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Australian Public Transport projects & stuff

pman said:
Sydney’s public transit is materially better than Toronto’s, and while there’s a lot of complaining, Sydney appears to be able to plan, fund and build major infrastructure on a somewhat rational basis. Toronto, where diversity is of course our strength, is so diverse that we’re incapable of even articulating a collective interest in any of our many fantasy transit projects. And your status quo is materially richer than ours, which is apparent to anyone who spends time in the two countries.
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Yeah, even if there is a barbed edge to Oz Barbie Life, for a nation with roughly the same natural resource wealth, on transit infrastructure alone, they're doing a hell of a lot better. Is that because they have an exceptional edge for some reason, or that we're the product of very stymied thinking and approach? Toronto especially would indicate the latter. It's frustrating. Oz isn't the only nation that surpasses us. NZ, with a slightly lower standard of living and resource wealth and a fraction of the population of Canada also has a higher quality of life.

To be continued...
 
pman said:
Mate, I’d take Australia’s status quo over Canada’s any day of the week. You develop massive new energy export projects like Gorgon and bring their output to tidewater. We don’t. Sydney’s public transit is materially better than Toronto’s, and while there’s a lot of complaining, Sydney appears to be able to plan, fund and build major infrastructure on a somewhat rational basis. Toronto, where diversity is of course our strength, is so diverse that we’re incapable of even articulating a collective interest in any of our many fantasy transit projects. And your status quo is materially richer than ours, which is apparent to anyone who spends time in the two countries.

en.wikipedia.org

List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

BTW I just received Australian permanent residence, so many thanks to the Commonwealth government. You live in a great country and I’d love to make it my year-round home.
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I always make a distinction between state and federal parties. Thankfully, Labor or Liberal parties at the state level fully recognise their role: delivery services and the primary source of planning (and implementing) urban infrastructure - rather than trying to shadow federal level ideological games. With the Victorian Libs spanked twice at state elections with underwhelming policies/proposals, they've hopefully turned that corner. NSW Libs are on fire in this department.

NSW has a good Liberal government at the moment, they're now in their third term and are powering along with a very very good public transport agenda & pipeline. In Victoria, the Liberals who came to power a year before the NSW Libs first got back in in NSW, did absolutely nothing, their primary transport project for re-election was an inner city freeway.

The 3 year head start the NSW Libs have on the Vic Labor government is just a timing thing but they are essentially doing the same thing: far more focus on Public transport, but still have mega-road projects (Westconnex in Sydney, North East Link/West Gate Tunnel in Melbourne) - they actually have 'balanced' the capex spend but in both states and thankfully across the two main party lines, they're both lining up very very long lists of public transport projects.

The SRL was Vic Labor's re-election/come-from-nowhere project for November 2018 which is now under way (planning/business case) - federal Labor were going to help finance it, the federal Coalition didn't have that promise. But the Federal coalition did have a western metro in Sydney finance promise in this federal election and they promised $4billion for the very inner-city freeway (tollway) that the state Victorian Libs took to elections not once, but twice, and saw them emphatically rejected.

6 years this rubbish has been going on (dangling federal cash for a freeway at the state level has been rejected) and it's likely to continue.... unless Scott Morrison, with his new authority within the federal liberals, gets more pragmatic and helps to start financing Melbourne PT like he's promised to finance future Sydney PT projects.
 
Telegraph behind paywall, but ironically, Murdoch's news.com isn't:
Good article:
https://www.news.com.au/technology/...s/news-story/8b247f49b59a136c864509614b54b175

This metro is so much what's being touted for Toronto's Relief Line, but years earlier.

Province of Quebec is going to poison Montreal's REM procurement model (the rolling stock is almost exactly the same as Sydney's)
Premier Legault to force the Caisse to purchase REM trains made in Quebec

Addendum:
Sydney Metro North West - Chatswood to Tallawong full ride
 
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The "new" infrastructure in that video above starts at 16m (at the points: left, where the train/video eventually goes, is new tunnel and to the right is the old connection to the T1 line when the tunnel between Chatswood and Epping was used by existing trains).

I always wondered what it'd look like making a new tunnel to tunnel connection underground, this will probably be happening in Melbourne and building two new dives for the City Loop sometime next decade. It looks quite 'clean' - just a winder cavern dug out around the points/connection point.
 
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tayser said:
The "new" infrastructure in that video above starts at 16m (at the points: left, where the train/video eventually goes, is new tunnel and to the right is the old connection to the T1 line when the tunnel between Chatswood and Epping was used by existing trains).

I always wondered what it'd look like making a new tunnel to tunnel connection underground, this will probably be happening in Melbourne and building two new dives for the City Loop sometime next decade. It looks quite 'clean' - just a winder cavern dug out around the points/connection point.
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Yeah, I had to rewind a few times past that to realize that's what it was. It was late when I watched it, so fast forwarded the last stretch until it became surface run. I was getting hypnotized by the tunnel running. My God, Sydney sprawls an incredible distance. The last stretch reminded me of San Diego's Trolley.

There's quite a bit on-line of a technical nature on the engineering aspects, this link is excellent:
https://www.cbe-tunnels.com/en/news...-pour-sydney-metro-northwest-a-sydney-en.html

I'll post it in the Relief Line string as the City of Toronto is in zombie mode issuing RFIs for tunnel rings for a tunnel it's not going to be building, and are spec'ing at a dia not compatible with this kind of system (they're spec'ing 5.4m i.d. for third rail and some posters there just don't get what's wrong with it). Sydney's are:
Each ring has an external diameter of 6690 mm, an internal diameter of 6170 mm, a width of 1700 mm and a thickness of 260 mm. Each ring is composed of 4 counter-key segments and 2 key segments. A total of 108 moulds have rotated on the double carousel, with a shared concrete alimentation.
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The ride quality looked superb, and I can see that a large part of that is from floating the tracks. That eats up a good part of the tunnel bore, but I've got to say that I am impressed. That being said, London's Crossrail and Thameslink also do same for an equally smooth ride with mainline trains (single decker), the Thameslink also operating ATO through the core section of London tunnels. Tunnels are of a similar diameter.
 
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I had to ask on another forum where there's been a tonne of posts over the past 24 hours from Sydney-siders, but in the surface/above-ground sections I noticed that each track is double-wired. In Melbourne you'll get that between each segment for 100-150m or so but nope, the whole thing is double-wired in Sydney. Started off in the 1970s when they electrified through the blue mountains ('to get more juice down the lines') and it slowly spread through the rest of the network.

Sydney Metro is 1500v DC (like the rest of the Sydney network).


Apparently the line had 100,000 passengers in the first 7 hours of operations yesterday (when it was free!). Also there were some reports of internal PIDs not working correctly and they had an issue with one train door during the middle of the day. Regardless though, the NSW government did say it was not going to be running the full timetable (4 min peak, 10 min off peak 6am-1am) but reduced services for a few weeks while they iron out other problems (trains are stopping at 10pm for next few weeks, replaced by buses).

PIDs do look good though.

 
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steveintoronto said:
Yeah, I had to rewind a few times past that to realize that's what it was. It was late when I watched it, so fast forwarded the last stretch until it became surface run. I was getting hypnotized by the tunnel running. My God, Sydney sprawls an incredible distance.
Click to expand...

Yep, all Australian cities do, but we're happy to build underground rail lines in the 'burbs though!
 
tayser said:
I had to ask on another forum where there's been a tonne of posts over the past 24 hours from Sydney-siders, but in the surface/above-ground sections I noticed that each track is double-wired. In Melbourne you'll get that between each segment for 100-150m or so but nope, the whole thing is double-wired. Started off in the 1970s when they electrified through the blue mountains ('to get more juice down the lines') and it slowly spread through the rest of the network.

Sydney Metro is 1500v DC (like the rest of the Sydney network).
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Oddly, I missed the doubled catenary, but was looking at the carrier wire in spots, wondering how they deal with supply 'sag' on the long lengths of track. AC (Oz standard is 25kV, ostensibly 50 Hz) is much easier to 'boost' on long runs, and line loss is a fraction of what it is for DC low voltage since the line voltage is 33 times or more higher. In a linear comparison, that's 33+X more loss per distance.

The engineering for that catenary is intriguing! I'll dig on that later. (Btw, quick point, the loss compensation by doubling the line *more than halves the loss*. It's a geometric improvement.
 
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^ I defer to your better judgement lol (I've no idea about electrics! :D).

Google's been pretty quick (or rather, Transport for NSW has been quick) to update the Sydney region / transit info. Blue line is the Metro phase 1, Chatswood to Epping section has been there for 10+ years, the new infrastructure is from Epping out to Rouse Hill.

Satelitte photos are always better because you can see the job centres the new line links (Castle Hill, [not named on map but still there!] Norwest and Bella Vista).

DtBX3HC.jpg
 
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