A sustainable Sydney needs bikes and trams  

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore has an opinion piece in the SMH on the need to reduce traffic and create an integrated transport system - A sustainable Sydney needs bikes and trams.

Around the world, smart cities are remaking themselves. They are investing in sustainable public transport and creating pedestrian-friendly environments, reducing their greenhouse emissions, cleaning the air, and providing places for people to meet and congregate.

Professor Peter Newman, one of Australia's most eminent urban thinkers, said at a recent CityTalk that traffic congestion and rising petrol costs make creating more space in cities for pedestrians an economic necessity.

If the City of Sydney Council had its way, an integrated transport plan would properly mesh light and heavy rail with ferries and buses, and do much more for pedestrians and cyclists.

Improving transport, streets and the public realm is not simply about aesthetics or congeniality, nor is it driven solely by the economic costs of congestion or the health costs of respiratory diseases. Those matter, but above all, it is about creating a more sustainable future for our city, which helps our state, our nation, and, ultimately, our planet. The financial crisis has grabbed headlines from climate change, but the two are interlinked.

I would like to see part of the massive economic stimulus packages around the world directed to developing green infrastructure, laying the foundation for a restructuring of the economy to allow for a low-carbon future. Cities are critical to this shift. More than half the world's population lives and works in cities, which are the major source of greenhouse gas emissions. They are where we must make the biggest and most urgent changes.

In Sydney, we need to ease car and bus congestion by improving public transport. In the city centre in particular, we need to move workers and residents more quickly, cleanly and efficiently.