Cox Says Sydney Needs More Freeways

Having once lived in Sydney for 19 years, and now living in Newcastle 150km to the North, I am only vaguely aware of Cox's reputation, and am glad that developers are pushing for the government to think more about transportation. However, I agree that he is probably not the best person to be representing the argument. The NSW government and Roads and Traffic Authority is locked into a couple of Public/Private partnerships on tollroads that have been poorly planned and executed, in particular, the Cross City Tunnel, confidence in their ability to provide the best solution is at an all time low.

Sydney's two recent attempts at light fixed transport, (click on link for a "fun" flash map, or here for a scale map), a monorail that loops around town, and a light rail network with a limited number of stops have proved very little, (despite Kevin Warrel's comments about light rail in European Cities in the article), in a city that has a ridership on public transport that fluctuates with oil prices.  Buses drive on congested two to four lane roads with traffic lights every couple of hundred metres, the train network doesn't extend out to many of the more recently developed areas or isn't easily accessible from many of the infill developments anyway.  Many of the best road links in Sydney have been freeways in recent years, allowing people to travel to work much more quickly. It's the other roads that service as many vehicles that are still full service access roads with shop fronts and side roads, that are really collector roads trying to be arterial roads. For many people, even close into the urban/city core, these roads are congested for hours morning and evening.

So in a way, I'd have to agree that with how Sydney has already sprawled, freeways would be a suitable part of any solution to be put forward, but I'd hope that much more effort is put into all public transport options.

Thanks for pointing out all these issues.

 Mike

UrbanWorkbench 

Wendell Cox has no real credibility. He uses the false statistical analysis that plays to a hegemonic and anti-market scheme. If anything, the free-makret thinkers should catch onto this elitist and corrupt marxist views. Good transportation is a balance of modalities not the over-reliance on one mode. Sydney shouldn't feel so bad that it is second only to London for having few highways. I've never heard of people saying I want to vacation in Dallas, or Houston, or St. Louis, places with some of the highest roadway per capita.

Sean P. Bender
Director
Community & Learning Partnerships
Wentworth Institute of Technology

You can always rely on Wendell Cox to work for what he thinks is our self-interest and to ignore the well-being of future generations. Demographia never studies how these policies would affect global warming. After all, what have future generations done for us?

But Cox's idea of our self-interest is clearly mistaken. A couple of obvious misconceptions in this article:

He claims that more freeways promote more home ownership. Obviously, people could just as well own their own homes in street-car suburbs or own their own condominiums in the city. Home ownership has increased because of higher incomes and because of government policies encouraging home ownership, not because of freeways; in fact, freeway-oriented development is creating a scarcity of land that is driving up home prices.

He claims that higher densities drive up housing costs. Obviously, this depends on how we promote higher densities - whether we use policies restricting low-density development or policies encouraging high-density development. Many cities have done the former, which explains Cox's findings about density and price. But if cities did the latter, it would obviously drive down housing prices.

Charles Siegel

Cox Says Sydney Needs More Freeways

And in other news, the sun rose in the east today...

Best,

D