00:00 It's a picturesque harbourside city, with billions of dollars being spent building the
00:12 Sydney of tomorrow.
00:13 But driving around it today can feel like being on a road to nowhere.
00:20 Sydney is a very challenging city for transport planning.
00:23 We have this beautiful harbour in the middle, but that's also making it very difficult to
00:26 transport people from every side.
00:30 The Roselle interchange is the final stage of the WestConnex Road project connecting
00:34 Sydney's west and CBD.
00:37 But its opening caused commuter chaos, especially for those living on top of it.
00:42 It was a hot mess.
00:44 The subway went from being pretty easy to get around.
00:47 As soon as it opened, it was just complete gridlock.
00:51 To be brutally honest, I just didn't use it.
00:53 I didn't use my car for a couple of weeks.
00:55 I caught the ferry to the city, to North Sydney, and if I had the bus, just to avoid getting
01:00 involved in it.
01:02 He hopes the traffic woes improve because he can see the wider benefits.
01:07 I can go from here to Campbelltown, two sets of lights.
01:10 So I think that's pretty impressive.
01:12 It's cut down a lot of lights, but as I said, it is a bit costly.
01:16 The government blamed the gridlock on teething problems.
01:18 But as traffic again increases after a summer reprieve, some worry it's the result of design
01:24 flaws.
01:25 You can already tell now that people are starting to ramp up work that the traffic is getting
01:29 a lot heavier, the congestion is getting a lot worse.
01:32 It's really just a shambles.
01:34 Australia's a driving nation.
01:36 And while Sydney-siders are more likely than other city dwellers to ditch their cars, Professor
01:41 Mikael Bleimer reckons Sydney's at a crucial crossroads.
01:45 Do we want to live in a car-oriented city and we have lots of traffic in front of our
01:49 street?
01:50 Or would we like to live in a city with lots of parks, cycling ways, and we use mainly
01:54 public transport?
01:56 To do that, the city will need more higher density living and more public transport.
02:01 This last decade where we've built so many urban tollways and very large motorways, I
02:06 think we now need to turn a corner on that.
02:09 We need to say no more.
02:11 What we need to do now is focus on the rail and public transport networks and I think
02:15 getting much better at operating regional rail networks that are interacting with the
02:20 metropolitan rail network.
02:22 When you think things are going to get better and they just get steadily worse, it does
02:25 make you second guess if this is the lifestyle that you want.
02:28 Big questions for a city that's just getting bigger.
02:31 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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