high rises like the Gold Coast.
“The main resistance is from the locals, they fear even more massive hordes of people descending on sunny days and predict pressure to develop high rises like the Gold Coast.”
I quite like the bus. The train to Junction is full of shoppers and commuters and feels just like any other city train journey. But once you transfer to the bus you’re surrounded by people with towels and there is no confusion where they’re all heading. The sun is out, the views are brilliant, the passengers are international, and it feels like an adventure rather than transit.
I’ve been to Bondi Beach a few times during the peak summer seasons. Always found the bus to be a bit of a trial but I suppose that’s because its always been super busy when I’ve done the journey.
Sounds that the NSW Government is very generous.
🙂
Generous?
Sure are. Promises are cheap and endless here
Get rid of state government
It’s definitely a system that has the feel of years of underinvestment, the rolling stock I rode on when I was last in Sydney had more duct tape on the seats than seating material and the walls seemed to be held together by graffiti – enjoy Sydney but always keep in mind that PT can be done so much better.
@rtc – When was your last visit?
Underinvestment, probably. I’d point finger at incompetent state gov. No brainer there.
Lots has been happening. But with each state election big ideas are put up, old ones rehashed. They have projects in the pipeline they just need to be funded
Bondi junction was never intended to be the permanent terminus, the line was designed from start for an extension to bondi beach and beyond.
No need for spirals, the platforms at bondi juction are already quite deep, the route wouldn’t be straight line but would follow the ridgelines to some extent, and of course the platforms at bondi beach wouldn’t be anywhere near sea level. The rise from the water is quite steep at bondi, even the first row of shops is about 20m above sea level.
The proposed Bondi spur line is one of those many fantasies that have characterised rail development in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. From recollection, it was not part of the original eastern suburbs rail proposal which was intended to extend beyond Bondi Juction to , Charing Cross, Frenchmans Road, Randwick Junction, University of NSW and Kingsford (Nine Ways). The extensions were abandoned (by the incoming ALP administration in 1976. However sometime around 1999 the property developer Lend Lease proposed a rail link to Bondi itself as part of its attempt to cash in on the Olympic bounty (privately constructed railways were all the go with the state governments of the day, eg the airport line (a Coalition contribution to the mess) but due inter alia to a vociferous backlash from local residents this did not proceed. In terms of the rail network, nothing has happened in the eastern suburbs since 1979 when the truncated eastern suburbs line opened and little has been achieved elsewhere. But NSW politicians have been promising the earth and delivering nothing ever since. Enjoy your holiday!
My understanding was the original plan involved both the Bondi Beach line and the southerly eastern suburbs extension, basically replacing the core of the eastern suburbs tram system that had been removed less than two decades earlier. However these lines were both canned in favour of the system of bus feeders to Bondi Junction on cost grounds.
One wonders if they also had conceptual plans to extend the Bondi Beach branch to North Bondi and Dover Heights.
It would have somewhat ironically made the name Bondi Junction appropriate again, if for different reasons (it was originally named after the tram junction, but would have been a rail junction).
I always thought that the Eastern Suburbs line was to be extended to UNSW and Maroubra rather than to Bondi Beach.
Sorry about the typo – took a while to get access to internet to fix it!
Pretty sure it was both, a branch to Bondi Beach plus a long eastern suburbs line. I’ll not that the other end of the line has two branches also, one to the south coast and one to Cronulla, so it would make sense to have two at the other end also.
“both political parties in the upcoming NSW state election appear to be outbidding each other in their promises to expand Auckland’s rail system.”
That would be awesome. Australians have way more money than us!