Gridlock choking Olympic city Sydney

SYDNEY, July 20 (Reuters) As the 2000 Olympic city, Sydney gained international praise for its efficient transport.

Six years later, it's a different story.

The rapidly growing city is being choked to death with cars, public transport is suffering after years of underinvestment and a new tollroad network, rather than easing the congestion, is adding to the traffic chaos because of poor planning.

Each night, traffic reporters flying above Sydney in helicopters warn office workers of gridlock, with television footage showing clogged freeways.

''This city is the most gridlocked in the nation and the most gridlocked it has been in many years,'' Christopher Brown, head of the Tourism and Transport Forum, told Reuters.

During the Olympics, visitors were impressed by the new underground rail line from the airport to the city centre and a dedicated rail line and river taxi service to the Games site.

But in reality, only a small portion of Sydneysiders use public transport.

The sprawling city of about 4.2 million is a car town, with private transport accounting for 70 per cent of trips, compared with public transport accounting for only 10 per cent of commuter journeys.

A motorist who travels 22 km a day in Sydney will spend three days stuck in traffic each year, says one report on Sydney's transport crisis.

The city's morning and evening ''peak hour'' now stretches from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. until 7 p.m., says The Australian Traffic Network, which monitors Sydney's traffic flows.

The network's Justin Kelly says an accident on any of Sydney's major freeways can cause chaos, with a morning car accident on the Sydney Harbour Bridge causing city-wide snarls as motorists try to escape the congestion.

And the transport crisis will only get worse with Sydney's population expected to increase by an average of 42,000 people every year until 2020. Road traffic volumes are forecast to rise by 29 per cent in Sydney between 2005 and 2020.

A recent transport report by the independent Centre for International Economics (CIE) titled ''A City Going Nowhere Fast'' concluded Sydney's transport system was no longer working.

It said that Sydney's reliance on the car cost 14 billion dollars in 2005 if you calculated the cost of traffic congestion, accidents, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The report warned that if nothing was done the cost would rise to A billion in 2020 as more motorists take to the roads for longer periods due to congestion.

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