PWDA submission to the NSW Department of Transport on the nine Strategic Regional Integrated Transport (SIRT) Plans
28 February 2025
PWDA welcomed the opportunity to provide comment to the NSW Department of Transport on the nine Strategic Regional Integrated Transport Plans.
PWDA are part of national working groups to reform the disability transport standards, on the NSW Accessible Transport Advisory Council and work to co-design disability standards in Aviation.
PWDA want more people in NSW to have accessible public transport that enables them to participate in daily life.
A range of things are needed to make public transport more accessible.
- Wheelchairs and mobility assistance devices require step-free infrastructure and vehicles that enable their access.
- People with communication, sensory or psychosocial disabilities need information about public transport, wayfinding, booking, and the travel process to be accessible using braille, hearing loops, Easy Read and formats that allow assistive communication technologies to be used.
- Guide dog and assistance animal handlers need to have their right to access public transportation with their animal respected.
For people in rural and regional NSW there may be little-to-no useable public transport that enables them to get where they need to go.
People needing a wheelchair accessible taxi struggle with poor levels of availability and reliability in some communities, or complete non-availability in others.
Requiring public transport standards reform to improve accessibility has no impact on communities that have no public transport to start with.
Recommendations
Transport Oriented Design
Wherever Transport Oriented Development (TOD) Precincts are planned to align with key transport hubs such as the development around Morriset station, PWDA recommends that all homes are built to the Silver Livable Design Standard, in line with the Building Better Homes Campaign
Affordability settings
We also call on the NSW Government to set affordability standards to meet the needs of people who live on social security payments.
The Draft Hunter Strategic Regional Integrated Transport Plan
The Draft Hunter Strategic Regional Integrated Transport Plan failed to address a number of areas.
There are opportunities to improve public transport infrastructure by:
- Upgrading rail routes previously used for coal and freight to be used for passengers.
- Converting disused rail corridors into rail-trails. This enables more people who use mobility assistance devices to move safely and access more of the country, whilst also preserving these corridors as public assets for future use.
- Providing staffing at train stations to make travel safer, especially at night.
- Upgrading pedestrian crossings to ensure signalization, better lighting and intersection timing.
- Providing wheelchair accessible transport services to enable access to cycle tourism areas such as rail-trails.
- Upgrading stations in land release areas and increasing service frequency along the Hunter Rail Line, aligned with land releases.
- Ensuring all road developments include fully accessible active transport.
- Extending ferry services to more communities as this is usually a more accessible form of travel than a bus.
- Continuing to improve train services to deliver day return trips between Tamworth and Newcastle, and to plan services around key health, education and business precincts.
- Improving public transport services to better connect the Hunter with Newcastle Airport, particularly from Newcastle, Port Stephens, Forster and Taree
- Many important locations like John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle University, Charlestown, and Kotara are hard to reach from nearby communities. Also, trips to local schools, shops, and health services are not supported.
- Mapping the areas a wheelchair user can reach on the network and plan how to fix the journeys that are currently are impossible
- Implementing timetabling, booking and wayfinding in accessible formats
The rest of NSW faces similar issues to those explicitly outlined for the Draft Hunter Strategic Regional Integrated Transport Plan.
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