Druitt Street re-opened

The inbound bus lane on Druitt St has been re-opened (Druitt St is above the 'Cross City Tunnel')

Druitt St has 3 lanes. Two lanes are outbound (ie, out of the city), one of these is a bus lane, the other is for general traffic. The 3rd (inbound) lane is for buses only. During the evening peak hour, hundreds of people cross Druitt St on their way to the Town Hall train station. While there is lots of traffic leaving the city, there are not many buses entering the city on the bus lane. Some people forgot to look both ways.

Permanent fences have been installed on either side of the bus lane and there is a speed limit of 30kph.

Below, is an article from the Sydney Morning Herald from last year describing why it was closed.

Danger zone dispute on road to nowhere fast
Linton Besser Transport Reporter
November 13, 2007

IT TOOK 13 accidents involving pedestrians and buses for the city council and three government agencies to sit down and discuss ways to improve safety in one of the city's worst danger zones.

But after arguing for two years they still didn't reach a permanent truce, underlining the difficulties of getting road conditions changed in Sydney's CBD.

So instead, the State Government has decided to take unilateral action.

Eastbound buses, since August, have travelled up Bathurst Street into the CBD, after the Druitt Street bus lane was closed adding as much as 15 minutes to journeys for inner-west commuters.

But buses will return to the $1 million bus lane on the western distributor before the end of the year in a trial of an alternative route - instead of continuing up Druitt Street, the vehicles will turn right on Sussex, and then left again up Bathurst.

Until now, the City of Sydney Council, the Roads and Traffic Authority, the Ministry of Transport and State Transit have long argued over how to protect pedestrians from buses along the busy artery.

The first accident was only weeks after the Cross City Tunnel opened in 2005, when Druitt Street was reconfigured as a two-way artery for buses.

Plastic barricades were erected after the accident to stop pedestrians, unaware that the steep thoroughfare was no longer one way, from stepping out.

But hordes of city workers continued to overwhelm narrow footpaths and spill onto the road or - too frustrated to wait for traffic lights to change - took their chances with the Druitt Street traffic.

The accidents continued: a woman was killed on June 19 crossing at Clarence Street where it meets Druitt, and in July another woman was rushed to intensive care after she was hit by a bus crossing Druitt Street at the corner of Sussex Street.

Two days later, under pressure from the Rail Tram and Bus Union, State Transit said it was suspending eastbound Druitt Street bus services indefinitely. On August 23 the bus lane was closed, bringing to an end the horror run.

As a permanent solution, State Transit has argued for a high fence to be built along a median-strip down the centre of Druitt Street, preventing jaywalking.

But the chairman of the city council's traffic committee, Councillor John McInerney, said the transit authority's proposed fences would not work because "it transfers the problem to the end of the fence, and ... traffic speeds up where the fence is".

He also criticised the RTA for ignoring the needs of pedestrians, adding the council wished to take control of the city's traffic lights.

"We think they do a very bad job and give overly long times for cars going through the city," he said.

The RTA is loath to give pedestrians greater priority at the lights, arguing changes to the lights' rotation could have a ripple effect throughout the CBD.

"Traffic light phasing on Druitt Street during peak periods has been set, as in all areas of the CBD, to balance the need for adequate pedestrian walking times with the need to keep buses and other traffic flowing," said Adam Berry, a spokesman for the Roads and Transport Authority.

Russell Mahoney, a spokesman for Transport Minister, John Watkins, said the government agencies involved would "continue to consider engineering solutions to the problem".