Yeah I lived through all that too Tony. Another old friend is John Hatton
and we've spent a fair bit of time talking over the years about Askin etc
and I've read some very interesting stuff in his papers about a lot of
people in politics over that and following decades. I won't go into any
details here! Politics is a dirty business everywhere and on all sides.
Like you, I've often wondered whether TfNSW deliberately stuffed CSELR to
make trams look bad. There's the old saying about a leopard doesn't change
its spots. For decades a tram-hating body of bus boys, then suddenly it
faces a new government that demands trams. It must have been quite a thing
hitting the brakes and doing a U turn in that deep swamp. I certainly feel
that TfNSW kept their professional commitment at arm's length for a very
long time, not deigning to research the subject deeply (unlike Queensland
DoT) and delegating the details to a motley collection of consultants. It
was certainly a major oversight not challenging Transdev's estimates of a
leisurely journey time (and then locking that into a long contract), which
has led to the present situation.
Can hardly blame SE commuters for resisting being forced onto the trams for
a slower commute and the local MPs O'Neill, Daley and Hoenig are certainly
making political hay out of the situation. The problem is that their
solution is not to improve the tram but to bring back the buses with a
vengeance. It's a bad situation and such a shame for the tram project.
Tony P
On Sunday, 22 November 2020 at 18:06:21 UTC+11a...@... wrote:
> Jeez Tony, you’re game opening that can of worms.
>
> The problem the corrupt, opponent murdering Askin/Lewis government had
> with the Whitlam government was that it was in power at all - nothing else.
> That was true of the liberal party everywhere, the born-to-rule soggy sao
> eaters didn’t like being kicked off the treasury benches, much like the
> Trump freak show in the US. NSW was lucky that Jack Mundey, Joe Owens,
> Juanita Nielsen and thousands of other decent people resisted the plague of
> vandalism that the Askin regime was prepared to inflict on Sydney, from The
> Rocks and Woollomooloo being demolished to the grotesque and bizarre
> destruction of Centennial Park for stupid sports grounds, and carving up
> the inner suburbs with freeways.
>
> The state government has been offering a lot of rewards for cold case
> murders lately, but the one they, and the corrupt, murdering, racist, child
> molesting NSW police farce will never offer is for information on what
> happened to Juanita Nielsen.
>
> As for the “fresh start” with the gormless Tom Lewis - they turned the cow
> turd over so the wet side was up. Changed deckchairs on the Titanic. And
> considering the transport policies under Askin it’s not surprising Morris
> left the portfolio, like Matt Keane and Catherine Cusack in the Stupid
> Gladys regime he must have been frustrated being the smart person
> surrounded by cretins. If you have a problem with that label, consider the
> deputy premier called koalas “tree rats”, and I haven’t heard Gladys
> disagree, but then between Shagger Maguire and the council grant rorts she
> illegally destroyed records of, she probably has other things on her mind.
> And Shagger was involved in the Camellia toxic land scam - what a surprise……
>
> Gladys looks more every day like Askin in drag, and her claque of
> criminals and cretins are the same sort of cultureless, greed driven dregs
> that have inhabited every corrupt coalition regime in this state, and
> that’s all of them.
>
> And, if you’re looking for some knee-jerk defence of the NSW ALP,
> particularly it’s knuckle dragging, clericofascist, DLP wannabe right
> faction, you won’t get it from me, but this government is such an easy
> target due to its congenital incompetence and innate corruption. And
> there's so much more to be ashamed of. ALP or coalition - Hobson’s choice.
>
> NSW - once a penal colony, always a penile colony.
>
>
> (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a pic of “Tree Rats" Pork Barrel-aro
> strangling a koala - he must do it in private_)
>
> Tony
>
> On 22 Nov 2020, at 4:50 pm, TP histor...@...> wrote:
>
> Morris didn't move to another ministry in the new Lewis government as a
> result of his tram report. It was a cabinet reshuffle made for various
> other reasons, revolving around a "fresh start" after ten years of the
> Askin government. I knew Milton, he was glad of the change.
>
> What a federal Labor government wanted to do at that time had no relevance
> to the NSW government which was the level of government actually
> responsible for urban transit. The NSW government was at loggerheads with
> the Whitlam government for many reasons - the issue of trams was nothing in
> the general picture. A couple of decades later the Fahey Liberal government
> was far more receptive to providing assistance to implementing a
> federal-state joint tram initiative.
>
> Any belief that NSW Labor will ever support trams would dissipate if you
> watched the recent parliamentary debates on the save the buses petitions
> and the shouts from the Labor benches of "good riddance" in response to a
> government speaker attempting to remind Labor that it got rid of the trams
> in the first place. It's delusional to think otherwise. The three Labor
> local members for the SE have now got together some 80,000 signatures from
> locals opposing being forced onto the trams, so it's not just the
> politicians, but the people of the SE who have ceased to love the trams
> like they did 60 years ago.
>
> I warned about this ten years ago and more - that whatever new system was
> built, it had to offer a value-added experience in order to attract bus
> users across to the tram. I also warned that French tram systems were
> notoriously slow. So everything I raised has come to fruition - all locked
> into a sixteen something-year contract that can't be changed. Fortunately,
> a metro line is to be eventually built to the SE, so that will rescue all
> those commuters living down there.
>
> People don't automatically swoon over trams and disregard all other
> convenience issues just to get on a tram. That little bit of light rail
> advocacy wishfil thinking has to be laid to rest. If some city wants trams,
> it requires a bit of hard yakka and doing it properly. Fortunately CSELR at
> least has a decent job to do within its direct catchment. It just won't
> viably replace the buses. which was one of the original objectives.
>
> Tony P
>
> On Sunday, 22 November 2020 at 14:53:57 UTC+11a...@... wrote:
>
>> Really, the rot in NSW started after WW1. Unregulated buses were cherry
>> picking the cream of the tram traffic and nearly every postwar tramway
>> extension proposal was first delayed and then discarded. The flu pandemic
>> and postwar recession meant the economy was weak and money, for various
>> reasons was short. Reliable motor transport and increasing car ownership
>> among the political and business classes made road transport look modern
>> and versatile, like aviation, seen as the way of the future. This was also
>> recognised by treasury bureaucrats as a way of shifting cost - and debt -
>> from the state, as the provider of rail transport, including tramways, to
>> businesses and individuals operating their own vehicles on state provided
>> roads on payment of a registration fee.
>>
>> And in the 20s the pirate buses were shiny and new, with padded seats and
>> everything, while the trams were already labelled boneshakers, rattletraps
>> etc, and once the bus had cleaned up enough of a paying load, comfortably
>> seated, the trams could pack in the rest as the most remunerative traffic
>> from the outer end of the route got a fast run to town. Hard for the mostly
>> pre WW1 tram fleet, and wooden seated P class, to look flash alongside
>> that, something that the tramways grudgingly recognised by running “first
>> class” services to Randwick racetrack using P cars fitted with seat
>> cushions. Trams were old, passé, rattly relics, while the future rolled
>> smoothly on rubber tyres over paved roads.
>>
>> That’s why none of the peri-urban steam tramways in Sydney were
>> electrified, and only Newcastle partly electrified out of the regional
>> steam tramways there and in Maitland and Broken Hill. Most of those steam
>> operations ended in 1926, coincidentally when suburban electric trains
>> started running in Sydney.
>>
>> All through the 20s and 30s the emphasis was on the city railway,
>> suburban rail electrification, road bridges and extensive road widening and
>> paving rather than tramway expansion and improvement, and despite some
>> brief periods of apparent reprieve the trajectory from around 1920 to the
>> final demise in 1961 is pretty much downward, aided and abetted by a
>> relentlessly hostile print media - with honourable exception of Ezra
>> Norton’s Daily Mirror, and Packer’s Telegraph being the worst anti-tram
>> shills - and an aggressive anti-tram, pro-motoring lobby in the National
>> Roads and Motorists Association and the Motor Traders Association.
>>
>> This Trolley Wire issue covers it well :
>>
>>
>> https://www.sydneytramwaymuseum.com.au/members.old/Trolley_Wire/132%20-%20Trolley%20Wire%20-%20Feb%201971.pdf
>>
>>
>> Tony
>>
>>
>> > On 22 Nov 2020, at 1:50 pm, Mal Rowe mal....@...> wrote:
>> >
>> > According to the Daily Mirror in the war years, the rot set in early in
>> Sydney.
>> >
>> > Here's an article from the Mirror quoted with obvious relish by the
>> MMTB in their staff magazine.
>> >
>> > Mal Rowe - in a nation where inter city rivalry is alive and active
>> >
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>> .
>> > <TramwayTopics_20Jul1944-p2.pdf>
>>
>>
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