Parking and Traffic Consultants – 2012 year in review
2012 has been another eventful year for PTC. Many new clients joined the prestigious names in our portfolio, including Perth Airport, Health Infrastructure, Adelaide University and Leichhardt Council. Many other previous clients engaged us to do new work. Just to give you an idea, during the year we worked for these airports: Adelaide, Gold Coast, […]
Sydney light rail project to be green lit
The first stage of the extension of Sydney’s light rail appears to be moving ahead, with the staged construction of a line from the University of NSW in Randwick to the CBD expected to be announced this week. NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell will announce that work will start at the university and go to Central […]
Sydney’s rush hour traffic grinds to a halt
The release last week of the Auditor-General’s performance report into peak hour travel on Sydney’s major roads revealed that traffic is getting slower in the afternoon. However, the report says that there has been a minor improvement in travel times in the city’s morning peak hour. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the average afternoon […]
Hola from Santiago
A guest post from Parking & Traffic Consultants’ Managing Partner, Cristina Lynn Hola to all our blog readers! George Burton, Grant McLean and I are in Santiago, Chile to kick start a project for a major shopping centre owner. The project will include design review, signage and wayfinding and external traffic issues. I thought you […]
A year of ‘Parking and Traffic’ blogs in review
Feel like the year has passed you by too? If you’ve been too busy to stay on top of the parking and traffic industry news every week – never fear! Here is our annual round-up of the highs and lows, and headline-making stories from 2012. Parking and policy in Australia This year saw Parking & […]
Weekend-long traffic jam in Russia
Last weekend saw a 125-mile long traffic jam along the main highway between Moscow and St Petersburg which lasted for three days. According to media reports cited by state-run RIA Novosti news, blame for the slow slog goes mainly to bad weather. The traffic headaches began Friday, when up to three feet of snow began […]
Sydney’s bike lane network set to be completed
NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell’s push to take control of Sydney’s CBD transport may see the completion of the network of bike lanes. The committee set up by the government to take control of the city’s transport planning has endorsed the completion of the bike lane network by May next year. The committee gave new impetus […]
Sydney’s smartcard technology already behind the times
With the roll out of Sydney’s new ticketing system, the Opal card, starting on December 7, some transport experts are claiming that the system is “old technology”, already being replaced around the world. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, one analyst claims that the Opal card is 10 years too late, due to the rise […]
Sydney public transport mapping
Mapping of Sydney’s public transport network has revealed that huge pockets of the city are disadvantaged when it comes to convenient and frequent transport services. According to ABC News, a community group called the Sydney Alliance has commissioned maps revealing the proximity and frequency of public transport services throughout greater Sydney. Key findings of the […]
Light rail is people’s choice for George Street
A forum at Sydney’s Town Hall on Monday night has endorsed plans for a light rail line down George Street (see our previous post about this here). The forum, attended by around 700 people including business owners and general public, tackled two competing plans before the O’Farrell government: a tram line versus an underground bus […]
The market for charging stations for electric vehicles
Meanwhile, and somewhat in contradiction to our previous post, research released by Lux Research recently indicates that the market for delivering electricity to Electric Vehicles will rise to be a $1.2 billion market in 2020. Lux Research developed a forecast using vehicle sales to project the global electric-vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) market. According to a […]
13th Australian Parking Convention is a resounding success
Following in the steps of the November 2010 Convention, the Parking Association of Australia held its 13th event at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre earlier this week. The event was characterised by a high level of local and international speakers that had the delegates particularly riveted to their seats. The exhibiton, in Hall 6 […]
Avoiding holiday parking stress
Whilst still very early in the holiday season, that doesn’t stop some department stores displaying Christmas decorations and nor is it too early for the International Parking Institute to publish a list of tips to help avoid parking stress during the holiday period. According to a press release on the IPI site, shoppers who circle […]
Smart paint lights your way on the highway
The Netherlands is introducing a form of ‘smart highway’, featuring glow-in-the-dark tarmac and dynamic paint that warns drivers of weather conditions. The roads will include interactive lighting and an induction priority lane for electric vehicles, with the aim of using light, energy and road signs that automatically adapt to varying traffic conditions. The design and concept […]
Public transport use in Sydney on the rise
Results from the latest Sydney transport Census snapshot released yesterday have revealed that public transport use is increasing, but the car remains the dominant mode for people commuting to work. In the five years to 2011, Sydney’s total workforce increased from 1.9 million to 2.06 million, with the proportion of people using public transport growing […]
Free 15-minute parking in Sydney CBD
The newly elected council of the City of Sydney is considering introducing 15 minutes free parking throughout the CBD. The first meeting of the council voted unanimously to conduct a feasibility study on the idea. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, parking allocation, charging and restrictions were the subject of debate between many of the […]
NSW’s proposed Opal ticketing system
Sydney residents can expect the first release of an electronic ticketing system at the end of 2012 as a part of the NSW Transport Master plan and a commitment in the NSW Budget, released in June. The ticketing system, called Opal, will be rolled out on Sydney’s ferries by the end of this year, before […]
Can the bicycle save the high street?
Following an article we published in March, Why cyclists are better customers for local businesses, we recently came across another article that also found that cyclists and pedestrians tend to spend more money in local economies. According to TreeHugger, both Portland, Oregon and New York’s East Village have found that streets that promote cycling and […]
Seeing the back of the car
Following our article last week, ‘Population density puts the squeeze on cars’, we came across an in-depth article from The Economist this week, titled ‘Seeing the back of the car’. The article explores how in the developed world, people seem to be driving less than they used to, with both car ownership and distances driven […]
Sydney’s George Street : what does it look like with light rail?
The City of Sydney has put forward a proposal to contribute to the NSW State Government’s light rail project, transforming George Street into a world-class main street. Council has offered to work with the NSW Government by committing $180 million to the light rail project, including funding new pedestrian spaces, new information signage, upgraded public […]
Brisbane airport upgrade officially opened
The upgraded Brisbane Airport Domestic Terminal Precinct was officially opened on August 28. The redevelopment included an expansion to the Central Area Satellite and terminal aprons, construction of a new nine-storey car park, an elevated Skywalk, new forecourt area and central taxi rank, and reconfiguration of the road network in front of the terminal. The […]
Car sharing: data shows it may be working
The city of Hoboken, New Jersey, introduced a car sharing scheme over two years ago; based on the assumption that they would create parking spaces by taking them away. According to the New York Times, 42 of the city’s roughly 9,000 on-street spaces were allocated to the car sharing program upon inception. Survey data shows […]
Gambling with one’s life on city roads
And it’s not just the developing countries that are having issues with too many cars on the roads. A letter to the Sydney Morning Herald recently highlighted the changes in Sydney’s traffic and drivers’ attitudes. The author, Nestor Lexa, used to ride a bicycle, but on noticing that car drivers were becoming more and more […]
The world is on track to be one giant parking lot
A study recently published by Uri Dadush of the Carnegie Endowment proposed a new definition for ‘middle class’: those who own a car. Dadush contends that the number of passenger cars in circulation can be considered a direct measure of the middle class in developing countries. An article on TreeHugger says that if this theory […]
NSW Government announces draft transport plan
On Tuesday this week, the NSW government announced the latest transport master plan, proposing four new motorways and another rail crossing under Sydney Harbour. The plan identifies four lead projects to complete the ‘missing links’ in Sydney’s motorway network: the M4 motorway extension between Strathfield in the inner west and the Port Botany–Sydney Airport precinct in […]
Sydney’s public transport infrastructure solutions
As Sydney’s population grows, so too has the demand for supporting infrastructure, particularly between the city and the suburbs. Two initiatives announced this week aim to try and address this demand through increased capacity. The NSW Transport Minister announced last week the return of double-decker buses to Sydney’s roads, as part of a trial to […]
Victorian car park congestion levy to stay
A study published by Monash University has found that the congestion charge on city car parks in Melbourne has not eased congestion. The levy, introduced in 2006, applies to 50,000 car spaces in Melbourne and was designed to stop people driving into the city. According to Yahoo, The Victorian Treasurer Kim Wells claims that the […]
Sydney’s CBD bike path debate continues
Whilst on the subject of bikes, according to a number of expert reports obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald, the controversial bicycle lanes in Sydney’s CBD have made little to no impact on the city’s general traffic congestion. The consensus amongst traffic experts is that congestion continues as no car traffic lanes have been removed […]
Cycle-tecture in urban landscapes
A guest post from our Senior Traffic Consultant, Andrew Morse. Will the bicycle influence our future streetscapes? It’s not such a strange question when considering how the car influenced not only our streets, but our architecture too. In fact, according to Dr Steven Fleming, Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, there are architectural […]
Around the country: Australian parking news wrap
A number of short stories we’ve collated in parking and transportation from around Australia over the past few weeks. Adelaide Airport has opened a new multi-level short term car park, providing customers with more efficient parking and a weather-proof link to the terminal. According to Impact Pub, the new short term car park is more […]