311 Bus Route Campaign

In 2011 the NSW Government want to cancel as many bus routes as possible. The number of 324 and 325 buses through Bayswater Road was reduced. Two bus routes down to Garden Island were cancelled.

Now the Government wanted to shorten the route of the 311 bus route. Instead of the 311 buses leaving Macleay Street and going down Elizabeth Bay (the “Elizabeth Bay loop”), the new plan would be to have 311 buses just go straight along Macleay Street and Darlinghurst Road.

This change would have stranded the many elderly people who lived down the hill in Elizabeth Bay from Macleay Street and who heavily depended on the buses going down there to pick them up and take them to shopping in Potts Point, to medical appointments and to Kings Cross Railway Station.

It would have also effectively stranded families with young children and prams who depended on the 311 to get them up the long hill to Potts Point and the rest of the city, and made each day more difficult for working people travelling to and from their place of work.

After a long campaign (2008-12) of petitions, public meetings and lobbying, the 2011 Residents Association finally persuaded the NSW Government to keep the 311’s “Elizabeth Bay loop” (with the exception of the Billyard Avenue section which was too narrow for the latest kind of buses to navigate).