FAQs

It’s our 10-year guide to planning and investment in future transport infrastructure and services within the Wollongong LGA. It outlines our vision, guiding principles, and goals to improve the way we move around our city into the future and the actions we’ll take to achieve them. Until now, we’ve considered transport planning and delivery in a site-specific or transport-specific way through documents like the Cycling Strategy 2030, the Wollongong Pedestrian Plan and various Town Centre Masterplans. The draft strategy takes a more overarching view of the city and lays out what steps we, Transport for NSW, and our community can take to ensure sustainable, accessible, and affordable transport options are available for our growing and diverse community.

The draft strategy provides background analysis which looks at the challenges and opportunities facing the region including projected population and employment growth as well as transport trends across Wollongong. It then outlines the case for changing our approach to transport planning and the issues we’ll face if we don’t. 

Wollongong is growing and without change, the way we rely on cars for even short trips will mean our roads will become busier, travel times will be longer and environmental impacts will be worse. While cars are important, many people are not able to drive and the community has told us they want viable alternatives like walking, bike riding and public transport. Providing viable transport alternatives will reduce our reliance on cars, reduce congestion for those who rely on our road network, and bring social, environmental, and economic benefits to the region. The draft strategy looks at ways Council can improve and advocate for this change across our transport network.  

The draft strategy has the following Vision: Wollongong is a liveable and green city where everyone has viable transport choices that provide connected journeys through Country that are safe, reliable and accessible.

1. Competitive public transport – We want to make public transport a quick, easy, and attractive option for everyone.
2. Everyday needs within 15 minutes – Everyone in Wollongong should have access to services and amenities locally to improve local economies and the quality of daily life.    
3. Sustainable transport options – Travelling in a car needs more land for transportation than travelling in any other way. As communities grow, we need to support multiple transport options for people to move around by building on our existing walking, bike riding and public transport assets, for a more sustainable future. 
4. All ages and abilities can get around with ease – Transport infrastructure should be designed or upgraded to the latest standards to support everyone whatever a person’s age or ability.                
5. Increased use of active modes - Increasing bike riding and walking for work or shopping trips, not just for recreation, will reduce congestion on our roads and support the physical health and mental well-being of our communities.
6. A connection to Country and sense of place - We aim to build knowledge, acknowledge and appropriately recognise the traditional routes used through Dharawal country.    

Overall there are 56 actions in the draft strategy – the 14 Top Moves represent key steps we’re planning to take, grouped into themes:

Advocate to state government for better public transport and freight including:

1. Develop a public transport service plan that has high service standards including route coverage, frequency, travel time, journey time and reliability on priority corridors.

2. Investigate and prepare a feasibility study for high quality, high frequency transport (rapid transport technology).

3. More on-road bus priority for more competitive bus travel times.

4. Delivery of the South West Illawarra Rail Link (SWIRL) for passenger and freight to support connections to Western Sydney.

5. Assess and upgrade bridges along M1 to support oversize and overweight loads to and from the Port of Port Kembla to stop detouring.

Connect to Country and Place through:

6. Build knowledge and acknowledge the traditional routes of the Dharawal people and develop a plan of how the routes may be appropriately recognised to honour this history through signage, information and art.

Make biking and walking more attractive for all abilities by:

7. Enhanced 15-minute walking and bike riding infrastructure around town centres.

8. Pedestrian-focused town centres, including connections to train stations.

9. Develop a public domain planting guide to support walking and cycling to reduce the urban heat island effect. 

10. Creating Park Streets by retrofitting micro-parks into the road space and allowing access for active transport only.

11. Implement 30 km/h speed limits within school zones and in town centres.

12. Developing a kerbside use framework that continues and expands the use of parklets, wider footpaths and planting, while balancing parking and loading.

13. Car light tourism including an emphasis on cycle tourism taking advantage of routes with train station access and coastal highlights.

Embrace tactical urbanism experiments:

14. Road environment changes can be trialled through tactical urbanism projects that can make temporary changes and test approaches to inform future infrastructure spending and engage with community.

Fast, low-cost, temporary changes to public spaces like roads, verges or paths. These may be Council or community-led and respond to locally identified issues or to test new approaches before investing significantly, in permanent infrastructure. Examples include pop-up seating and outdoor dining within parklets. If the changes work well, they can be formalised. We currently have a parklet on trial in Wentworth Street, Port Kembla.

Council engaged a consultant team to develop the draft strategy.  

The consultant team engaged with a range of government, non-government, business and community organisations through targeted workshops, feedback sessions and meetings. The outcome of these engagement sessions helped guide the development of the strategy’s vision and guiding principles.

Council works to improve and maintain assets across our city that help people of all ages and abilities get around. This includes walking, cycling, driving and supporting access to public transport which is managed by Transport for NSW.

Working with other agencies Council is not the only authority that looks after transport in our city. We work with several other agencies who are also responsible for managing transport in our region, such as Transport for NSW, Police, and local bus companies.

The infrastructure Council can build We build and maintain local footpaths, shared paths, cycleways, and local roads. Our transport infrastructure delivery program also includes traffic facilities such as public car parks, bus stops, roundabouts, pedestrian crossings, street signs, some traffic signals, speed cushions and other road safety features. We’ve also recently added more supporting facilities, like bike parking, water stations and similar features to help more people to ride and walk.

Information and education We have several programs to help people be safer riders, drivers and walkers. Our road safety programs include education for learner drivers, cyclists, and people driving around school zones. Wollongong is also proud to be the first city in the southern hemisphere to become a UCI Bike City. This label recognises our long-term commitment to cycling, and educating people about the many benefits of riding bikes.

Council has an Infrastructure Delivery Program (IDP), which is a four-year plan for projects we'll be working on. Many different types of transport projects are included in this plan.

Our IDP is updated every year.

When making decisions about what will get included in this plan, we take a lot of things into consideration. This can include:

• Feedback from our community
• Available budgets
• Balancing projects across different parts of our city
• Priorities for safety and accessibility
• Improving connections between different types of transport
• Information like traffic volumes, speeding concerns, crash data, road conditions, and changes in housing and businesses that might affect how people use transport
• Advice from other authorities, like Police
• Advice from Council's transport-related committees and groups, including our:
  • Cycling Advisory Groups
  • The Local Traffic Committee
  • Walking, Cycling and Mobility Reference Group.

Paper copies of the draft strategy and survey are available at all libraries and from the Customer Service Centre at 41 Burelli Street, Wollongong.

At the end of the exhibition period all submissions are provided to the project team to inform the final version.

The project team may make amendments to the draft strategy based on the feedback received. The revised strategy is then presented to Council.

To take the survey you just need to provide an email address and a screen name. You don't need to be registered with our engagement website. However, if you receive the message: ! Email address in use when you put in your email address, this means our engagement website has recognised your email, as you have previously used it to register with us. The website is prompting you to sign into your account first. If you are registered with us but prefer not to sign in or have forgotten your password, you can take the survey by providing an alternative email address.