News & Discussion: Trams

[Llessur2002]

REVEALED: Labor's favoured CBD tram loop

Labor’s preferred CBD tram loop would not run past the Adelaide Central Market, but instead use Halifax Street to encourage property development in the south of the city, InDaily can reveal.

A consultation document for the CityLINK CBD tram loop also details the Government’s justification for the lack of a right-hand turn from North Terrace onto King William Street and foreshadows an end to all peak-hour turning actions at the key intersection.

This means an end to the regular Glenelg-to-Entertainment Centre route, in favour of east-west and north-south movements – a decision intended to maximise traffic flow.

InDaily can reveal the CityLINK tram loop would rundown East Terrace to Hutt Street, turning right to traverse most of the length of Halifax Street.

The Government’s preferred course then veers right to round the northeastern boundary of Whitmore Square, traverses a city block’s length of Morphett Street to turn left on Gouger Street – about 250 metres away from the Central Market – before heading up West Terrace and closing the loop at North Terrace.

Transport Minister Stephen Mullighan told InDaily the southern section of the city could do with some encouragement for small-to-medium scale residential development and that Gouger Street would not cope with the traffic and car parking impact of a tram service through its centre.



Government consultation documents on the proposed city tram loop say there is a potential for a tram stop near the Central Market.

The existing tram service features a stop at the western edge of Victoria Square in front of the Hilton Hotel.

Mullighan said laying tracks along Gouger Street would have meant trams having to share the road with other traffic – reducing the reliability of the service – or getting rid of on-street car parking along the eastern portion of the street in front of the Adelaide Central Market and Chinatown.

“There’s only really that one lane of traffic that’s available (along that stretch of Gouger Street),” said Mullighan.

“It would be very, very tight.

“I can’t imagine that would be acceptable to the Gouger Street traders.”

Mullighan argued that while there had been a lot of residential development along the western portion of Halifax Street in recent years, the eastern stretch between King William Street and Hutt Street had been relatively neglected – and a tram service would help meet the Government and the Adelaide City Council’s population growth targets.

“We’ve seen a lot of two-storey-type medium density townhouses already in Halifax Street (west … providing) a substantial boost to the number of residents in the city,” he said.

If there were a shift from low- to medium-density housing along the eastern portion of Halifax Street “that would be a very successful outcome for the trams,” he said.

He added the route had the further advantage of taking in the southwestern corner of the CBD, which had “hasn’t yet been developed very much”.

InDaily understands the length of the preferred CityLINK route means travelling the entire loop would take 45 to 50 minutes – 15 to 20 minutes longer than the complete City Connector free bus service route currently does.

But Mullighan argued that that was immaterial because it was unlikely commuters would use CityLINK to travel the entire loop, but rather they would use the service to access different parts of the city.

“We wouldn’t anticipate that someone would jump on the city loop … and ride the whole route,” said Mullighan.

“It’s meant to connect up (parts of the CBD).”

He added that a tram route along Halifax Street could be engineered to avoid removing established trees along the median strips between Pulteney Street and Hutt Street and that there would need to be significant consultation with businesses and residents in the area.

The Government’s consultation document for the CityLINK tram loop shows plans for a “termination point with tram storage” to be built on Rundle Road and a new tram depot for up to 60 trams between the city and Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

The CityLINK consultation document also foreshadows an end of the regular Glenelg-to-Entertainment Centre route and details the Government’s justification for the lack of a right-hand turn from North Terrace into King William Street.

Late last year, InDaily revealed that the Government saved $20 million by rejecting a “grand junction” to allow all turning movements for trams at the city’s busiest intersection.

East End traders and the Adelaide City Council have argued this squanders easy access to the northeastern corner of the city, which is expected to suffer economically from the transfer of a customer base from the old Royal Adelaide Hospital to the new Royal Adelaide Hospital.

In the longer term, under the Government’s plans, all turning movements at the North Terrace/King William Street intersection would be eliminated for all peak hour tram services.

According to the consultation document, Government modelling shows 60 trams an hour – one every minute – traversing the North Terrace / King William Street intersection at peak times.

“Modelling indicates that when AdeLINK is completed 18 trams per peak hour or one each 3 minutes will operate east-west in each direction – 36 in total – on North Terrace and one tram every five minutes – 12 trams per hour – will operate north-south in each direction on King William Street (24 in total),” the document says.

“Assuming the existing two minute signal cycle, this would mean an average of two trams moving through the intersection in every signal cycle during the peak period.”

The key intersection caters for about 60,000 vehicles per day and several thousand pedestrians.
Show us the money, and the modelling

Despite its planning though, the State Government is yet to secure funding for CityLINK.

Mullighan told InDaily the Government was still putting together a business case that would be used to apply for funding from Infrastructure Australia.

He said a re-elected Labor Government would build the EastLINK and ProspectLINK tramways within the next four-year term, but CityLINK was a longer-term proposition.

Yesterday, InDaily revealed Labor’s plans to extend EastLINK included laying tracks over much of the “green island” median strip on Osmond Terrace.

The Government’s city tram loop plans have attracted majority support among those who returned consultation survey forms – but only 21 forms were filled out.

The Government has yet to release traffic modelling, crowd modelling or rail service modelling for any of the newly announced, proposed tramways.

From: https://indaily.com.au/news/politics/20 ... tram-loop/

[Waewick]

I can't believe they would even comment about the time take going around the full loop, I mean seriously who would ever use it.

not sure if I am reading it too quickly, but I cant see why they do that log leg at Whitmore square, why not just go straight to West Terrace?

I like the idea of the loop and going down huts street too.

[Waewick]

Hi Waewick,

Politicians deserve all the cynicism we can pour on them: Turnbull and the NBN, Barnaby Joyce, enough said, Trump, words fail me. Apparently his latest is that he would have run towards the Forida shooter to help - the guy whose "bone spurs" stopped him serving in Vietnam.

However, the fact is that there will be no tram extensions of any kind, nor train extensions/electrification if the Liberals or Xenophon form government. Labor has no choice but to campaign hard in marginal seats.

So, does Labor come up with some scheme that pleases everybody (good luck with that), but loses the election, and NOTHING gets built, or do they try to win the marginal electorates?

Having said all that, if Labor loses on this set of promises, there's almost no chance they will repeat a losing offer in 2022. So, if Labor loses now, you might see them target other areas in 2022, rather than trams and trains which lost the election in 2018.

If Labor loses this, there's no chance of tram or train extensions till after 2026 or later.

That's the choice.

Of course, if Xenophon or the Liberals come up with something better in the next two weeks, I am happy, more than happy to eat my words and support them.

Tell you what, if the Liberals or Xenophon come up with a better policy, I will go to the metro electorate of your choice on election day, and hand out how to vote cards for them, with confirmatory photos pm'ed to you. Fair?

in all honestly, they should have gone with the loop which is a whole project and people would see the point.

at the moment, it feels like two attempts to grab votes and the negative press due to uncertainty of the future extensions makes it even worse (for instance, not only are they against Norwood residents against the initial spur, they have a heap of people against the proposed extension down magill rd even though no one is sure if it will go down that path in the future.)

This is exactly the same way they sold the Port Road extension which again just led to cynicism with trams, something that is going to be awfully tough to remove.

[Nort]

I can't believe they would even comment about the time take going around the full loop, I mean seriously who would ever use it.

not sure if I am reading it too quickly, but I cant see why they do that log leg at Whitmore square, why not just go straight to West Terrace?

I like the idea of the loop and going down huts street too.

http://infrastructure.sa.gov.au/__data/ ... lowres.pdf

From the CityLINK report, page 8:

CityLINKOptions.JPG (94.24 KiB) Viewed 2843 times

Don't have time to read the whole report (it's 80 pages long) but the final route chosen seems to be a combination of the A and B options. Given that West Terrace down that way has a large section taken up with a car dealership and a cemetery I'm going to guess the Southmost part of West Tce was never considered as somewhere that a tram could add a lot of benefit.

edit: The report does go into fairly detailed analysis of the catchment zones for each of the route options which probably explain how they chose this final design.

[shiftaling]

I agree with the Whitmore Sq comment - it seems pointless to turn three corners just to pick up a couple of blocks of Gouger in preference to West Tce. Only makes sense if the original proposal for turning left at Currie was retained. Too much West Tce in that loop!

[Ben]

They said that there is no commitment within the next 4 year term. So lets be serious this is all just pie in the sky stuff at the moment. The route will no doubt change as it gets closer to being funded.

[Norman]

They said that there is no commitment within the next 4 year term. So lets be serious this is all just pie in the sky stuff at the moment. The route will no doubt change as it gets closer to being funded.

I don't think it will change much. There has been months of consultations for this plan to be finalised, I don't think they will want to go through that again.

I do wonder, though, how they will incorporate all the other new lines such as UnleyLink and WestLink into this plan.

[[Shuz]]

I prefer Option B. Sometimes simpler is better. East Terrace, Angas and Gouger Streets, West Terrace. No weird doglegs, picks up on enough key destinations along the way as well as catalysing potential development sites.

[rubberman]

I can't believe they would even comment about the time take going around the full loop, I mean seriously who would ever use it.

not sure if I am reading it too quickly, but I cant see why they do that log leg at Whitmore square, why not just go straight to West Terrace?

I like the idea of the loop and going down huts street too.

I see the initial advantage of the loop being to take passengers getting off at the O-Bahn tunnel, and at the Currie Street/West Terrace corner, and enabling them to access North and South from there. Say O-Bahn outlet to Hutt St and down to King Wm. St. South (similarly to the Station), or from Currie down Morphett to King Wm. St. South, (similarly to the Station). The attraction of Morphett Street is that there are now some big inner city apartment complexes there. There's a good chance if the tram went ahead, it would make apartments more attractive there too.

Of course there are those who think the trams should not have a whit more off the Square.

[rubberman]

I prefer Option B. Sometimes simpler is better. East Terrace, Angas and Gouger Streets, West Terrace. No weird doglegs, picks up on enough key destinations along the way as well as catalysing potential development sites.

Anxious Street is ok, but Gouger would have to be a mall. There's zero space for trams and cars.

[[Shuz]]

Gouger and Angas Streets could have a shared tram / car lane. Why is this always immediately ruled out? The mentality seems to be that trams should either have a right of way or no way at all. That doesn't work in most urban environments unless you're building a city from scratch.

[Kasey771]

Trams are both “pedestrian accelerators” and “development accelerators”. They drive activation in areas their routes run along.
As noted above, with the cemetery and the car dealerships already established on West Tce , it makes sense to choose the route they have to try to activate the ‘sleepy’ SW quadrant of the city mile. Brings it closer to the Central markets and Gouger street too.


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[rubberman]

Gouger and Angas Streets could have a shared tram / car lane. Why is this always immediately ruled out? The mentality seems to be that trams should either have a right of way or no way at all. That doesn't work in most urban environments unless you're building a city from scratch.

This option scored the worst on the multi-factor analysis. However, to answer your point directly, I'd ask the obvious question of why jam up an already busy street, when there's a wider, less busy one a couple of blocks further south? If there were no other options, sure, make it so. However, there's no reason for the big time penalty that Gouger St would involve.

[shiftaling]

Gouger St as a mall would seem to me to be the perfect solution, if any (main) street in the CBD were a candidate for pedestrianisation it would be Gouger between the square and Morphett.

[shiftaling]

Is a good point though that Victoria Square stop already services the Central Market