5th UITP Asia-Pacific Assembly, Sydney

摘要

The 5th UITP Asia-Pacific Assembly was held in Sydney on 5-7 November 2003. This is a brief overview of a most useful, sometimes controversial, but interesting event which concluded with a local technical tour. 1. Ten Years of Progress. A Keynote Speech was presented by Mr John Stott, CEO of State Transit Authority of NSW, who reviewed changes over the past 10 years since UITP held its first Australian conference in Sydney. He noted that in Australia there was strong interest in competition, New Zealand had recently privatised its bus and rail networks and the UK was still bedding down its deregulation with the exception of London which was moving to contracting-out its buses. Here in Australia, we were yet to come to grips with this subject; our national competition policy agreement was still two years away. In Sydney a new generation of rolling stock (Tangara) had been introduced and the Airport rail line was on the drawing board but STA had yet to commence its switch to natural gas as an energy source for the bus fleet and had no idea of the accessible transport challenge that was about to impact on the whole of the industry.