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Sydney’s phenomenal new metro takes only ~100 seconds (1m40s) to travel from Central Station to the new Waterloo Station.
However, you could be stuck waiting up to ~111 seconds (1m 51s) to cross Botany Rd just outside the Waterloo metro station when you arrive! (see the signal timing map at Better Intersections)
Don’t believe me? Here’s a video in realtime showing both journeys: one 11 metres across a 4 lane 50km/h stroad, one about 1.7 kilometres underground:
That is, the time between the start of the flashing red pedestrian signal and the next green (between which you would be jaywalking if you started walking) is measured on Better Intersections as 93 to 111 seconds. There is no open government data on traffic signal timing in Sydney or NSW. Signal programming can be purchased for AU$200 per intersection (in a proprietary format and under a restrictive license) or AU$400 for historical signal timing. Better Intersections currently includes crowdsourced measurements for over 420 intersections.
This Tuesday, the Sydney Morning Herald published Dr Christopher Standen’s excellent letter which linked to Better Intersections. Dr Christopher Standen is a research fellow at UNSW Sydney specialising in health and urban/transport planning.
Sydney Metro certainly does make you feel like a VIP (“May Sydney’s future citizens never know pain of sitting in soul-crushing traffic”, August 20). But that feeling quickly dissipates when you step outside the stations. To access our local station, Waterloo, we must cross four sets of traffic lights, each with a waiting time of up to two minutes. These can almost double the time needed to walk to or from the station. And no one likes waiting next to a noisy road inhaling fumes. Transport for NSW sets these excessively long waiting times to allow for more road traffic, but this means thousands fewer residents can access stations within an acceptable walking time. Metro has put a massive dent in the state’s finances, so you’d think Transport Minister Jo Haylen would want to maximise its benefit by making station catchment areas as large as possible. Prioritising road traffic over people using public transport shows she still wants the latter to feel like second-class citizens, not VIPs.
Finally, an end to a 50-year wait for a metro line, Sydney Morning Herald, August 20, 2024. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/finally-an-end-to-a-50-year-wait-for-a-metro-line-20240820-p5k3qi.html (Archive.org link)
Chris Standen, Erskineville
This got me thinking – perhaps you can travel to the next metro station faster than you can cross the adjacent road. I noticed the Waterloo Station to Central Station trip duration is timetabled as 2 minutes (120 seconds), however in reality is even faster. There are plenty of traffic signals in Sydney that have a maximum wait time (start of flashing red to next green) or cycle times around this duration.
A world-class metro, but dangerous streets
What use is Sydney having a world-class metro system when our streets are so hostile to people exiting it? While our new metro is genuinely cutting edge, our streets are falling behind best practice cities around the world.
Traffic signal cycle times
While this Botany Rd intersection has a measured cycle time between 100 and 120 seconds and maximum wait times between 93 seconds and 111 seconds, the City of Sydney’s excellent ‘A City for Walking’ strategy and action plan advocates that TfNSW set a maximum pedestrian wait time (flashing red + red signal duration) of 45 seconds with a target of 30 seconds.
Copenhagen has a 70 second cycle time as the maximum, and high pedestrian usage areas have cycles of 48-60 seconds (Gehl Architects, Public spaces & public life: Sydney 2007 (part 1), page 142).
The London Cycling Design Standards states that “junctions with pedestrian crossing facilities, signal cycle times should only exceptionally be longer than 90 seconds.” and The Urban Street Design Guide by the (USA) National Association of City Transportation Officials recommends cycle times of 60-90 seconds in urban areas.
Urban speed limits
This Botany Rd intersection has a 50km/h speed limit. According to TfNSW – who sets speed limits on state roads – there is a 90% probability a car crashing into a pedestrian at this speed will kill them. This drops to 10% at 30k/h.
While international cities like London and Paris have reduced urban speed limits to 30km/h (or 20mph) boosting local business and cycling, and the City of Sydney’s ‘A City for Walking’ strategy and action plan recommends speeds of 30km/h on city centre and high streets (among others), the NSW Premier Chris Minns recently said increasing the number of 30km/h roads in Sydney was over the top. He falsely claimed: “You could walk quicker than that.” and that the Sydney CBD “shouldn’t be treated as if it were a country town”.
Transport for NSW however assumes an 85% percentile pedestrian speed of 1.2 metres/second (4.32km/h) when designing signal crossing timings (Traffic Signal Design – Section 2 Warrants, Version 1.4, PDF page 9, Roads and Traffic Authority, 2008). This would be comedic if the stakes weren’t so high: the NSW Government’s goal is zero deaths on NSW roads, however there were 352 lives lost in the 12 months prior to this article and 10,555 serious injuries to Dec 2023.
The Waterloo estate project isn’t expected to start until 2027 and could take up to 15 years – that’s 8 years shy of 2050. We’re supposed to be at net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050! Better, safer streets suitable for walking and active transport can’t wait until then, and our urban speed limits and traffic signal design can’t either. Installing new speed limit signage is relatively low cost, and reprogramming signals is free.
Is this the only case of long pedestrian wait times next to a metro station?
Likely not! The Victoria Cross to Crows Nest trip is timetabled as 2 minutes, however the traffic signal crossing the Pacific Highway is even worse than this one, with a measured cycle time of ~130 seconds and maximum wait times of 125 seconds! To add insult to injury, the pedestrian traffic signals crossing the Pacific Highway just north and south of Hume Street (at the other end of the station) are completely shut down due to nearby construction works, requiring a long walk to nearby intersections.
How can I contribute traffic signal measurements?
Know of other dangerous crossings near metro stations? Contribute some measurements!
Head to betterintersections.jakecoppinger.com, and follow the Contribute Measurement link under the ‘read more’ menu! There are over 420 intersections with a measurement as of August 2024. Thank you to all those who have contributed measurements so far!
Preliminary analysis of this data is published at https://betterintersections.jakecoppinger.com/analysis, and all the data can be downloaded as a CSV or JSON at https://betterintersections.jakecoppinger.com/about.
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