Roads in Sydney are not getting wider and the demand for cars is certainly not decreasing. Some CBD roads have shrunk to make space for bicycle lanes.

By Eli Gescheit

Anyone who has watched a movie or television series set in Manhattan would have seen the typical bumper to bumper traffic jams, dominated by yellow taxis and private cars.

Economists are considering the move to introduce congestion pricing to reduce the use of cars in New York city roads. According to Nancy Folbre, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, “London, a city that resembles New York in many ways, introduced congestion pricing in 2003. The widely heralded results include a decrease in traffic, improvement in air quality and expansion of bus travel and biking. Two-thirds of Londoners express support for the policy, including members of the business community, who were initially nervous about its possible effects.”

In her article Traffic Jam Economics she suggests traffic congestions costs Americans around $100 billion per year, or $750 per commuter.

Singapore was the first city to introduce the tax in the 1970′s. Rome is currently operating the tax, while Beijing and Shanghai are considering implementing a similar scheme. Germany has a truck tolling system. In December last year it was reported that Delhi and other Indian cities, including Mumbai were also considering the tax.

An animated argument for congestion pricing is captured in a few short video clips by Lewis Lehe in his article here. These videos explain the benefits of charging congestion pricing in layman’s terms by focusing on case studies.

In 2010 the Nationals’ Andrew Stoner was quoted saying there were “Absolutely no plans from the Liberals or the Nationals for a congestion tax”.

In 2011 the previous NSW Roads Minister, Duncan Gay said in Parliament during a debate against congestion tax: “The fact the federal government is suggesting a congestion tax for a place like Sydney, that doesn’t have adequate public transport links to growth areas like south-west and north-west Sydney after 16 years of Labor failure, shows how completely out of touch Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan are”.

Brendon Lyon, chief executive of Infrastructure Partnerships responded to the national October tax summit last year: “We have enormous congestion problems in our cities. It’s time that Australia really started to embrace some of the changes that we need to undertake, some of the structural changes that we need to undertake, if we’re going to deal with the significant public policy issues.”

An NRMA survey released in May last year reported almost 80% of businesses believed congestion on Sydney’s roads had worsened over the previous year. Businesses that were surveyed were associated with operating vehicle fleets. A quarter of the businesses believed operating costs increased by around $5,000 due to traffic congestion.

The Greens have indicated their support for introducing the congestion tax, however other Government officials have clearly expressed their concerns with the system. Have we been slugged with enough taxes as the cost of living continues to rise? How many times has the price of cigarettes increased? Have the astronomical prices stopped people smoking?

Commuters using the Cross City Tunnel and other commuter-paying roadways may have noticed the toll increases slightly every few months (I certainly do!). Although people are still using these roadways despite the increasing tolls. Time of day tolling was introduced to the Harbour Bridge and tunnel, however how successful was it in reducing the number of cars?

On the other hand, support for congestion pricing is compelling as a system to inject necessary funds to improve the city’s ailing infrastructure. If the system is introduced, it would give Sydney’s public transport network an opportunity to increase capacity and operate an effective system. A congestion tax is a simple and cost effective method, but is it something car-obsessed Sydneysiders are prepared to accept?

Image Source: flickr

TRYING to build a new house or renovate? Bad luck if your council is Leichhardt or Mosman. Leichhardt’s Greens council and Mosman’s independent council are among the slowest in the state when it comes to deciding development applications, a new report shows.

But the Greens-dominated Marrickville Council, which was slammed for neglecting its core business of roads, rates and rubbish, made the biggest improvement of any NSW council. It cut 22 days from the average DA processing time to bring it down to 74, the average for urban councils.

The Planning Minister, Brad Hazzard, today released the 2010-2011 planning report card, naming and shaming councils that drag their feet on development applications.

Click here for full article

See how your Council rated here

The Sydney Opera House is being made into an official Lego product, joining a select few architectural icons recreated in miniature architecture collection.

The Opera House is one of seven brick-built models in the new architecture range, which will also include New York’s Empire State Building and Seattle’s Space Needle. It’s due to be released in March.

Of course people have been making their versions of the iconic building with the famous toy for many years, although it is often cited as one of the most challenging of buildings to replicated in Lego.

Click here for full article

Source: Architecture and Design

Premier Anna Bligh has announced plans for a major expansion of South Bank, boasting an Olympic-sized swimming pool, new commercial and residential buildings and, possibly, a national Indigenous museum.

Announcing the project this morning Premier Bligh said the next stage of South Bank development would evolve over a 15 to 20 year period, with the entire precinct expanding from 42 to 69 hectares in size.

The new project, billed as South Bank 2, would form a 5km recreational strip running from the Story Bridge to Hockings Street when completed.

Click here for full article

Source: Brisbane Times

IMAGINE waking up one morning and staring into the neighbours’ bedroom just eight metres away. That could soon be the reality of living in central Melbourne.

The CBD residential lifestyle is quickly becoming a victim of its own success – skyscrapers shooting up metres from existing apartment towers, blocking light, ruining views, potentially lowering property values.

Battles are flaring across the CBD, pitting residents in existing high-rise towers against developers hoping to cash in on the ”city-change” phenomenon that has seen the residential population of the CBD double in a decade with thousands more on the way.

Click here for full article

Source: The Age

Bigger Australia, better Australia, or both? Brian Haratsis, Managing Director and Chief Economist of Macroplan, talks about his view of population growth in Australia.

Brian Haratsis sees a radical vision for Australia. It involves more and bigger cities, a property market unfettered by over-regulation and a relocation of the nation’s capital to the north.

“The concept of 36 to 39 million (people) being a ‘big Australia’ is fallacious,” he says. “The whole debate has been stolen by people in Australia who have views on not growing and developing Australia.”

“We should be growing more cities,” Haratsis says. “We need a national charter of principles and objectives for regional city building. At the moment, there’s no point of reference for anything.”

Click here to read full article

Source: Competitive Cities 2012

Alan Davies from The Urbanist blog shares his views on improving public transport in Australian cities.

Many people are surprised by the relatively small share of urban passenger travel made on public transport in Australia. Notwithstanding a slight narrowing of the gap in recent years, cars still dominate travel in capital cities, accounting for 85% of all motorised travel in Sydney, 89% in Melbourne and 90% in Brisbane. Their share in Perth and Adelaide is around 93%.

While there are a number of reasons for public transport’s low mode share, a key reason is it serves a small number of destinations – mainly the CBD – really well, but generally fails miserably for those travellers who want to go elsewhere, especially the great majority who want to travel between suburbs.

The ‘hub and spoke’ pattern was fine a hundred years ago, but now most destinations and origins are highly dispersed. For example, only around 10% of all jobs in Sydney and Melbourne are located in the CBD and a clear majority are more than 10 km from the centre. Also, fewer than 10% of residents live within 5 km of the centre.

Read full article here

Colliers International has produced a research report showing predictions across all property sectors. In summary the report predicts:

Office
Perth and Brisbane CBDs to experience a surge in demand from mining related office users.

Retail
Continued growth of online trading and occupancy cost ratios to be sustained.

Industrial
Shortfall in A-Grade stock and tenant demand to be driven by logistics and retail however, demand from mining sector also strong in some locations.

Residential
Residential property fundamentals remain in check in 2012 as supply levels dwindle and demand on smaller lots on the rise.

Hotels and Leisure
Chinese tourism will be the strongest growth market.

Healthcare and Retirement
Further consolidation in ownership of private hospitals while uncertainty remains in the aged care sector following the Productivity Commission’s report. Also new development of retirement villages remains low due to funding issues.

Click here to download the full report

The latest proposal for a $1.3 billion mixed-use tower above Wynyard Station in central Sydney was referred to the NSW Planning Assessment Commission this week.

Property group Thakral Holdings, which owns the building above the train station, lodged a revised development plan for the project late last year following state government objections to earlier plans.

The City One Wynyard concept design has been developed by Hassell, and it proposes to build a 29-storey tower above the station which includes a new shopping centre and office building.

Read full article here

Source: Architecture and Design