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Optus-ville: The Changing Face of North Ryde

About two years ago, Optus made an announcement to let the world know that they’re relocating 6500 employees to “a new, state-of-the-art, campus-style headquarters in North Ryde”. This relocation was scheduled to take place from July 2007.

Over the past two years, I’ve seen their new headquarters evolve from just a huge patch of dirt into the campus that exists today. I haven’t been inside the campus to have a look, but it’s meant to be pretty impressive — ponds, water features, gardens, restaurants, etc. It has even been described as a small city in itself.

And so, as of about two months ago, the new inhabitants of this North Ryde’s mini-metropolis started rocking up. Having an extra 6500 neighbours turn up in the space of 2-3 months changes things somewhat… and not all of it is good. The following is what I’ve noticed to have significantly changed over the last three months or so.

More people, More traffic
Now, it’s probably not entirely their fault. I think the farcical narrowing of Epping Road associated with the Lane Cove Tunnel would itself cause motorists some/much grief. However, with an extra 6500 people to share the already somewhat-congested peak-hour Epping Road with, the average trip time for me has gone up by about five minutes to about 30 minutes from home to work.

For those of you who drive down Epping Road in the mornings, you’ll probably understand what I’m talking about.

Previously, once I get onto Epping Road, it would all be pretty smooth all the way to work. I’d swing a left at Wicks Road, then onto Waterloo, and I’ll be at work.

This is now no longer the case.

A lot of people now jump onto the transit lane right after the Epping Boys school zone (where the cops like to camp). Maybe this is because the middle and right lanes are now jammed up from the Balaclava Road lights all the way to the Shell petrol station. Wicks Road is also regularly jammed all the way from the Lane Cove / Waterloo lights all the way to the Wicks / Epping lights.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the light timings have changed as well — to Epping Road’s disfavour…

Macquarie Centre Shuttle Bus
As an incentive to get more people to shop at Macquarie Centre, they run a shuttle bus service around the North Ryde area. Now, a bunch of us from work usually catch the shuttle bus to Macq Centre on Thursday lunch. Before the Optus folk came along, we’d normally be greeted with an empty bus. However, once they moved in, a good number of seats are already taken by the time we jump on. There were even times when not everyone could get onto the bus.

Thankfully, they upgraded the shuttle bus to a bus-sized bus (as opposed to the previous minivan-sized 15-seater ones).

Of course, the question that remains is: Why are they catching the bus in the first place? It’s a 500m walk that takes about 10 minutes max.

Macquarie Centre Food Court
On your typical Thursday lunch time, we normally have to battle the masses of uni students, as well as other workers, for a table in the food court. Despite the Optus guys having a whole bunch of eateries on-campus, they still seem to favour the Macq Centre food court.

Maybe it’s the convenience of being able to do a spot of shopping whilst grabbing lunch at the same time. Either way, that means even less tables for us…

Parking
Perhaps it’s something to do with Optus’ environmental stance, but there’s apparently not much parking within their new campus. Instead, the company has hired buses that offer employees free transport from a number of railway stations (Epping, Chatswood, Wynyard, I think).

Now, I’m pretty sure there’s a good number of those 6500 employees that would like to avoid Sydney’s pitiful public transport system, and drive to work. Unfortunately for them, there’s not enough spaces on-campus. I guess that means they’ll need to park around the area.

Furthermore, I’m fairly certain that the North Ryde council knew about this well in advance — which is why they installed parking meters all over the surrounding areas just a few months ago. [As an aside, I challenge anyone to prove to me how this is not another money-grabbing exercise that the local council justifies as "traffic improvement"].

What does this mean? For those who don’t want to fork out $2.20/hr, they’ll most likely end up parking at Macquarie Centre — where they can park all day…

For free…

Along with all of the other uni students who don’t want to fork out over $100 for a parking permit.

Thankfully, things are not as bad as it sounds… for the moment. It’s still relatively easy to find parking at Macquarie, provided you don’t go there during lunch hour…