Slightly different urban scale of course:
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NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and Minister for Transport Gladys Berejiklian have announced light rail will be built through the Sydney CBD to Randwick and Kingsford to reduce congestion and revitalise the city.
The estimated $1.6 billion 12 kilometre light rail project will link Circular Quay and Central via George Street, the Moore Park sporting and entertainment precinct including the Sydney Cricket Ground and Allianz Stadium, Randwick Racecourse, the University of NSW and Prince of Wales Hospital at Randwick.– February 17, 2013
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For comparison, here’s Surrey’s vision:
Sydney, already transit rich, not Paramatta or Canada Bay (the fastest growing suburbs)…
But why a LRT in sydney? here an element of answer:
http://voony.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/sydney-brt-tunnel-and-trams/
That stop short the comparison with Surrey (notice that Surrey still put car in the LRT corridor…)
“And with 97% of Light rail services arriving within 2 minutes of their scheduled time”
This one, I will have to call BS. With so many potential conflicts with vehicles and pedestrians with the largely on-street R.O.W. and the risks posed by fixed-rail at-grade transit in times of accidents and closures, I don’t see how this is going to be in any way manageable. Sydney is going to have a huge accountability issue after building this.
This stat is higher than the on-time percentages being reported by the fully grade-separated SkyTrain services in Vancouver. It’s far higher than on-time percentages in other LRT-bound cities. In Portland, for example, services on the MAX LRT are between 75 and 80% on time to a 5 minute standard – and this is on a system that operates long stretches that are not on-street, such as the entire West-side MAX, the east-side MAX paralleling the banfield freeway, the Red Line, and the Green Line.
The main difference that I notice between the concepts illustrated in the two videos is that, in Sydney, the LRT runs mostly in streets that are dedicated fully to LRT. In Surrey, the LRT would run on wide arterials that also contain lanes for private vehicles.
This makes all the difference in the world. I would assume that the reason for this is that in Sydney, they recognise and place a high value on LRT, so they are willing to dedicate roads specifically for that purpose.