[LINK] more myki woes

[Tom Worthington]

Scott Howard wrote:
> I can't see flat-rate tickets coming to Sydney ... Some individual bus
> routes in Sydney are over 40KM long, and many of these are very
> heavily-used routes due to the lack of other forms for public 
> transport ...

Yes. Flat fares could be used within the actual City of Sydney, the 
inner west and the other cities which make up the surrounding 
conurbation, but not for long distance transport between them.

Sydney is a public transport and land planning problem, which a 
ticketing system cannot solve. Even if the entire population of
Australia was moved to the Sydney area, there would still not be enough 
people for the metros which the NSW state government proposes (and then 
cancels every few months). The NSW Government is reluctant to point out 
is that to make a metro viable, almost all the existing homes along the 
route will have to be demolished and replaced with higher density 
housing. It seems likely that the latest NSW Government will abandon the 
latest Metro plan in January 2010 and perhaps replace it with an 
expansion of conventional heavy rail and express busses, but call these 
a "Metro" to save face.

Just to get this back on the topic of the Link list, one of the things 
the NSW Government could to is to use the "Inquiry by design" process 
advocated by Dr. Zeibots of the Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/11/fast-track-sydney-transport-with-web.html>.

I suggest the Internet could be used to allow the community to be 
involved in the planning process. This would telescope the usual serial 
process with the planners preparing a plan at the same time the 
government considers it and the community is consulted.

If some online tools are used to help the process, it might take some of 
the political difficulties out of the process. As an example, citizens 
have a natural inclination to want to live on a large block of land but 
have fast, low cost transport. A tool which quickly and automatically 
calucated the transport costs for different plans might help with 
decision making. Citizens could try designing their own city and then 
see what it is going to cost to live there (much like Sim City).


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274