Is Efficient Public Transport Possible for Western Sydney?

No matter what part of the world you live in, every citizen understands the difficulties of taking public transport. Sydney’s T1 Western Line has become one of the busiest transit systems in the city, with over 1400 passengers boarding the train to Parramatta alone. As demonstrated from the image below, the trains and buses surrounding the Parramatta and Granville area tend to be overcrowded, slow and late and often irritate and exhaust daily commuters travelling from school or work. Many have moved to social media networks such as Twitter and Instagram to show their discontent with the public transportation system in Sydney, labelling it as #CityFail. 

Although there a quite a few positive aspects of taking public transport, such as saving money on petrol and not having to find parking spaces, unfortunately many negative aspects seem to outweigh the good. After taking trains and buses to university several times a week, I found that most of the times the experience can be quite stressful and chaotic. Large crowds of people mean invasion of personal space, therefore aggravating my claustrophobia. It sometimes makes you wonder why you aren’t in some kind of alternative universe where you’re able to walk through a concealed entrance to Platform Nine and Three Quarters and catch the Hogwarts Express. I’m sure we can all admit that it would be so much easier and efficient than any other type of public transportation in Parramatta.

Since we don’t have any magical powers, it will probably go something like this.

Okay, sorry for that. Back to reality now.

The following video by Seven News demonstrates the problems with taking public transport in Western Sydney.

Many of the suburbs mentioned above, such as Parramatta, Campbelltown and Penrith are home to some of the main campuses for The University of Western Sydney.

The University of Western Sydney’s Parramatta South campus is located in the heart of Rydalmere and is approximately three kilometres away from local shopping centre Parramatta Westfield. Every day, hundreds of students catch the buses from Parramatta Interchange to UWS Parramatta because of the difficulties of catching the train to Rydalmere station. Although the university is mere five minute walk from Rydalmere station, every hour, only one train leaves Rydalmere to Parramatta station. Busy student schedules mean that they do not have time to wait more than hour to catch the train if they miss it. Therefore many students opt to catch the bus instead. There are five buses that operate to and from Parramatta campus and the station. The routes are called M52, 521, 523, 524 and 525.

As buses travel from Parramatta’s central business district, students from numerous primary, secondary and tertiary schools are accompanied by many workers and busy commuters who often struggle to find empty seats or spaces to stand, sometimes they are dismissed by the bus driver, leaving them to take the next bus.

After the introduction of the Opal card system in Sydney last year, approximate costs for public transportation have changed to $65 per week for adults, $30 for concession and child card holders and $20 for seniors and pensioners. These costs are definitely not worth the frustrating experience on Sydney trains and buses.

With the help of the internet and social media, we as a community are able to create awareness and build connections with one another by engaging in public conversations and groups. The Facebook page “UWS Confessions” is an online community where students from all six campuses are able to post and share opinions to over seventeen thousand people. Within the past year, it has generated audiences from other universities within Australia and around the globe. We can begin to advocate for social change with the help of the confession page and their large audience share. With many Facebook likers being university students, we able to establish a sense of understanding to the situation. Numerous counts of people on the page have often complained about their experience on the bus travelling from Parramatta Station to Parramatta South campus.

On other social media platforms such as Twitter, we should create an account for the movement and start the hashtag #ImproveOurPublicTransport. The government has been promising improvements to Western Sydney public transportation systems for years now and we want the government to know that we are in fact a high priority.

The most successful way to inform people in the community who may not have to take public transport is to entice them visually. With many talented students who are able to create short films and documentaries, we should all team up as groups and upload videos to YouTube for this campaign. Seeing is believing and it enforces empathy and understanding.