State Govt delays AGAIN
BIKESydney MEDIA STATEMENT
26 June 2013
BIKESydney calls on the State Government to deliver its
Central Sydney Access Strategy.
In deferring the delivery of the Central Sydney Access Strategy (the integrated transport plan for the CBD), the State Government has again blocked the delivery of critical cycling infrastructure in the CBD. Potentially terminally.
The State Government promised to deliver the blueprint for the CBD bicycle network in May of this year. At yesterday’s Central Sydney Traffic and Transport Committee meeting, the State Government again failed to deliver the Plan and evaded committing to a fixed deadline for its delivery.
We know that the City of Sydney is ready to construct these routes and that their plans have been approved by the Roads Authority and other agencies.
The State government is still yet to provide cyclists with safe East-West and North-South crossings of the city.
Other projects like the City West Cycle Link and the southern approach path to the Harbour Bridge are also being ignored while the State Government builds around them, simply because we don’t yet have an integrated transport plan.
The CBD cycleway network will need to be completed in time to provide a viable alternative to the traffic congestion that will hit once construction of the George St light rail commences. In fact, we believe the Roads Minister is intentionally pushing the approval of the CBD bike network hard up against this deadline.
The State government will fail to deliver on its NSW 2021 goal of doubling the number of bike trips by 2016 if it doesn’t connect the CBD cycleway network in the next 18 months.
In the meantime, the Committee appears to have busied itself with micromanaging individual parking spots in the CBD.
The State government is spot on about the need to coordinate transport in central Sydney, but it’s now two years since it was elected and still nothing has been done. It’s now time to deliver on the “can do” rhetoric.
BIKESydney
Downloadable copy of BIKESydney’s Media Statement
Business and Minutes of 1st CSTTC meeting (Nov 2012) can be found here
BIKESydney quoted in Sydney Morning Herald (25 June 2013) on the failure of the CSTTC to deliver the Central Sydney Access Strategy
Cycling targets of the NSW Government’s NSW 2021 Plan are presented below:
From the Committee Minutes, http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/b2b/CSTTC/csttc-resolutions_190413.pdf
On 12 April 2013, two members of the Committee, Mr Les Wielinga and Mr Peter
Duncan, pursuant to clause 9 of Schedule 2 of the City of Sydney Act 1988, proposed a
new list of exemptions for the CSTTC to adopt based on the advice of the CSTTC
Working Group.
The new list of exemptions when adopted would have benefits for all CSTTC members
in terms of:
-streamline processes and reduce administrative workload associated with minor
proposals; and
-enable the CSTTC to concentrate on significant, high level traffic and transport
matters in the CBD…
And the three subsequent out of sessions resolutions? Drainage and parking! Any change from poles and potholes?
Find your local parliamentarian and write them, cc the Minister or vice versa. Slip a few dollars in there so they get the message, apparently the libs respond well to ‘coordination’.