FERRIES have long been considered the silvertail’s mode of public transport: now a report has confirmed it.

A blessing or a burden, depending on your view…passengers relax on the Mosman Bay service to Circular Quay. Photo: Peter Rae

White-collar professionals in some of Sydney’s most affluent suburbs are enjoying subsidised ferry transport, while Central Coast, western Sydney and Blue Mountains commuters crowd onto trains that crawl at their slowest speed in almost 50 years.

The report says that residents of the lower North Shore are subsidised to an estimated $80 million for inner harbour ferry travel. Meanwhile inter-urban rail passengers are now paying up to $3000 a year each in fares.

The Transport Data Centre’s latest report on ferry use in Sydney finds commuters have an average annual income of $55,100 compared with $39,200 for the average Sydney resident. The income figures are likely to provide more ammunition for proponents of ferry privatisation.

The single biggest group of ferry commuters comes from Manly, where 47 per cent travel to the city by water, followed by Hunters Hill, where 26 per cent catch the ferry, and Mosman where 23 per cent use the service.

While the report reveals that less than 1 per cent of average weekday trips are made by ferry, it also says “this mode of transport plays a unique role in supporting Sydney’s transport”.

About 10,000 trips to work in the greater metropolitan area each weekday involve ferry travel. The report says that without these ferry services about 4000 trips to downtown Sydney – originating each weekday in Manly, Warringah, Mosman and North Sydney – would probably need to move to road transport across the Harbour Bridge.

Ferry advocates leapt on this finding to defend the service.

“Many of these ferries service areas that may be pleasant but are also hard to reach by other methods,” Jim Donovan, a spokesman for Action for Public Transport, told the Herald.

“The alternative is to push everyone onto buses, especially on the lower North Shore, and have them travel on the road network, which is already choked. The additional buses would then have to find somewhere to stop in the city, which is extremely crowded.”

Mr Donovan said that while the residents of the lower North Shore may be affluent, ferry commuters who took Parramatta River services from Rydalmere and Meadowbank were not necessarily wealthy.

He also said that with the Government trying to encourage residential and business development near Homebush Bay and the Olympic precinct, it made sense to improve Parramatta River services.

Graham Taylor, a public transport advocate who commutes from Neutral Bay to Rhodes, said ferry fares were too expensive for people on lower incomes.

He said that in the years when Sydney Ferries had not sought fare rises patronage had increased.

Andrew West is the Herald’s Transport Reporter

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald