Always great to see Sydney covered in pride this time of year - streets, public transport, shops, offices, everywhere!
🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ Trans rights are human rights
After many years of tantrums from North Sydney NIMBYs, the new Sydney Harbour Bridge cycle approach ramp is finally open!
www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...
Has hell frozen over?
You know metro has been a smashing success when even the Northern Beaches wants one
Over 1,000 followers here! Time for a progress update. I've visited 184 stations with 133 to go, and 35 Sydney ferry wharves.
Right now I'm exploring the Central Coast and Newcastle line. It feels like really a very long, poorly serviced suburban line, not "inter-city".
Thanks heaps for following!
> Revolutionary transport system
> Fully autonomous
> Electric, powered by renewable energy
> Effortlessly moves 250,000 people per day, a fraction of its ultimate capacity
> Transforms how we get around the city
> Massive expansion underway
> Actually exists
> Sydney Metro
> Pic unrelated
LITHGOW, 153km from Central, is the last station on the Blue Mountains Line served by electric trains, although a handful of diesel Opal and pre-booked services continue west each day. It has two platforms accessed from an overhead concourse with lifts, a ticket office and waiting room. (1/5)
HELENSBURGH, 46km from Central, is a quiet old station on the South Coast Line, serving low-density suburbia and surrounded by native forests. It has two platforms in a cutting, accessed from a newer pedestrian bridge, with glass lifts contrasting with the heritage brick station building. (1/3)
Shout out to the recent upgrades to Crown St, Surry Hills. City of Sydney removed several car parks in favour of landscaped outdoor dining areas. Some were turning temporary ones from COVID permanent, others are new. It's a really great area to walk along and enjoy.
Here's some before and after:
ZIG ZAG, 151km from Central, is a tiny station serving a heritage railway and nothing else. It has two platforms that are barely 10m long, accessed from a pedestrian level crossing. It is an "interchange" to the heritage railway's Bottom Points Station, but I don't think you can connect here. (1/2)
Imma say it - George St is the best urban environment in Australia.
Over 2km of a car-free (mostly) street with so many stunning architectural landmarks and non-stop life. An amazing public space.
What strip is bigger and better? (1/3)
What a stupid waste of money.
$160m to provide one train's worth of capacity. There'll still be no spaces past 7am.
I was hoping NSW had moved past this, but so many people are being sold on living in sprawl and driving to metro. And the govt pretends it'll work.
www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...
We never needed to surrender so much space to cars.
This section of Margaret St has been reduced from 4 lanes to one service access lane. No more through traffic, two sets of traffic lights removed and a new plaza coming. Several businesses already have outdoor dining set up!
Tallawong is the perfect case study on how park-and-rides can never scale up to meet the capacity of a metro line but will consume the prime land around the station trying to do so.
www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...
GADIGAL, 1km from Central, is a spectacular new underground station surrounded by skyscrapers in Sydney CBD. It has two platforms accessed from a concourse at either end, each with very long escalators, lifts and gates. Each exit sits at the base of a new tower, as an integrated development (1/7)
BELL, 137km from Central, is an almost unused station that serves a couple of houses and a whole lot of nothing. It has two platforms accessed from a pedestrian level crossing. There's an unused heritage brick station building in the usual style, with a weatherboard extension. (1/2)
LEURA, 108km from Central, is another charming station - everything is so charming up in the Blue Mountains - serving retail strip of cute cafes and shops popular with tourists. It has two platforms cut into the sandstone, accessed from an overhead concourse on a road bridge, with a lift. (1/3)
If the planning profession took a tenth of the energy it puts into resisting inner-city apartments, and put that energy into resisting Sydney's rapid and destructive suburban sprawl, we'd have far more pleasant and sustainable city.