Transporting Constance
Andrew McPherson of Kalaru had an interesting letter printed in the Sydney Morning Herald recently pointing out that if Andrew Constance, the State Minister for Transport, was to catch the “last train (or any train!) home”, it would take him at least 2½ hours to travel from Sydney Central to Bomaderry, then have a wait, then be faced with a tiresome 6 hour 40 minute bus journey to Bega.
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In this day and age this is ludicrous and should be totally unacceptable.
It’s time our Minister for Transport looked to introduce modern public transport options to and from our area.
His government is spending $45million upgrading the Princes Hwy at Dignams Creek, which will provide perhaps a two-minute saving in road travel time between Sydney and Bega. Imagine how many subsidised return flights from Merimbula or Moruya to Sydney that money could provide – rewarding local users of public transport with at least an 8-hour time saving each way!
If Easyjet can sell, commercially unsubsidised, $74 1h15m flights from London to Paris (which is the same distance as from Bega to Sydney) why can’t our state government and the airlines servicing the area agree on some formula, including a generous government subsidy, that will provide a basic good, modern, fast public transport service to and from the South Coast?
My suggestion is they should seriously explore what needs to be done so that travellers need pay less than $30 one-way from Merimbula or Moruya to Sydney.
Just because we live 350km from Sydney doesn’t mean we should be denied a good, basic, modern public transport option to and from the area.
Peter Lacey, Quaama
Crunching the numbers
A lot of the discussion about the proposed Frogs Hollow flying school comes from confusion about its size. To every business there’s a critical limiting factor, and with the flying school it seems to be how many planes can use the runway at the same time.
With basic flying training, most of your time is spent “in the circuit”, basically going around and around learning to land. The training syllabus doesn't really show this, but add in that every 1-hour lesson also has a take off and landing, you see how it could start to get crowded.
There is no legal maximum but it must always remain safe. Airports with control towers close the circuit at about five aircraft and this is with radar supervision. So with no tower supervision, and student pilots, we could assume three is a good maximum. So three in the circuit and two doing training manoeuvres, five in total.
Assume eight hours of flying per day and assume they can do instant changeovers, and we get 40 flying hours per day.
The legal requirement for an RPC is 20 hours, plus seven hours for “essential” endorsements (carrying passengers etc), but this is a minumum, not normal. We could easily use 40 hours to train a pilot.
So one a day, on a good day.
Using the Bantam as a trainer limits you to about half the year. I fly a Bantam, great planes but they don't like wind. Or rain. So let’s give them 200 students a year.
Its important to note that even with this much lower figure, this still has a take off every two minutes every day it’s operating. Which will wear out a grass runway very quickly (this may be the limiting factor beyond airspace).
This is just one of many glaring problems and “not-facts” with the SAA business plan.
With small operations, developments can be be permitted even though they're doomed to failure, but in major cases, part of the requirements for planning is to consider whether we, the community, will be losing a local asset only to have it left as a half developed mess.
If the proposal is approved, I hope it is with practical conditions that show the whole plan to be half baked and not viable.
