Sydney Airport’s traffic hell is man-made incompetence we’re all paying for
SYDNEY Airport is branded the most gridlocked airport in the world because of greedy corporate managers who have fleeced us blind for years, writes Miranda Devine.
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TRAFFIC gridlock around Sydney airport is a joke.
How many missed flights, how many billions of dollars in lost productivity, how much psychological stress, has this man-made incompetence caused?
Between 6.30am and 9am, seven days a week, traffic gridlock is adding 40 minutes to every airport trip. Hong Kong, Heathrow and New York’s JFK are dreams by comparison.
One veteran limo driver says he used to be able to manage three airport trips in a morning. Now he only has time for one.
A police car is now permanently stationed at the Marsh Street exit from the M5, where traffic is backed back up into the tunnel for several kilometres at peak times. Motorcycle cops are stationed at nearby intersections. They’re not there to help ease congestion, but to slap fines on drivers desperate not to miss their planes plane.
Don’t listen to the airport’s slick traffic managers try to tell you the reason you’re stuck in traffic for an extra 40 minutes is the temporary pain of infrastructure construction that will make future commutes a breeze. This gridlock predates those roadworks and will outlast them.
Don’t believe airport spin artists when they try to blame increased aircraft movements — the numbers don’t explain the exponential growth in airport traffic jams.
Any professional driver will tell you the truth. Sydney Airport is regularly branded the most gridlocked airport in the world because of greedy corporate managers who have fleeced us blind since the Howard government’s botched privatisation of 2002.
Last year, Sydney Airport made $100 million profit on car parking fees, a staggering 73 cents of profit on every dollar of revenue.
Macquarie Bank bought the 99-year lease on the airport in 2002, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and dividends before they offloaded the monopoly to shareholders in late 2013, having bled it dry.
The multistorey carpark at the international terminal they built in 2012, just turbocharged traffic gridlock, along with a Rydges hotel. More passengers now drive themselves and park because it’s convenient. Yet fees are so exorbitant, at $18.50 for 30 minutes, that people picking up passengers circle the terminal multiple times to avoid paying.
Control freakery by airport management has only added to congestion, with short term fixes that infuriate drivers.
In an attempt to speed up drop offs, for instance, the airport has removed signs designating where each airline counter is located in the terminal. But all that does is create confusion, with no one knowing where to stop and drivers overshooting the terminal and having to loop back around.
Then there are the traffic cones the airport has laid down the middle of the approach road to the international terminal to stop vehicles crossing lanes in any kind of organic, efficient way. Instead, one side is now designated for traffic coming from suburbs in the north and east, with the other side for traffic from the south and west.
This forces one lane to drop off at one end of the terminal and the other to drop off at the far end, whether you like it or not. Blocking the kerb every 20 metres is some hapless traffic controller in a fluorescent orange vest whose role is to frantically move drivers on and make it as difficult as possible to disgorge passengers. It’s a zoo.
One limousine driver describes the orange controllers as a “traffic hazard... You’re trying to get to the space behind them, and they don’t want you to stop. They want you to go to the other end of the terminal and circle the terminal again”.
Congestion is at least doubled by drivers forced to loop the terminal.
When gridlock gets too bad at the international terminal, the airport initiates a special overflow lane, so that if you are driving from the south or west you will be diverted downstairs to drop off your passengers outside the arrival hall where they face a 15-minute trek with luggage to the check-in counter. Good luck if they’re disabled. Most people head to the car park instead. Kaching.
The airport also has instituted express pickup points where you can wait 10 minutes for free. This is where Uber drivers hang out. Every 10 minutes, to avoid paying the toll, they loop the terminal. In peak times, an estimated 80-100 Uber drivers are circling the airport waiting for a pickup, adding to congestion.
It is utter madness. One solution would be to offer free parking a short distance away and free shuttle buses to the terminals.
Rod Sims, chairman of the ACCC, has been complaining for years about the airport’s monopoly.
“They’ve got market power and there’s not much we can do about it,” he said when he released his latest report in March.
The fact is that Sydney Airport does not care about the pain it inflicts on travellers because it knows they have no choice.
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