Active Transport Projects Must Be Prioritised, But Haylen Kept Back-Pedalling

‘Active Transport Projects Must Be Prioritised, But Haylen Kept Back-Pedalling’ is an opinion piece by sustainable transport activist and Friends of Erskineville Treasurer, Andrew Chuter.

New South Wales member for Summer Hill, Jo Haylen, was forced to resign as Minister for Transport this week after it was revealed that she and close friend, Housing Minister Rose Jackson, misused government drivers to speed themselves up to the Hunter Valley for a boozy lunch.

She has chosen to stay on as the local member for Summer Hill.

Haylen also used the drivers to chauffeur her children to weekend sports.

This is perhaps understandable: her local streets aren’t safe for walking or cycling given the number of active transport projects that have been canned or scaled back in the inner west of Sydney by her department, Transport for NSW (TfNSW).

NSW currently only spends 0.2% of its transport budget on active travel, 100 times below the 20% recommended by the UN.

Recent progress is little better than the days of the Liberal National Party coalition government of Barry O’Farrell, Mike Baird and Gladys Berejiklian. At that time, Roads Minister Duncan Gay became notorious for his hatred of bike lanes and had the College Street cycleway in the city ripped up at great expense.

After many ministerial reshuffles towards the end of the LNP’s 12-year reign, Rob Stokes MP was appointed as Australia’s first Minister for Active Transport and proceeded to reverse some of the previous damage. Prior to the state election in 2023, the College Street cycleway was reinstated.

When Labor returned to power in March 2023, the position of Active Transport Minister was abolished and Jo Haylen assumed those responsibilities.

Active transport campaigners in the inner west were cautiously looking forward to improvements that had been on the cards for many years.

One of the most vigorous campaigns, run by a trio of resident action groups, is for the long-promised completion of the north to south Eveleigh active transport bridge.

Originally promised and funded by Labor in 2006 and to be completed within 2 years, the project had become stalled. In 2021, when residents organised an online petition and gained the unanimous support of the City of Sydney, the LNP government said that it was “investigating the feasibility” of the bridge.

Disappointingly however, in 2023 the new Labor government told petitioners that the bridge was not feasible. Despite continued requests to Minister Haylen’s office for the feasibility studies to be made public, nothing yet has been released.

Another disappointment is the delays and broken promises over the mandated mitigation of the huge traffic influx induced by the St Peters WestConnex interchange.

Glossy government brochures showed a land bridge over Campbell Road connecting to Sydney Park with an elevated active transport skyway connecting people to Mascot. Neither materialised or even commenced construction under Haylen’s watch.

Another WestConnex mitigation, the Sydney Park Junction project, had extensive community consultation in 2021, with plans almost finalised in 2022. They included bike lanes, widened footpaths with tree plantings, street furniture, reduced speed limits and safety improvements.

However, Haylen’s office in 2023 reduced the scope of the project and TfNSW is only committing to a fraction of the project. A new consultation will take place where it is likely that minority negative feedback will be used as an excuse to justify further ‘de-scoping’.

Nearby, TfNSW has decided not to proceed with a critical section of the Alexandra Canal cycleway between Coward Street and Campbell Road, much to the disappointment of Bicycle NSW.

In Wilson Street in Newtown, there have long been calls for the popular cycleway there to be extended to make a connection with the Railway Avenue cycleway in Stanmore. In April 2024, Transport for NSW initiated an extensive community consultation for such an extension. Despite a majority of respondents leaving supportive feedback, in August TfNSW announced that the project was unfunded and to date nothing has happened.

A popular campaign run by the Friends of Erskineville was for lifts and a southern entrance at the local station. Building commenced in 2021 and was almost finished at the start of 2024 except for a set of bicycle racks and bench seats that were in the original plans but silently shelved. Transport for NSW later claimed the racks and seats were only artist renderings and despite another petition being launched, are still refusing to deliver.

In November 2022, TfNSW promised the Erskineville community that a temporary cycleway on the Swanson St rail bridge would be made permanent, and become a widened shared path for both pedestrians and cyclists. However in May 2023, the path was removed. Strong campaigning by WalkSydney members got the temporary path reinstated, but were told that the permanent solution would have to wait and require another round of consultation.

Several other improvements for walkability in the area, such as shared zones, raised crossings and completing the ‘missing legs‘ of signalised intersections are being championed by the Friends of Erskineville, but are being stymied due to TfNSW lack of support.

With Government statistics projecting that transport will become Australia’s largest source of emissions by 2030, all the above improvements must be prioritised if our climate commitments are to mean anything.

Instead we’ve had a Transport Minister racking up road miles on the public purse for her own private enjoyment.

Whoever replaces Haylen will need to do a lot better.