A major audit of regional organisation of councils (ROCs) in NSW and Western Australia prepared by Gooding Davies Consultancy has just been released.

The study was prepared for the Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government (ACELG) and the Northern Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (NSROC). It compares the structures, operations and activities of ROCs in both states as well as the implications for these organisations of the different local government reform processes currently underway in both jurisdictions.
It suggests some future directions and proposes recommendations for appropriate legal and business structures that would allow ROCs to operate more effectively.

As the ACELG website states: “The analysis is important for understanding the function of ROCs and their relationships between local councils and different levels of government. ROCs have a varied impact around Australia; some ROCs have led to major reforms including council consolidation, while in other circumstances they have enhanced their member councils’ capacity and performance.”

Foir an overview of the study visit the ACELG website or click here to download the study report directly.

Recently I looked at what Sydney could learn from Istanbul’s electronic ticketing system, which is part of a much wider story about how the public transport in Turkey’s largest city is being transformed through a massive investment in public transport infrastructure to meet the needs of a city of over 13 million people.

Although they are very different cities and Istanbul dwarfs Sydney in population terms, there are similarities. Both share the physical challenges of being divided by large bodies of water and steep ridges – and both have responded in similar ways, for example, by making extensive use of ferries. Both also adopted tram networks partly to deal with the hilly terrain, only to rip these up in the fifties and sixties in favour of cars and buses.
Now, both are undergoing suburban expansion in suburbs away from the coast and beyond the reach of each city’s current public transport infrastructure, while experiencing redevelopment in some older waterside suburbs. Initially both cities responded by investing heavily in road infrastructure, but are now looking belatedly at retrofitting (at considerable expense) public transport systems to deal with congestion and high car dependency, including heavy rail, light rail and busways.

There are of course major differences, apart from population size. Istanbul’s Bosporus and Golden Horn represent a much bigger challenge than Sydney Harbour and so its ferry system is much more extensive. On the other hand, Sydney may have got rid of its trams but it is blessed with an extensive suburban rail network, whereas Istanbul essentially has only two run-down and under-used suburban rail lines.

Istanbul’s other challenges are also far greater than Sydney’s; the city is close to the North Anatolian Fault and has experienced several major earthquakes in its history. This calls for special techniques in underground railway construction, especially if you are contemplating crossing under the Bosporous, which is over 60 metres deep.

If that wasn’t enough there is also Istanbul’s history as the capital of the Byzantine and then the Ottman Empires to contend with. For example, excavation works for the hub of a new rail network at Yenikapi have run into the remains of a fourth-century port, including a number of Byzantine vessels preserved in mud. Archaeological work on this site has already delayed the project by a number of years. As one of the project managers responsible observed, “I can’t think of any challenge this project lacks.”

Istanbul may face many more difficulties than Sydney and may be coming off a lower base in terms of pre-existing infrastructure, but it certainly has been more proactive in recent years. A metro, two light rail lines and a tramway have been constructed, along with a busway. Ironically, the tramway (which provides a public transport spine through the crowded heart of old Istanbul) and the busway (which links suburban population and employment centres) appear to be more extensively patronised than the new light rail and metro links, not to mention the older heavy rail lines.

This is partly due to the relatively poor connectivity between these transport systems. Some current interchanges are very poor. For example, the Istanbul public transport map would have you believe that there is an interchange between the tramway and light rail at Aksaray, when this actually involves a 300 metre hike across several busy roads. Other “interchanges” are closer but still require crossing busy unsignalled highways to change from one line to another.

In an attempt to overcome this, the new transport interchange at Yenikapi is meant to bring together the heavy rail lines from Europe and Asia (the latter via the already-completed but not yet operational Mamaray tunnel under the Bosphorus), linking them with Istanbul’s metro and light rail lines. The light and heavy rail extensions associated with this will also provide better connectivity with the tramway – when the much-delayed interchange construction is eventually completed.

Despite these problems there is still a lot that Sydney can learn from Istanbul, apart from the willingness to get on with the job of building infrastructure (regrettably, this is a lesson Sydney could draw from many other cities). Some examples include:

• Istanbul’s T1 tramway which threads through the narrow streets in the heart of the city provides a dramatic example of how light rail can operate successfully in busy and narrow CBD streets and in corridors where for environmental, engineering or budgetary reasons it is not possible to build metros. Compared to this, expanding Sydney’s light rail into the CBD and out to the eastern suburbs should be a doddle.

• The T1 tramway also demonstrates how trams cope with extremely high demand. While they are very well patronised to the point of being crowded, the high frequency of the trams in the T1 corridor seem to provide enough capacity. On this basis, any eastern suburbs extension of Sydney’s light rail should easily be able to meet demand until (and if) a metro is built, provided provision is made for much higher service frequencies than those on the current light rail.

• If the challenges of building a heavy-rail tunnel under the deep, wide and earthquake-prone Bosphorus can be overcome, then it should be relatively straightforward to construct a second heavy rail crossing across Sydney Harbour, either in tunnel or as a second deck on the harbour bridge.

• It is also important to look at how such a link can be integrated with other transport modes on either side of the crossing. Interestingly, the approach in Istanbul appears to be use heavy rail to provide links between metros and other transport modes on both sides of the Bosphorus rather than attempting to join these directly. This approach may be relevant to Sydney, where for example a northern beaches light rail network could link to a heavy rail crossing north of the harbour.

• The Turkish government has not been afraid to set specific and ambitious targets for public transport patronage and then to make the required investment in infrastructure required to meet these targets. This is perhaps the ultimate lesson for NSW transport planners.

Before I post my follow-up to the fare integration post, I thought I’d make a short diversion to Istanbul which is where I am at the time of writing. Apart from its intrinisc fascination as a city, Istanbul is also very interesting from a public transport perspective and has quite a few lessons for transport planners in Sydney and elsewhere.

In a future post I’ll talk a bit more about the investments in Istanbul’s infrastructure but for now I’ll take a quick look at the fare system. For the most part, Istanbul is a flat-fare, token-based transport network. Tramways, buses, metros, light rail and railways require token entry, either on-board or at a turnstile, with each “jeton” or token costing 1.75 Turkish Lira or about 95 cents Australian, irrespective of the journey length.

This entitles you to a single trip on a single mode or vehicle, with no interchanges. I’ll come back to the Istanbul concept of “interchanges” in future as part of my discussion on infrastructure, but for the moment all you need to know is that for the most part, each change of mode or even vehicle requires use of an additional token. Ferry journeys use the same concept but here the price can vary with the journey length. Even simple curbside tram stops have token entry through turnstiles.

In addition Istabul has not one but two forms of integrated ticketing. The first “Akbil”, which is reputedly being phased out, is my favourite. According to Wikipedia, Akbil is an acronym formed from “akıllı”, which stands for “smart”, and “bilet” meaning “ticket”; Akbil is actually a small stainless steel “button” that looks remarkably like a large watch or clock battery but which has a computer chip inside.

The Akbil is used to store value for public transport use; once purchased from a kiosk or shop it can be topped up using fare machines at major transport hubs. Every time you pass through a public transport turnstile or board a bus you touch the Akbil to a little receiver which deducts the fare, giving you a discount of roughly 6% on the cost of a token.

In addition an Akbil can be used for more than one passenger by touching on again for each person. More significantly, it also provides a further deduction for multiple use within a two-hour period (though not when you are using it for multiple passengers), thus overcoming the penalty inherent in the token system for users who have to change modes or vehicles on the same journey.

Akbil is supposedly being phased out in favour of the Istanbulkart, a stored-value “electronic wallet” similar to the Oyster card. Apart from it’s credit card format, Istanbulkart operates in a very similar fashion to Akbil; you purchase it and top it up the same way and place it on the readers on every turnstile at the start of each trip. The card format is slated for wider use to pay for parking fees, taxis, admission to museums, movies, theatres and other cultural venues and even as a form of ID (see Turkey Travel Planner for more details).

So what can Sydney learn from Istanbul’s experience in introducing electronic ticketing? Well, the first and most obvious thing is that they’ve actually gone and done it in all the time that NSW has talked about doing it, in large part because of the simplicity of the fare structure.

While I’m not a fan of flat fares, it’s obvious that Istanbul’s token system made it much easier to introduce electronic ticketing. Not only is there (pretty much) only one fare to incorporate, there is no need to make people touch off at the end of each journey. Touching off is probably unavoidable in any multiple-fare system (otherwise people get charged the maximum fare) but a simple zone-based structure is obviously going to be much easier to integrate into an electronic system.

The second is that, surprisingly, barrier entry seems to work even in the most unlikely of places, provided (again) the system is simple to use and fares are relatively low. Istanbul can be a fairly chaotic at times, but people seem to respect the system and even in the many places where it would be easy to get away with I did not see any attempts at fare evasion. No doubt it occurs, but it does not seem widespread.

The third is the commitment to overcome flagfall costs inherent in the flat-fare token system by offering discounts for multiple journeys. While Sydney does not have flat fares, bus users in particular suffer from the same problem that their Istanbul counterparts do (or did) – a journey involving multiple vehicles ends up costing much more than one of equivalent distance which can be made using a single bus. To a large extent the Akbil and Istanbulkart overcome this with the introduction of what is effectively a time-based ticket, which seems to work very well.

And why do I prefer Akbil over its more “modern” card replacement? I think it’s partly subjective – the little Akbil button and holder has a more tactile feel than a transport card – and partly practical. The Akbil can reside happily in your pocket attached to your key-ring, making it easy to pull out at turnstiles, while using the card involves digging out your wallet or purse, finding the Istanbulkart among all the other cards, placing it on the reader and then putting it away again.

The recent partial integration of Sydney’s Metro Light Rail (MLR) ticketing with the MyMulti/MyZone system is another welcome if very modest step towards a true integrated ticketing and fares system for Sydney’s public transport.

You can now use a MyMulti 1, 2 or 3, a MyMulti Day Pass, a Pensioner Excursion Ticket (PET) or a Family Funday Sunday ticket on the light rail. All these tickets have to be purchased prior to boarding a tram.

However, CityRail single-trip, return or weekly tickets are still not valid, nor are any bus-only tickets or concessions apart from the PET. Metro Light Rail also continues to issue the full range of its own tickets which are valid only for its own services. More on ticketing issues in my next post but first, how are the new arrangements operating and what has been the impact on patronage?

Trams don’t have ticket validators, so when you board a tram and show the conductor a My Multi or other valid ticket, he or she will usually issue a zero-value ticket. This is simple in practice but a ticket showing “$.00” value is a very odd thing to receive.

Given the absence of ticket validators on trams, this approach may be understandable as a temporary measure for counting how many NSW Transport tickets are being used. However, it could hardly be described as a watertight form of accounting. Indeed, on one of the trips I made just after the new fare arrangements were introduced the tram was so crowded that the conductor did not bother to issue “zero fares” to most of the people with NSW Transport tickets.

This brings us to patronage. I don’t have any figures (and if any are released, bear in mind the method of counting) so my evidence is based on my observations and anecdotal evidence, but there seems to be a small but noticeable increase in the number of tram users, particularly older users who qualify for PETs.

In particular there seems to be more people using the tram for short-haul trips, especially between Central, Capitol Square and Paddy’s Markets. For most people this is a walkable distance, but if you are infirm, carrying a lot of shopping or just in a hurry, the tram provides by far the best public transport connection between these points, especially if you already have a PET or MyMulti.

While the overall patronage increase seems relatively small, I was struck by the large number of passengers who did produce MyMulti and PET tickets on the tram, especially coming from or going to Central. This would seem to indicate that a significant proportion of people are already using the light rail in combination with trains; now they can use their MyMulti and other valid tickets without having to pay an additional tram fare.

Given the location of the current MLR terminus at Central, this is hardly surprising, but it also reflects the fact that the current ticket integration model tends to favour passengers transferring from trains rather than those who catch buses. For many train users, purchase of a weekly MyMulti costs little more than a weekly rail ticket but provides much better value – including now the light rail – and doesn’t lock them into travel between two stations on a particular corridor.

For bus users, especially in the inner city, it’s a different story. Even a Zone 1 MyMulti is relatively expensive, especially if passengers don’t have any opportunities to use trains or ferries. For these users, Travel10s are a cheaper alternative and offer reasonable flexibility – but these tickets, like all bus tickets, are not recognised on the light rail.

Part of the problem lies in the “unfinished” nature of the MyMulti ticket system, which I’ll look at in my next post.

Apologies to anyone following this blog. I’ve had a long break due to the death of my mother at the end of April. I’ll be resuming posts very soon.

Yesterday’s announcement by the new NSW Government of the creation of a new Integrated Transport Authority (ITA) not only fulfils a major election promise but also highlights the extent of the government’s transport ambitions.  

The announcement also echoes many of the governance recommendations of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) Independent Public Transport Inquiry. This called for a similar coordinating transport authority, though the government’s ITA will have a much bigger remit. There are other key differences, but let’s start with the similarities which are striking (and pleasing for those of us who worked on the SMH Inquiry).

The SMH Inquiry proposed a transport coordination authority managed by an independent board to plan and manage all aspects of Sydney’s public transport. Rail, bus and ferry operators would have been contracted on a contestable basis to provide services to the authority, which would have taken over and integrated their planning powers.

The SMH Inquiry report also proposed that the authority would prioritise customer service and the importance of providing each public transport user with a complete journey to meet their requirements rather than a set of disconnected bus, rail or ferry trips. This would have involved a branch dedicated to integrating all aspects of service provision including fares, ticketing, timetables, interchanges and information provision.

While the SMH proposal did not incorporate the management of car-based transport, the authority would have had a strong say in the approval of major new road projects.

The government’s ITA is very similar in that it will also integrate all aspects of public transport. It also emphasises customer service; there will be a division specifically dedicated to “Customer Experience”, which in the words of the Ministerial media release, “will make sure journeys are as simple and seamless as possible”.

There are other structural similarities, with divisions responsible for planning, services, projects and policies. The ITA will also take over planning powers from the individual transport agencies, much as the SMH Inquiry proposed, and use these resources to develop a comprehensive transport “masterplan”.

There are however some significant differences. These can be summarised as follows:

• The ITA will not be managed by an independent board, although an independent advisory board will be appointed by the government. The exact relationship of this to the ITA is unclear.
• The ITA will take over procurement, long-term planning and policy-making from the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) as well as from public transport agencies, thus giving it direct oversight of major road projects.
• The ITA will also manage freight transport and oversee transport across the State, not just in greater Sydney.
• However, it will not have the final say on major infrastructure projects, with the government intending to establish a state infrastructure body.

Despite these differences, the government’s new body is a huge step forward for transport planning and management in NSW. It is hard to disagree with the sentiment in the joint ministerial media release about the need to replace the current disconnected transport “silos” with a “streamlined agency which plans and delivers for all modes” and to concentrate on improving the transport user’s experience.

There is also compelling logic in integrating and extending the planning and management of transport statewide and to include road and freight transport as well as public transport. However, the government’s new approach is very ambitious and not without its risks:

• The first challenge for the new body will be getting on top of this enormous range of responsibilities and the associated expectations. While the primary reason for not including roads planning and transport management outside Sydney in the SMH Transport Inquiry recommendations was that these areas were outside its main terms of reference, there was also a desire to keep the proposed authority as lean as possible and focussed on Sydney’s public transport, which is a big enough challenge in its own right. The ITA has been handed a much more complex role and will need to be able to balance the competing demands of city and country, roads and public transport.
• Taking over planning powers from the current piecemeal collection of agencies and in particular the RTA will involve not just a short-term period of dislocation but also a long-term process of major cultural change, both within the agencies and at the political level as well. This will not be easy; for example, the attempted merger (by the previous state government) some years ago of infrastructure, transport and landuse planning had similar aims. However it began to unravel soon after the departure of the responsible Minister and was quietly dismantled shortly thereafter.
• Indeed, the Roads Minister has openly acknowledged the need to change the public perception of the “arrogance” of the RTA. Given the dominant role it has played in NSW infrastructure planning for decades and its success in getting motorway projects built, it will be fascinating to see if the RTA meekly accepts its new role of being just another transport provider.
• Having created a “mega-authority” with such far-reaching powers over all aspects of transport, it is understandable that the government has decided to separate the process of managing the state’s overall infrastructure program from transport planning. However, it will need to clarify the relationship between the two authorities and also how the additional funds required to meet the huge shortfall in public transport infrastructure will be provided.

Despite these concerns, the Government is to be congratulated on what is, in “Yes Minister” parlance, a “courageous” decision.  Given the widespread public cynicism regarding previous public transport plans and announcements, it will need to be equally courageous in ensuring that the planning and prioritisation processes to be implemented by the authority are also credible and transparent and above all, that the resulting projects are funded and built.

Last week I attended the Right to the City symposium at the Sydney University Faculty of Architecture. The symposium sought to make connections between artists, activists, planners and architects in seeking ways to "remake" the city “in more socially connected and sustainable ways”, responding to the increasingly fragmented and complex nature of urban life by “developing critical spatial practices that engage in micro-political actions”.

The presentations were interesting if a little uneven in quality, not surprising given the symposium’s diverse range of perspectives and participants. It was more disappointing that there seemed to be (at least in the sessions I attended) relatively little emphasis on outer suburbs or the urban fringe. Most of the “micro-political actions” were targeted towards inner-city areas and predicated on a relatively dense population; for example, interventions that depended on high levels of pedestrian traffic.

An exception to this inner-city focus was Linda Carroli’s participation in a forum on place blogs. Carroli is a writer, researcher and consultant who works in the cultural/arts sector. She is particularly interested in the critical and cultural exploration of place, looking at the role of artists, designers, planners, architects and other urbanists in the process of change. An integral part of this project is her blog, Placeblog. While this is not itself strictly speaking a place-based blog, Carroli’s location in the Brisbane suburb of Aspley informs her wider work. 

The other panellists and presenters in this forum were involved with more “traditional” place blogs focussed on specific locations, all located in inner and middle-ring suburbs such as Kings Cross/Darlinghurst, Ultimo and Marrickville. The discussion was interesting, particularly when it touched on issues of class and gentrification.

As Jesse Adams Stein, who chaired the session states on her Penultimo blog, “Place blogs enact a very specific act of watching, witnessing, monitoring, recording, sometimes celebrating, sometimes protesting – on a very local level” (click here for her summary of the forum outcomes). In this context I raised the question, “why are hardly any place blogs written about specific outer suburban locations such as places in Western Sydney?” which produced a wide range of responses.

Some thought this was due to the lack of access to computers and/or a lack of familiarity with blogging software in these areas. However the consensus (and my view) was that while this may be applicable in some places, it was hardly a universal explanation. The same applies to assumptions about class differences, given the range of income groups represented in areas like Western Sydney.

It was also pointed out that many residents in these communities run and participate in blogs – it’s just that they are mainly about things other than place. Those that have a spatial focus tend to look at wider regions and to deal either with broader cultural, social and spatial issues or specific problems such as the lack of transport infrastructure.

Leaving aside my half-joking response that place blogs are the harbingers of gentrification, there may be other reasons for this discrepancy. First, the nature of suburban life means that the nature of place is different.

In the inner city, people can live, shop, relax and go to school all in the same location and often their workplace is nearby as well. In the suburbs, however, they may live in one suburb, work in another, shop in a third and send their children to school in a fourth.  

This means that outer urban areas are often less “fine-grained” than inner urban ones – I don’t mean this pejoratively, but in the sense that social activity takes place over a much larger geographic range in car-based low-density suburbs.

This makes it difficult to write about place without writing about a wider region (thus ending up with the sorts of “issues” blogs I mentioned earlier) – or conversely, writing about stuff that may be way too local, like what your neighbours are up to. Indeed, the “communities” that many suburban dwellers belong to are not spatially based at all – an outcome that ironically is now being facilitated by the same sort of technology that makes place blogging possible.

This should not discourage blogs about places in outer urban areas, but I suspect that they will always have a different “feel” to their inner-city counterparts. The exception may be place blogs centred on the old centres around Western Sydney (such as those located on the rail lines) or the new ones that are starting to appear in places such as Rouse Hill, documenting the rate of change occurring in many of these places.

A blog about one of the latter would be particularly interesting. Anyone want to take up the challenge?