Practically impossible to comment on transport plan
The Draft Regional Transport Plan 2041 is now on exhibition, with comments being invited (closing on 24 February).
In this context, your article ("Gosford over 30 minutes away, transport document shows", PN 562) only emphasizes what I have pointed out on multiple occasions, which is that Gosford is unsuitable as the regional centre which should be nearer the population centre of gravity which is around Tuggerah.
However, the contrary conclusion of the Regional Plan is that Gosford should somehow be made to come within 30 minutes of the whole LGA, without giving the slightest indication of how this desirable situation could be brought about.
If the Department of Transport can produce a workable scheme for bringing the northern extremities of the LGA within 30 minutes of Gosford, we should see it and, then, we'd be able to make an intelligent comment about it.
As it stands, the report provides nothing but generic "solutions" that could have been copied from any planning textbook.
The crux of the publication comes in the Key Initiatives section which lists 80 items that have to be dealt with over the next 18 years.
Of these, 43 are in the "Investigation" phase.
However, a "plan" where more than half of the "key initiatives" haven't even been investigated doesn't seem to have yet reached a level of maturity that justifies the name.
These items might better be termed "Vague Ideas That We'll Get Around To Looking At In The Next 10 Years, Maybe", and it would be tedious to list them, because most of them are largely meaningless generalities, and many of them have only the most tenuous connection imaginable to any of the region's transport requirements.
For instance, "investigating dual signage opportunities" hardly seems like a vital contribution to improving the lifestyle of our community, and others are just as nebulous.
The "Planning" phase includes such hardy perennials as the chimeric fast-rail project (no report would be complete without it) which has been studied by experts more than once and determined to be unfeasible but which is so dear to the hearts of our planners that it won't lie down and die.
We also have such ambitions as "transition of passenger vehicles to EVs": perhaps, this is to be fully achieved by the provision of a charging point at Woy Woy, but the linkage is not made clear.
The old adage that our reach should always exceed our grasp is a fine one, but there comes a point where reality has to be matched against fantasy.
This report could have been half the length (or less), if it had focussed on crucial points, instead of inflating every trivial side issue into an opportunity for departmental grandstanding.
Obviously, this publication has no value as a "plan" from which programs and projects might be derived.
It is equally obvious that it is practically impossible to make any meaningful comment about it.
Perhaps, this was the intention from the start.
SOURCE:
Email, 11 Feb 2023
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy