Eastwood: An Accidental Pedestrian Heaven (Sydney Suburb Planning Series)
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- Опубликовано: 17 янв 2022
- In this video, I'll be looking at the north-western Sydney suburb of Eastwood, observing its poor planning and lack of adequate road infrastructure, and how this has inadvertently allowed the suburb to flourish into a pedestrian friendly Asian culture hub.
For more on the Eastwood County Road, visit www.ozroads.com.au/NSW/Specia...
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Extremely impressive detail of analysis.
There are two key words I would say regarding the alleged insufficiency of road infrastructure: induced demand. You'll never satiate the latent traffic & parking demand in a city like Sydney; you'll see improvements that are temporary at best.
The fundamental metric you want to improve for people is *trip duration*, not traffic maximum speed or volume. If you think about priorities this way, the answers to congestion problems start to look a little different.
Public transit, enhanced walkability (details like curb cuts, wombat crossings, road width etc.), greater allowance for mixed use (e.g. suburban dwellers not opposing the occasional cafe or corner store being established in the middle of their suburb) - these will give people alternatives to driving, which will reduce congestion as well as yielding other benefits (reduced noise, air pollution, more inviting streets, improved property values, etc.). Putting in more high-speed roads across neighbourhoods is incredibly destructive of wealth. Turning those grassy sections into a linear greenway park, by contrast, would generate a huge benefit to the thousands of people living around it.
I think you would find the work of Strong Towns very interesting if you haven't come across it before. It talks about rethinking American-style urban planning from a civil engineers' (and a budgetary) perspective.
Oh, and you should check out Not Just Bikes video about Stroads - built on the work of Strong Towns. This video forever changed the way I look at the arterial roads, shopping streets and motorways in Sydney. ruclips.net/video/ORzNZUeUHAM/видео.html
Yall speaking straight fax. American car centric planning is really backwards and congests roads with the least efficient form of transportation.
well said
But how are you gonna improve 'trip duration' when everyone is walking? Do you mean trip distance? Make it impossible for anyone to leave their little village like the Middle Ages?
@@antiwalk username "antiwalk", lol. Good one
Build cities for people, not cars. Less roads, more walkable, safe, pedestrian friendly, active modes of transport rather than endlessly building and widening roads.
Build cities for pedestrians if you want to keep people and the level of transportation in the Middle Ages.
Great to watch this historic content right from planning textbooks of the 1960s. Town planning = traffic planning. More lanes is the solution to all our problems etc. Let's build highways through the parks to solve our problems etc etc. Possibly time to join the 21st century.... more lanes mean more cars; the Eastwood County Road reservation is crying out for cycleway/ light rail.
The traffic lights at 10:53 have now been implemented. Traffic flows more smoothly in that area now. Great video!
At 10:25 it is no coincidence that you cannot see the indicators of the white BMW. Love your video, champ. You are an unsung hero of Sydney.
You are right in that because of the lack of road connection it has meant that the suburb is much more pedestrian friendly, but I would argue that this is pretty much a 1 to 1 correlation. If they improved traffic flow, then the pedestrian viability would suffer massively, and if on the other hand they somehow closed the cross roads it would force people to get out of their cars and walk which would only serve to help pedestrian accessibility.
Building a highway would just make things markably worse, if you imagine that there are 1000 cars that cross Eastwood west to east every day, (which is wrong but it doesn't matter) you would think that a highway would be able to cater for all of them easily and it would solve traffic, however this is wrong because everyday there are 100 000 people that could cross Eastwood and another 100 000 that would change their habits, jobs etc because it would be so much easier to cross. The only reason why these people don't travel now is because they don't want to sit through an 11 hour traffic jam. This means that unless you built a highway that can cater for 201 000 cars you aren't going to change anything except to waste millions of dollars and ruin the suburb of Eastwood. The streets would likely still be just as jammed up by drivers as potentially all the residents that live there would now be able to drive.
Traffic is only ever as bad as people are willing to put up with. If you want to reduce the traffic flow through Eastwood, stop cars from being able to cross and don't give them another option (except maybe public transport). This won't cause 11 hour delays, it will mean people will just change their habits.
You're exactly right. It's induced demand, and it's a big reason why governments globally are prioritising public transport over roads. New roads make people want to drive, and we want to discourage that. I wouldn't worry, because there's no way the Eastwood County Road will ever be built.
It will cause 11 hour trips. Have any of you ever been to Eastwood or taken public transport around there? To get to anywhere from Eastwood, other than the next town, is impractical. The 545, the only bus that comes more than once a century, takes 50 minutes to travel to Parramatta (15-30 by car) and 30 minutes (10-15 by car) to travel to Macquarie Park. To Macquarie is just straight up Balaclava Road - One could probably cycle faster than the bus or even taking the train and transferring to the Metro. Except cycling is neglected here. Train frequency is 15 minutes. The express train doesn't stop here. Where can you go other than Central and along the narrow T9 corridor?
These ideas are dangerous. You lot keep going on about getting everyone out of cars and forcing them to walk everywhere. You lot want to keep people in the Middle Ages, or like what the CCP is doing. Keep everyone tied down in their towns, make movement really hard except people with a lot of time and money. Force people from all social strata together and expose vulnerable individuals such as minorities and women to crime from antisocial elements.
It's always about subtracting, preventing, restricting, controlling. Always from people of this ideology there's calls to close roads and force people onto the streets but I don't often see the same people acknowledging that additive solutions like more public transport investment and access and building cycleways are necessary.
Arguably, the more that can be done to discourage cars in Eastwood, the nicer a space it will be for people.
All they need is a multiplex carpark and extend the mall
The more people are in a space, the less nicer a space for people it will become.
This is terrific. So glad you're making these videos about our city!
After discovering your channel a few weeks ago I've been working backwards through your great videos. I now live in the UK, but was brought up in Dundas Valley, went to school and worked in Eastwood. I left in 1991. About 5 years ago I looked at Eastwood on Google Street View and couldn't believe the change in the suburb, from a middle-class predominately white neighbourhood, to a Chinese/Korean centre. Wow, what a change! One thing you didn't mention was why the two Rutledge Streets were never joined up. As you said, there has been talk of a multi-lane road for decades, but it was in the 1980's when the idea was killed off once and for all. It was due to protests regarding the destruction of bushland in the construction of a bridge over the Brush Farm creek. It's crazy to think of the traffic funnelling along Silverwater Road, onto the widened Stewart Street, and for the traffic flow to abruptly end at Marsden Road (I used to live on the corner!) I used to commute around the Brush farm dog-leg and it was a peak hour nightmare. A great video which brought back tons of memories.
I was brought up in Eastwood from1946 to 1979, lived in Ethel Street until 1965, and then Five Ways. It was a large suburb with a good school and a heap of churches. Looking at the video, little has changed, and in fact I still go there from time to time for Asian groceries. But every shop has been rebuilt - there is not a single shop in the eastern section of Rowe Street hat has not been rebuilt, gone are the produce store with its horse food and the hardware shop, the PO and the paddock where Ashton's circus set up when they visited annually. There was no Police Station and the blocks of flats were all houses. Doubtless the horse trough in West Parade at the end of Rowe Street has gone as well.
On the opposite site of the line in Rutledge Street the timber yard and St Andrews church have been gone. It was interesting to see the Masonic Temple still there, but the School of Arts is long gone.
The station used to be 2 platforms servicing 2 tracks with an overhead bridge, and then they rebuilt it in the 1950's with a relief Up line and the Up platform converted to an island configuration, and thus a subway, as it appears in this video. The Down relief followed many years later.
Finally, there ws no Marsden Park. There was a North Ryde, which partially became Marsden Park, and Marsfield, where Macquarie Iniversity was built in the 1960's.I went to Epping Boys High School in Marsfield on a 2 lane Epping Road.
Things change, but the Eastwood County road corridor has not changed in 70 years!
I went to school in Eastwood in the 1970s. The layout of roads has not changed all that much in that time, but the density has greatly increased. However the increasing density was haphazard, not planned, so big picture thinking was not part of the equation. Very interesting video, thanks.
Nothing in Sydney is ever big picture thinking. No town planning, just let developers build, build, build, high density in places with low density transit infrastructure, and when the density is bursting at the seams, the result is no room for any kind of infrastructure whichever side you're on, whether it be roads, cycleways, bus lanes, tramways, grade-seperated and what have you.
Then they apply band-aid solutions like narrowing and closing roads that are already at capacity or just surrendering completely to the pedestrians at the cost of everyone else.
Great video, thanks! I believe another reason the County Road never went ahead was the impact that construction would have on bushland at Brush Farm Park.
Exactly what I was thinking, as someone who lived in Eastwood but went to Marsden Highschool (which used to be on Winbourne Street) I would often take the walk from Brush Farm Park through Lambert Park, and I definitely would not have liked it if a highway was built straight through that walk. The noise from Brush Road was already pretty bad in the the northern parts of the walk.
As someone who until recently attended Macquarie Chapel Presbyterian Church, the proposed highway will have definitely changed the feel of the area.
Great video! Regularly visited Eastwood as a kid during the early 2000s and boy has it changed. So much more vibrant these days and way more fun to hang out. Traffic and parking always been an issue. It was never not a problem, but exacerbated these days. Hope one day Rowe Street can be pedestrianised (safe for the school too) and that the main car parking lot be torn down, replaced with a plaza with basement car parking relocated to the periphery. Rather pedestrians being prioritsed over cars. Not many people walk to Eastwood due to lack of transport from the west and east and the inconvenience behind crossing First Avenue and Rutledge Street.
Since you're digging up old highway plans. Another suburb you maybe interested is Ashfield which has an interesting history and was also earmarked for these forgotten highway and now carved up by arterial roads. Let me know, I can recommend you some information.
you're kidding right? the chinese turned it into a shithole, can't even find a sign in english these days.
'sO vIbRaNt'
Why do people of this ideology so love using this word to describe crowded places? What exactly does it entail?
Great Video. Explains what the empty land was reserved for around the area.
My recollection is that the highway through Eastwood was long planned but was scuttled in the 1970-80's by the small pocket of 'rainforest' or endangered animal habitat in Brush Farm Park which enabled the 'greenies' of the time to successfully protest against the development. Most of the green strip to the east would have been subsequently re-purposed for houses and small roads.
It was and still is a nightmare in peak hour traffic.
There's no accident: it was originally designed around walkability and plans to turn major streets into a noisy, polluted car sewers only came later. Maybe instead of considering adding turning lanes, overtaking lanes, signalised intersections, car parks etc, we should take a more holistic approach to transport and think about ways to make it easier to get around the suburb that enhance the walkability rather than work against it. This could be anything from improving bus frequency to more bus lanes, protected bike lanes, better footpaths & crossings, traffic calming or reduced speed limits to improve pedestrian safety and reduce rat-running.
Whenever I go to Eastwood on a busy day I approach from the north via misdon Rd and park on wingate St on the north side of the oval; there is plenty of perpendicular parking and the walk through the ovals to Eastwood is quite pleasant.
This is amazing!!!!!!
Grace
🎶how sweet the sound
I like the cleaner / smaller Korean side (the hill) for the Korean food but the other (predominantly Chinese with the council building, which is DEFINITELY stuck in the 70s... Even has the old Woolies logo, is crumbling) hectic side is definitely more interesting / feels foreign and rustic.
Do one for Punchbowl, Cabramatta and Cronulla!
You are wrong. Eastwood is not what it used to be. It is not stuck in the 70s, the predominantly Cantonese, 'rustic' as you describe it, character of the old days is nowhere to be seen, replaced by a similar aesthetic to that of Burwood or the CBD of predominantly recently arrived, modern mainlander Mandarin influence. Cantonese was commonly heard even in the late 2000s. Now it is practically a dead language here.
The Korean side (Rowe St) is the same as ever... A perpetual traffic jam, walking is dangerous, parking is impossible.
The "Chinese side" still has the old Woolies logo lol... And no new development anywhere. Still hanging on to the 70s, slapping on new tenants.
The other side with the police station and buses ("Koreatown"... Which is BS because Eastwood is only nearly 5% Korean background according to the census) is much nicer in comparison, though much much smaller. Cleaner and well maintained.
Parking is a nightmare on both sides let's be real. Definitely more pedestrian friendly ok the Chinese side, but it's not like the new Koreatown ever was a problem for pedestrians.
PS, live Ur show, that red rooster divide between city and suburbs, brilliant analysis. You must bring out a book!!
Parking in Eastwood is crazy during weekend....
Eastwood is a great place to walk around. We go often for the food😋
We are usually lucky to get a parking spot quickly😁
Nice video. But you forgot about the parking area at the woollies building.
I still hate driving in Eastwood and that’s where I learned to drive ten years ago.
Having been to school in Eastwood many years ago (although didn’t really discover the town outside of the oval and my old school which was amazing), and wishing to become a town planner in the future, this has been an amazing video, keep it up! Oh, and if you’re doing any videos around the Upper North Shore, give me a buzz and I’d be happy to help with some local knowledge of the nonsense congestion, and the rest of the city, the country, *and the world…*
Oh, and you got 477 now as well…
Thanks for the subscription!! Glad you liked the video, I'll keep you in mind if I ever need help :))
You need to turn on the Super Thanks button in your settings. It's sort of like Patreon, except your viewers can donate money directly to your channel.
the start of something great
It would be interesting to see how the traffic could change if they turned the ‘reserved for highway’ sections into bike and e-mobility tracks. Given there is the current issue of things like e-scooters etc. being too slow for the road but too fast for pedestrians. With such wide areas in front of houses they could easily add more bike lines for that third row of traffic and help decrease vehicle traffic even more while making things even more human friendly. Sure some sections that were are forward planned for the highway would be narrower and bikers etc. and pedestrians might still need to share in some areas but it looked like there would be enough room for a footpath at least, although I’m working from limited images here so there may be even less ideal spots. But still, could be interesting.
A rare nuanced comment in this community. Unfortunately you will be drowned out by the walker crowd because 'vibrant' walkability and inconvenience is the ultimate ideal here. Pedestrians are apparently sacred - cyclists and scooters are a menace to poor vulnerable pedestrians and will probably be regulated to death in the near future while being forced to walk 30 minutes (for a 5 minute drive/bus ride or 10 minute bike ride equivalent) will be hailed as a victory for urban planning, according to these people.
Did you know Eastwood used to have KFC, Maccas, Pizza Hut and Redrooster. KFC used to be where 億吃家 is and Maccas is next to Tonyon Supermarket.
I remember going to the McDonald’s as a young child. It was beautiful federation style. There was also a dymocks. This was in the late 80s
6:01 The ultimate Ewoo nightmare... A 6 wheeled Camry.
Sharath’s first video is not nostalgic it’s crazy he’s at 35k all ready ❤
Ikr
Eastwood is a wonderful suburb
Perhaps you could cover Lidcome in one of these video. Council is seek submissions right now for an 8m spend on trees,street furniture and art etc. I suggested creating a pedestrian plaza such as Eastwood or Lane Cove would provide the largest boost in ammenity and real community building. This would not impress the dedicated motorists who are being pandered too, with pledges of zero net parking loss. Should my proposal be condidered around 15-20 car spaces would be sacrificed.
I think the corridor could still be somewhat widened.
1. making Rutledge street 2 lanes in each direction. The road is wide enough in my opinion so lane markings just need to be redone.
2. Pinch point program can address turning issues by adding turning lanes.
3. First avenue widened to three lanes in each direction
4. Building that final connection to the A6 (which is unlikely)
I think the first 2 points would be doable in this decade.
You have nailed it with Eastwood. I agree the County Road no longer makes sense. The preferred route from Macquarie to Parramatta will be via Epping and preferably using public transport. Public transport is always best couraged by restricting parking at the destination.
Epping's Town Centre has not been activated as was the intention of the so called Planning Department. But Eastwood is no longer a heavy weekly shopping destination for adjoining suburbs (Denistone!) because parking has become and will remain difficult. West Ryde is possible, but Top Ryde has thousands of car spaces and a good selection of shops. Consequently, I would only go to Eastwood by public transport.
Eastwood is similar to Chatswood.
more lanes = less space for living. Alternative modes of tranport is need for most of Sydney's west to reduce private vehicle use.
The 1880s planned Ocean View estate at Bexley is just as good except for the aircraft noise which is particularly bad west of Seaforth Park. Heaps of Federation homes and an easy walk to Kogarah station from most of the streets with its own Winthington Pathway. Rockdale station can be accessed from Watkin Street. The area in question extends from Albyn Street at the back of the Bexley shopping strip to Warialda Street in the Muddy Creek Valley which is now a brick stormwater drain running through a park. Harrow Road takes more east-west traffic than it is designed for not unlike Rutledge Street at Eastwood. Then again there are no container trucks going through Eastwood avoiding tolls and you are not sandwiched between employment and education hubs like Parramatta and Macquarie Park.
Please review Lakemba!
Can you review Cheltenham?
I mean, I wouldn't say it was "pedestrian friendly"... The locals are as likely to be driving on the footpath as the road.
👌🤣 je...zuss
Great food but parking is a absolute nightmare on a Saturday
Thanks for the video. I would be interested to hear your rating out of 5 for bicycle accessibility.
2 out of 5.
On the one hand, traffic density is always very high. There is always intense competition for parking spaces which encourages unsafe driving. Cyclists are very uncommon and drivers will not be used to giving way for bikes (they may not give way for pedestrians either) so you may get hostile responses if you ride as if you are driving a legitimate road vehicle - you certainly won't be regarded as one.
On the other hand, the pedestrian crowd density is so high in all of the urban areas that you might as well walk not to mention it is illegal to ride on the footpaths in NSW. The footpath in Rowe St is narrow with people getting out of parked cars on one side and people waiting outside of shops on the other.
In the 60s it was planned as a hing kong ghetto, and it became that, once was a thriving neighbourhood, is reduced to being a squalid just je. Bathrooms in Eastwood centre, with signs explaining how to use toilet, with instructions to raise the seat. The old target store is like a junk yard shops, switch chipboard between retailers, the other back retail area that had mark fits is the open retail with butcher and fruit shops. The stink if decay us effusive. It's a ghetto in mind soul and practice.
Wow that's racist
Live there, work there...Get out of your Im so offended....Keyboard warrior stuff. These are ghettos, the people do not communicate.
There are traffic lights on rowe st now
Was driving through Eastwood today. Had to wait about 5 minutes at the Rowe St pedestrian crossing. Definitely not a car friendly area.
8:06 This is just how houses used to be built. Nothing to do with the highway. Back in the day, blocks of land were a decent size. My house in Epping is like this in a quiet street, nowhere near a proposed highway.
Hehe, there we have it. Eastwood is such a northwest debacle. It's not even Pymble.
I just don't understand your last sentence. Eastwood has always been a shopping centre that draws people from a wide area. For a short time, there was even a Mark Foys there - entirely the wrong place for that. It was in the blond brick building on the western side of the line near the oval.
Pymble is most certainly not a shopping centre, never has been and never will be. We go there from time to time as it has an excellent greengrocer. The grocery itself is tiny and is no more than a place you drop into to buy a carton of milk on your way home. The shopping centre at West Pymble is a good example of what such a centre should be - an IGA, greengrocer, butcher, newsagent, a couple of places to have coffee, a few other shops.
Every year Toyota Camry Enthusiasts make the pilgrimage to Eastwood for the national terrible driving convention
🤣👌 camrecca
@@nolesy34 I face it every hour
@@gdawwg1125 oh the agony
You probably have to look at plush toys and bouncy head things
Clearly you haven't been since 2009. The terrible drivers have all moved on to Mercedes and BMW SUVs.
People of Easewoo . . . .
Hello in 2023 👋
Chinese drivers, confusing roads and lots of pedestrians. That’s the holy trinity of car crash black spots
👌🤣
Ewoo!
Is that the newest missa booshi
This I would say Eastwood was a lovely shopping Centre. But it’s changed. Don’t get me wrong I’m not racist I do like people of other races.
You say you're not racist you like people of other races... So I take it you mean that you like people of races other than the ones you find in Eastwood. Why else would you feel the need to mention race in your comment about the shopping centre? There's no beating around the bush.
"I am not racist But...." is always a giveaway@@antiwalk
It's not Asian, it's Chinese, they don't integrate, Indians and Koreans do, that's the problem. It's so xenophobic.
Eastwood was a beautiful shopping Centre once. You wouldn’t go there now. It’s awful.
I went there on a Saturday, thousands of people disagree with you. It was bustling with markets and with pop-up street food stalls . Even the presence of beggars is a sign of high foot traffic.
I wouldn’t ever go there again. The shops were lovely then. To me it’s a dump of a place. We live on the northside of the Harbour. Wouldn’t live down at Allawah again. It’s awful.