Olympic Corridor part 3: High bus patronage = not white elephant!

Hills Shire and Parramatta City Council claim that the Olympic Park light rail route would be a "white elephant" for the 300 days per year when there are no special events.  Well, someone must have forgotten to tell TfNSW that.

With over 1600ha of potential urban renewal area, Olympic Park has barely begin the scratch the surface of it's long term potential, and yet already it has very high bus use intensity.  To get an idea of the size of how big 1600ha is, it is bigger than the sum of all of the following put together: Macquarie Park corridor (300ha), Norwest (200ha), Green square (20ha), Bays Precinct (80ha), and Sydney CBD + Redfern corridor (300ha).  Even throwing in North Sydney, Chatswood and St Leonards and the Olympic Park corridor is still bigger.  This 1600ha is located near the geographic centre of Sydney, with underutilised green and open space and riverfrontage.  It's weakness that has prevented it realising all this potential has been insufficient rail transport services, with a Lidcombe rail shuttle being the only weekday access service.

Last week, over 300 new bus services were initiated by TfNSW between Strathfield and Olympic park, accounting for all the additional bus services in the Inner West and nearly half of all new bus services added across Sydney:



Patronage of Strathfield to Olympic Park bus services is now so high during weekdays, that in peak hour buses services are running every 3-5 minutes.  In contrast, Parramatta to Macquarie Park station has only one half the bus frequency of Strathfield to Olympic Park, with patronage only sufficient to justify direct bus services every 10 minutes:

Parramatta Council and Hills Shire should come clean and acknowledge they are just advocating for their residents in Carlingford rather than being truly concerned about getting transport working effectively Sydney-wide.  Strathfield to Olympic Park has double the bus use intensity of Parramatta to Macquarie Park, and light rail conversion should focus on routes where bus use intensity is highest.  Claims about "white elephants" are lies and hyperbole.

Additional note: TfNSW normally makes a big announcement about any new transport services.  Yet the 300+ additional Olympic Park bus services were buried deeply away in a Transport Status announcement... could this because they have an even bigger anouncement coming up?