The very shiny new Bankstown metro station, on the Southwest Sydney metro that opened last Friday.

Unfortunately, the destinations on the train didn't come up, but they say "Bankstown".

#Bankstown #WesternSydney #train #metro #rail #railway #TrainStation @fuckcars@lemmy.world

The entry to the new metro station, with a timber roof over the concourse.
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[–] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

There's a common pattern with public transportation projects in North America in general.

When a project is built city planners use the opportunity to widen streets, roads, build or upgrade bridges, and do this all in a effort to not diminish the amount of lanes previously available to vehicle traffic. Something even adding a new lane where one did not exist beforehand.

This means when new stations go in, or there is any above ground transit corridor, a good chunk of the cash gets funneled into "car centric initiatives" as opposed being solely allocated for the transit line.

In the area I live we have a tram line that went in not to long ago. It has both above and below ground sections. Along the whole corridor the city street was repaved, and at the street level routes the street was completely reconfigured and widened. This includes sidewalks, benches, planting, landscape, curbs, mediums, traffic lights and signaling, electrical, and storm water. The costs ballooned obviously.

It's almost like city planners were working on the assumption the public was still going to choose to drive, as opposed to take the new transit line. So all efforts and funds were put to work in a way not to inconvenience drive in the slightest.

So in the end the project costs are higher, and the public does not question all the shiny new car infrastructure, but then proceeds to ask why the transit line was so expensive in the end.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago

    what makes it even worse is that you can totally design with the assumption that people will still drive, without making it horrible.
    Just design for people to drive to metro stations! A lot of the suburban washington DC metro stations are like that, and while yes obviously it's not great it's a hell of a lot better than having suburbanites continue to drive downtown.

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