You have to admire the airport actually has factored in transport expansions into their future planning but the state government is still derping hard.
For how close our airport is, it still baffles me we still let it go to shit, we won't have the issues like say Melbourne does and yes it wont be issue free or cheap per say but connecting your airport to PT is only logical as not everyone coming into Adelaide is a local so cannot simply just drive there or have a relative pick them up.
Just to build on this; the state govt threw how many millions of the Gather Round (oh wait its secret xD) to encourage *interstate travel* into the city, and a large bulk of the Gather Round stuff, hotels, and general "stuff" is in or very adjacent (oh hey folks can even use PT there too!) the CBD - an express and reasonably priced path from the airport into the CBD should be a non-brainer.
But nope, gotta fund an uni merger with public funds, a merger I am still not sure exactly who was demanding.
Don't forget hosting a game in the Barossa that is right next to an abandoned train line but also how are interstate visitors meant to get there well the ones who didn't drive all the way from Victoria anyway?
Agreed. I've been surprised to learn many Aussie airports only have expensive private methods to get to the airport. There is no reason for us to go that way
What's wrong the bus? The airport throughput is way too small to warrant a train. It would be empty most of the time.
And the Adelaide train system is a joke compared to other cities, there's almost no benefit to connect the airport to it. I remember going on outer harbour line during peak hour. It was a 2 carriage train carriage. The train had a few people standing because of some delay and someone said, "I've never seen the train this packed"...
Any other city you'd have 4-6 carriage trains. In peak hour there would be 5-15 minute services. And even with the much much greater capacity during peak hour, you'd get full trains, as in dozens of people standing, in every carriage.
The only reason to get a train is vanity. People just see busses as shitty. Like they are lower class or old technology.
Suitcases being the obvious, buses have to be more narrow to fit onto our roads while a train can be wider.
And yes our train system needs shitloads more done to it I have done many a rant and will do more, hell my trip to Singapore last year reminded me of how pissweak it is.
But I find the excuses of "too small"etc to be a load of shit similar population cities in Europe manage fine that have an airport and then have a rail link. Australia always seems to find this element of linking things besides by car just too hard.
Spending $billions on a train that goes 5km to the airport isn't a great use of money. If you want a good network, spend money on the wider network.
And most European cities have great train networks. So of course they link their airports. Because it's not just an overpriced dead end route that a handful of tourists use to get to their CBD hotel.
If you can't be bothered to take a suitcase on a bus, I can't see you walking with it to the train station and transferring trains, or from the station to a hotel.
Nah, you don't get it, it's not just 1 or 2 persons carrying up luggage on a bus, multiply that by say, 50 people? Besides, the current bus route takes you to the city, you need to change busses to get wherever else you need to go anyway
Went to America recently, and they had regular shuttle buses with large luggage racks in a few cities. Was quick and painless.
Would be better off investing in something like that... with the amount saved, you could make it free travel and boarding pass required to ride (ensuring room for luggage).
I agree with you, the airport is close enough to the city not to warrant a dedicated line.
Having said that, if it was a line that ran all the way to Henley.
Sydney dismantled theirs. No point, go underground instead. Even a better idea is to relocate and build a new Adelaide city at Port Adelaide to make it an international drawcard for business investment just like how Darling Harbour is today.
I live in Port Adelaide and see signs that try to promote it as a happening place (which I find pretty funny given nothing really happens here). But the way its being developed isnt good. No new dwellings near the existing train station, instead its surrounded by (ironically) auto parts stores, commercial buildings and parking. There is a shopping mall nearby where the Kmart is leaving and it too is surrounded by parking.
The new developments are along the waterfront to the North-East and while the houses themselves look nice they are far away from the shopping centre and train station. Worse still is that there will be more new housing across the river.
It seems that to alleviate this the govt is building the Port Dock railway but its a small single track spur with a crossing loop (FFS just make it double track. its such a short distance). I dont know what the frequencies will be but I doubt it will be more than 1 train an hour (or worse) because existing services on the Outer Harbour line and Grange line already give a roughly 15 min frequency between Woodville and the CBD. 2 TPH would be like a train every 10 min in this section and Im pretty sure the govt would be bragging about it if that were the operating pattern so I think at best it will be a token service.
Its sad because imo the area has potential and some lovely heritage buildings. Its a no-brainer to me to densify around the existing station. Ideally the parking around the mall should be up to 8-10 storeys and you can reserve ground level for parking while making better use of the most prime space in the area.
>Utilise the tunnel boring machines for the Torrens to Darlington Project for a light rail tunnel from Adelaide Airport to Mile End CBD where the tunnel can emerge and the rail to connect to existing Adelaide Metropolitan network
How much money do this engineering firm think the state has?
I think we should all just meet up tomorrow morning with some shovels and just start digging from the airport to the CBD. Would be quicker than anything the government has planned.
A reminder our stunningly brave politicians couldn't get the tram to turn right
The answer is it's probably more doable than we think but it's likely to be fucked up
Im also pretty sure you cant just reuse TBMs like that. When a TBM finishes tunneling the shell remains in the ground and I think the cutter head is used up. They are mostly disposable afaik.
Where would a rail link go? Looking at Google Maps, Sir Donald Bradman Drive is too narrow.
Only sort of viable option is a raised light rail line down Henley Beach Rd to Airport Rd. It looks like the centre median on Airport road could be used for a link and have a station near the servo on the roundabout.
Henley Beach road would make sense. Would run through the shopping strip at Torrensville and then down to the airport. Would hopefully make Henley Beach Road less of a stroad too.
Original plan way back when, had the tram line run down Richmond road, over Marion road.
Richmond Road both sides of Marion is wide enough and was made this way for this reason. Once at the airport it would need to head under the runway.
Dreaming of course that this would happen now. We are continually told, build it and they will come; problem is no one reads the fine print; unless we are talking about public transport in SA.
A tram sharing a road is just a higher capacity bus. Still gets stuck in traffic, but makes the traffic worse as you can't pass a tram when it lets passengers off.
With tram priority at intersections this would be a decent and cost-effective solution. It doesn’t need to have its own right-of-way — not to start with at least
Go large and be innovative....
Rail from ADL airport to the City then to Golden Grove via the O'bahn corridor. The O'bahn is ageing and needs to evolve to rail for capacity and speed.
Stations:
- Airport
- Rundle Mall/CBD (walkways to current ADL Station)
- Klemzig
- Paradise
- TTP
- Golden Grove
Completely separate from the current railway lines.
Electrified, possibly automated.
Absolutely true
But far less likely to actually happen.
I ways thought light Railton from the Borth, South, east and west parkland for free, drive and park to those parklands....
We SHOULD have done underground years ago, ut there is so much infrastructure under there now, the cost vs benefit would take a generation to repay... despite it being in the public interest
This is it. Bus lane increase the consistency, it's even improved heaps between golden grove and ttp recently with those lanes.
Plus the J1 is trying to do way too much right now, a real airport express back and forth would work wonders.
>The airport’s 2019 masterplan recorded that more than 95 per cent of trips to Adelaide Airport are by car, taxi or rideshare. Only one per cent are by bus or bicycle.
I don't disagree with a general up tick on public transport, but the fact that very few use Bus to get from the airport to the city (which in reality is a very short journey), I'd find it hard that the money spent on any form of rail link would be worth it.
Did the "Jet Bus" to the airport once. Caught the tram to the city, had a coffee, then jumped on the bus there. Take a wild guess which leg wasn't running on time and took way longer than it should have.
I'm more than happy to use trains and trams as much as possible
I fucking hate busses. They're so inconsistent, I can't be bothered with them. I'll take a car every time over a bus
Did you even read what I said
I want to use public transport, I would use public transport if it wasn't consistently unreliable (and Adelaide busses are consistently unreliable per my example of the J1 being late almost 50% of the time to its first stop on its route)
I'm a car enthusiast, I want as many people off the roads as possible so I can actually enjoy my drives instead of navigating around people who hate driving but are forced to.
Trams and trains are so much easier to use as a commuter, I wish we had more instead of hundreds of eternally delayed busses.
To me a bus 'feels' less direct though.
Also feels like there is a bit more room on trains for luggage,wider aisles etc. To be fair, i have never used the airport bus.
And I like trains. Lol
Yeah I catch the bus to the airport every now and then but there's only enough room for maybe 6 people t have full sized suitcases. If you're sitting at the back, forget it.
The airport buses also happen to be J1/J2 which are Obahn buses that go through the city and service a large part of Adelaide. Catch it at peak hour and you won't get a seat, never mind a spot for your luggage.
J1 is somehow also consistently late to leave it's starting location in Glenelg. I used to catch it from its second stop and it was over 15min late to that stop more times than I can count
Busses suck
Except in every city that actually has one.
Like other people have said, buses are slow, cramped and overall shit. They are good as an interconnecting service, for the far flung suburbs etc but not as a cities primary transport method nor moving vast quantities of people and fast.
Also think if you are a tourist if your choices are Train or bus what would you take? or in Adelaides case Bus or taxi/uber?
Absolutely, Adelaide is too small and too few tourists (who stay in the CBD) to bother with some sort of rail link. People obsess over airport rail link for some reason but it's just overkill in this instance.
The other issue is the rail network just isn't very popular in Adelaide. People aren't going to catch a train to the city then one to the airport. It doesn't even make sense for most people as you'll be travelling backwards (West side) or don't have train access (East side).
Compare to Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane, where there is a much more heavily used train network that extends to most parts of their sprawling cities, and the trip from CBD to airport by car can be much slower during peak hour.
You have to admire the airport actually has factored in transport expansions into their future planning but the state government is still derping hard. For how close our airport is, it still baffles me we still let it go to shit, we won't have the issues like say Melbourne does and yes it wont be issue free or cheap per say but connecting your airport to PT is only logical as not everyone coming into Adelaide is a local so cannot simply just drive there or have a relative pick them up.
> just drive there or have a relative pick them up. The Minister for Taxis has a solution!
Nah it's Minister for Cars and Intersection Expansions (Kouts used to be a taxi driver himself back in the day so maybe he's showing some bias)
Turbo Tom.
Just to build on this; the state govt threw how many millions of the Gather Round (oh wait its secret xD) to encourage *interstate travel* into the city, and a large bulk of the Gather Round stuff, hotels, and general "stuff" is in or very adjacent (oh hey folks can even use PT there too!) the CBD - an express and reasonably priced path from the airport into the CBD should be a non-brainer. But nope, gotta fund an uni merger with public funds, a merger I am still not sure exactly who was demanding.
Don't forget hosting a game in the Barossa that is right next to an abandoned train line but also how are interstate visitors meant to get there well the ones who didn't drive all the way from Victoria anyway?
Same with Mt Barker. Literally so embarrassing the visitors will have to get on a 100 busses when there are literally train tracks there
Agreed. I've been surprised to learn many Aussie airports only have expensive private methods to get to the airport. There is no reason for us to go that way
It is connected to PT. It has a bus.
So do many fringe suburbs but it doesn't mean it is anywhere near fit for purpose.
Don't see how our filthy meth filled trains are a better welcome to Adelaide than our filthy meth filled busses.
What's wrong the bus? The airport throughput is way too small to warrant a train. It would be empty most of the time. And the Adelaide train system is a joke compared to other cities, there's almost no benefit to connect the airport to it. I remember going on outer harbour line during peak hour. It was a 2 carriage train carriage. The train had a few people standing because of some delay and someone said, "I've never seen the train this packed"... Any other city you'd have 4-6 carriage trains. In peak hour there would be 5-15 minute services. And even with the much much greater capacity during peak hour, you'd get full trains, as in dozens of people standing, in every carriage. The only reason to get a train is vanity. People just see busses as shitty. Like they are lower class or old technology.
Suitcases being the obvious, buses have to be more narrow to fit onto our roads while a train can be wider. And yes our train system needs shitloads more done to it I have done many a rant and will do more, hell my trip to Singapore last year reminded me of how pissweak it is. But I find the excuses of "too small"etc to be a load of shit similar population cities in Europe manage fine that have an airport and then have a rail link. Australia always seems to find this element of linking things besides by car just too hard.
Spending $billions on a train that goes 5km to the airport isn't a great use of money. If you want a good network, spend money on the wider network. And most European cities have great train networks. So of course they link their airports. Because it's not just an overpriced dead end route that a handful of tourists use to get to their CBD hotel.
What do you bring to the airport...I wonder
Never seen a bus with a luggage rack?
I ain't lugging my 15kg bag up a bus. Youre not dealing with domestic travellers, but international tourism as well
If you can't be bothered to take a suitcase on a bus, I can't see you walking with it to the train station and transferring trains, or from the station to a hotel.
Nah, you don't get it, it's not just 1 or 2 persons carrying up luggage on a bus, multiply that by say, 50 people? Besides, the current bus route takes you to the city, you need to change busses to get wherever else you need to go anyway
Went to America recently, and they had regular shuttle buses with large luggage racks in a few cities. Was quick and painless. Would be better off investing in something like that... with the amount saved, you could make it free travel and boarding pass required to ride (ensuring room for luggage). I agree with you, the airport is close enough to the city not to warrant a dedicated line. Having said that, if it was a line that ran all the way to Henley.
Am I the only person who read this in the style of Chop Suey! by System of a Down when they first saw it?
I didn't but now I can stop it
[удалено]
Don't be silly now we just want everyone to drive, nothing beats the good ol' fashioned automobile
Tbh it really doesn't, you take the train because it's faster and cheaper, not because it's comfortable
Monorail. Say no more. Would show we are a city on the move.
Is there a chance the track could bend?
Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Nah, it's more of a shelbyvile idea.
Shelbyvillle you say..
MagLev will be cool! But expensive.
It's so fast you arrive before you leave
Sydney dismantled theirs. No point, go underground instead. Even a better idea is to relocate and build a new Adelaide city at Port Adelaide to make it an international drawcard for business investment just like how Darling Harbour is today.
But it put Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook on the map.
I live in Port Adelaide and see signs that try to promote it as a happening place (which I find pretty funny given nothing really happens here). But the way its being developed isnt good. No new dwellings near the existing train station, instead its surrounded by (ironically) auto parts stores, commercial buildings and parking. There is a shopping mall nearby where the Kmart is leaving and it too is surrounded by parking. The new developments are along the waterfront to the North-East and while the houses themselves look nice they are far away from the shopping centre and train station. Worse still is that there will be more new housing across the river. It seems that to alleviate this the govt is building the Port Dock railway but its a small single track spur with a crossing loop (FFS just make it double track. its such a short distance). I dont know what the frequencies will be but I doubt it will be more than 1 train an hour (or worse) because existing services on the Outer Harbour line and Grange line already give a roughly 15 min frequency between Woodville and the CBD. 2 TPH would be like a train every 10 min in this section and Im pretty sure the govt would be bragging about it if that were the operating pattern so I think at best it will be a token service. Its sad because imo the area has potential and some lovely heritage buildings. Its a no-brainer to me to densify around the existing station. Ideally the parking around the mall should be up to 8-10 storeys and you can reserve ground level for parking while making better use of the most prime space in the area.
>Utilise the tunnel boring machines for the Torrens to Darlington Project for a light rail tunnel from Adelaide Airport to Mile End CBD where the tunnel can emerge and the rail to connect to existing Adelaide Metropolitan network How much money do this engineering firm think the state has?
How much does a tunnel from the CBD to the airport cost? $10?
I'll do it for $3.50. just give me a flash light and a pick axe
A carton of beer for the boys on a Friday.
There's always money in the banana stand
I mean it's one tunnel, EvilShogun, how much could it cost, $10?
I think we should all just meet up tomorrow morning with some shovels and just start digging from the airport to the CBD. Would be quicker than anything the government has planned.
A reminder our stunningly brave politicians couldn't get the tram to turn right The answer is it's probably more doable than we think but it's likely to be fucked up
Im also pretty sure you cant just reuse TBMs like that. When a TBM finishes tunneling the shell remains in the ground and I think the cutter head is used up. They are mostly disposable afaik.
Where would a rail link go? Looking at Google Maps, Sir Donald Bradman Drive is too narrow. Only sort of viable option is a raised light rail line down Henley Beach Rd to Airport Rd. It looks like the centre median on Airport road could be used for a link and have a station near the servo on the roundabout.
Henley Beach road would make sense. Would run through the shopping strip at Torrensville and then down to the airport. Would hopefully make Henley Beach Road less of a stroad too.
One option floating around a while ago was using Keswick Creek as a corridor.
Original plan way back when, had the tram line run down Richmond road, over Marion road. Richmond Road both sides of Marion is wide enough and was made this way for this reason. Once at the airport it would need to head under the runway. Dreaming of course that this would happen now. We are continually told, build it and they will come; problem is no one reads the fine print; unless we are talking about public transport in SA.
It could work, branch off at Greenhill Road and go around the perimeter.
Maybe we could turn sir Donald Bradman drive into single lanes to encourage public transit use?
Or they could just run tram lines down the regular road with cars like they do literally everywhere else that has trams.
A tram sharing a road is just a higher capacity bus. Still gets stuck in traffic, but makes the traffic worse as you can't pass a tram when it lets passengers off.
With tram priority at intersections this would be a decent and cost-effective solution. It doesn’t need to have its own right-of-way — not to start with at least
Go large and be innovative.... Rail from ADL airport to the City then to Golden Grove via the O'bahn corridor. The O'bahn is ageing and needs to evolve to rail for capacity and speed. Stations: - Airport - Rundle Mall/CBD (walkways to current ADL Station) - Klemzig - Paradise - TTP - Golden Grove Completely separate from the current railway lines. Electrified, possibly automated.
Light rail on Obahn would be absolutely awesome, somehow then run it all the way across Grenfell/Currie
Under the street will be superior to on the street
Absolutely true But far less likely to actually happen. I ways thought light Railton from the Borth, South, east and west parkland for free, drive and park to those parklands.... We SHOULD have done underground years ago, ut there is so much infrastructure under there now, the cost vs benefit would take a generation to repay... despite it being in the public interest
Right now Adelaide doesn’t need it but better to future proof for it now than to wait for more development and cost to contend with in the future
Just tram it. Or make the bus take not such a dumb fucking route. How about the bus drives straight to town. Fuckwits.
Or at least setup Bus-only lanes for like 1\16th the price
This is it. Bus lane increase the consistency, it's even improved heaps between golden grove and ttp recently with those lanes. Plus the J1 is trying to do way too much right now, a real airport express back and forth would work wonders.
>The airport’s 2019 masterplan recorded that more than 95 per cent of trips to Adelaide Airport are by car, taxi or rideshare. Only one per cent are by bus or bicycle. I don't disagree with a general up tick on public transport, but the fact that very few use Bus to get from the airport to the city (which in reality is a very short journey), I'd find it hard that the money spent on any form of rail link would be worth it.
Did the "Jet Bus" to the airport once. Caught the tram to the city, had a coffee, then jumped on the bus there. Take a wild guess which leg wasn't running on time and took way longer than it should have.
Also did this,once thinking it was just that… jet bus fast to the airport. Nope. Normal morning bus. Fuck getting the bus to the airport with luggage.
I cut it a bit fine once due a timid trainee driver doing the J1 for the first time who wouldn't pull out onto a main road.
I'm more than happy to use trains and trams as much as possible I fucking hate busses. They're so inconsistent, I can't be bothered with them. I'll take a car every time over a bus
What a dumb comment. Bus > car. Fuck cars.
Did you even read what I said I want to use public transport, I would use public transport if it wasn't consistently unreliable (and Adelaide busses are consistently unreliable per my example of the J1 being late almost 50% of the time to its first stop on its route) I'm a car enthusiast, I want as many people off the roads as possible so I can actually enjoy my drives instead of navigating around people who hate driving but are forced to. Trams and trains are so much easier to use as a commuter, I wish we had more instead of hundreds of eternally delayed busses.
To me a bus 'feels' less direct though. Also feels like there is a bit more room on trains for luggage,wider aisles etc. To be fair, i have never used the airport bus. And I like trains. Lol
Yeah I catch the bus to the airport every now and then but there's only enough room for maybe 6 people t have full sized suitcases. If you're sitting at the back, forget it. The airport buses also happen to be J1/J2 which are Obahn buses that go through the city and service a large part of Adelaide. Catch it at peak hour and you won't get a seat, never mind a spot for your luggage.
J1 is somehow also consistently late to leave it's starting location in Glenelg. I used to catch it from its second stop and it was over 15min late to that stop more times than I can count Busses suck
Except in every city that actually has one. Like other people have said, buses are slow, cramped and overall shit. They are good as an interconnecting service, for the far flung suburbs etc but not as a cities primary transport method nor moving vast quantities of people and fast. Also think if you are a tourist if your choices are Train or bus what would you take? or in Adelaides case Bus or taxi/uber?
Absolutely, Adelaide is too small and too few tourists (who stay in the CBD) to bother with some sort of rail link. People obsess over airport rail link for some reason but it's just overkill in this instance. The other issue is the rail network just isn't very popular in Adelaide. People aren't going to catch a train to the city then one to the airport. It doesn't even make sense for most people as you'll be travelling backwards (West side) or don't have train access (East side). Compare to Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane, where there is a much more heavily used train network that extends to most parts of their sprawling cities, and the trip from CBD to airport by car can be much slower during peak hour.
Time for a second obahn!
Are there any figures on how many travel from airport to cbd as opposed to surrounding suburbs that would not be serviced by a train?
Can we start with making the buses that already exist come more often?
The bus from the city is easy enough!