It has come to light that the NSW transport minister was racking up road kilometres on the public purse for her own private enjoyment.
While Jo Haylen, from the “left” of NSW Labor, was forced to resign from the ministry for behaviour that didn’t pass the pub test, her legacy as boss of Transport for NSW (TfNSW) also deserves to be scrutinised.
Haylen’s term is marked by the number of active transport projects in the inner west that her department has canned or scaled back.
NSW currently spends just 0.2% of its transport budget on active travel, 100 times below the recommended by the United Nations.
Recent progress has been little better than during the days of the Coalition governments of Barry O’Farrell, Mike Baird and Gladys Berejiklian. Back then, roads minister Duncan Gay was notorious for his hatred of bike lanes and had the College Street cycleway in the CBD ripped up, at great expense.
After many ministerial reshuffles towards the end of the Coalition’s 12-year reign, Rob Stokes was appointed Minister for Active Transport — a first — and he started to reverse some of the previous damage.
Prior to the 2023 NSW election, the College Street cycleway was reinstated.
When Labor won office in March 2023, the Active Transport Minister position was abolished and Haylen assumed those responsibilities.
Active transport campaigners in the inner west cautiously look forward to improvements.
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 scheduled to be completed within 2 years, the project stalled.
Residents organised an online petition in 2021 and gained unanimous support from the City of Sydney. The then-Coalition government said it would “investigate the feasibility” of the bridge.
The new Labor government, however, told petitioners the bridge was not feasible.
Despite repeated requests to TfNSW for the feasibility studies to be made public, nothing has been released.
The delays and broken promises over the mandated mitigation of the huge traffic influx induced by the St Peters WestConnex interchange is another major disappointment.
Glossy government brochures showed a land bridge over Campbell Road connecting to Sydney Park with an elevated active transport skyway connecting people to Mascot.
Under Haylen’s watch, neither materialised, or even started construction.
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 now only committing to a fraction of it.
A new consultation has been announced. It is likely that minority negative feedback will be used as an excuse to justify further “de-scoping”.
Meanwhile, 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, Newtown, there has long been calls for the popular cycleway to be extended to connect with the Railway Avenue cycleway in Stanmore.
Transport for NSW’s extensive community consultation in April last year came back with a majority supporting the proposal. However, in August, TfNSW announced the project was not funded for construction and nothing has happened since.
A popular campaign, run by the Friends of Erskineville, for lifts and a southern entrance at the local station led to construction beginning in 2021.
It was almost finished at the beginning of last year, except for a set of bicycle racks and bench seats that were in the original plans, but silently shelved. TfNSW later claimed they were only artist renderings and, despite another petition being launched, is refusing to deliver.
TfNSW promised the Erskineville community in November 2022 that a temporary cycleway on the Swanson Street rail bridge would be made permanent and become a widened shared path for both pedestrians and cyclists.
However, the path was removed in May 2023. Strong campaigning by WalkSydney members managed to get the temporary path reinstated, but were told that the permanent solution would have to wait for another round of consultation.
Friends of Erskineville is championing several other improvements for walkability in the area, including shared zones, raised crossings and completing the “missing legs” of signalised intersections, but TfNSW is not interested.
Privatising public transport
Haylen’s record on delivering public transport is little better.
A parliamentary inquiry in 2019 into the conversion and privatisation of the Sydenham-Bankstown line concluded the project should not proceed. Transport campaigners recommended that instead of ripping up and replacing an existing train line, the Metro should be extended to suburbs without rail.
At that time Haylen agreed and described the project as a “trojan horse for privatisation and development”.
Once in power, she reversed her position, and the line is currently closed for up to a year during construction.
In opposition, Labor vehemently opposed the privatisation of Sydney’s public buses. Two years after being elected, not a single bus is publicly operated.
Another condition of approval for WestConnex was that two lanes of Parramatta Road be dedicated to public transport. In 2016, Haylen praised a light rail proposal and rubbished bus priority improvements. But when a clear plan was promoted by operator ALTRAC, Haylen suddenly preferred buses.
With government statistics projecting that transport will become Australia’s largest source of emissions by 2030, active and public transport must be prioritised if its climate commitments are to amount to anything.
John Graham, Haylen’s replacement, will need to do a lot better.
[Andrew Chuter is active in Friends of Erskineville and is a long-term sustainable transport activist.]