THE collapse of Sydney’s traffic system during the visit of two large cruise liners has cast doubt on the city’s level of preparedness for the APEC summit or for a major disaster.

The NSW Government, facing an election on March 24, apologised yesterday for the major delays and traffic chaos that locked down Sydney for much of Tuesday after tens of thousands of people turned out to view theQueen Mary 2, and her sister ship, Queen Elizabeth 2.

The massive public response to the maritime spectacle took the Government, traffic authorities, police and even the city’s ferry services by surprise.

Major traffic disruptions are expected today when police launch a security operation to protect US Vice-President Dick Cheney, who will arrive in Sydney for a three-day visit.

John Graham, chairman of medicine at Sydney Hospital, said Tuesday’s events illustrated why the NSW Government’s plan to move victims to hospitals outside the CBD in the event of a disaster or terror attack would not work.

“What it showed me is that the Government, with full warning that two simple Cunard liners were going to be inthe harbour on one day, still could not manage to avoid the total inevitability of gridlock on the streets of theSydney CBD,” Dr Graham said.

“In the event of a major emergency, whether it’s terrorist- driven or a natural disaster like an earthquake or fire, you are not going to have any advance warning, so the plans are likely to work even less well.

“The ability for the NSW health service to run the medical evacuation of people, keeping them alive until they can be triaged and moved to the major other hospitals that surround our city, is going to fail.”

Dr Graham has been campaigning to have facilities at Sydney Hospital, the only major medical facility in theCBD, upgraded to cope with a natural disaster.

He said the fact that the Government had declared a special public holiday on Friday, September 7 — the day US President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other dignitaries arrive in Sydney for APEC — showed it was not confident of its own disaster plans.

But a spokesman for NSW Health Minister John Hatzistergos said plans for a major emergency or terror attack were based on “a strong network of trauma centres located in Sydney and Newcastle” and had worked in thecase of bushfires and rail disasters.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma said the arrival of the ships had been a spectacular event but “clearly theGovernment underestimated the massive response”.

Roads Minister Eric Roozendaal reprimanded senior Roads and Traffic Authority officials over the debacle.

An RTA spokesman said: “We planned for a small event and got faced with a very large one.”

Opposition Leader Peter Debnam said the situation had been a disaster and questioned why the Government had failed to put in place the proper crowd management measures.

“I was simply appalled yesterday with the way the Government mismanaged that,” Mr Debnam said. “You only have to go back through the records to see how many large ships have come in (to Sydney Harbour) and theproblems they have caused.”

Watch video of the cruise liners’ visit at www.theaustralian.com.au

THE PERFECT STORM

Interest in the cruise liners Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth 2 left Sydney’s CBD gridlocked

1. 8pm: The top gates to the Botanic Gardens are shut at the routine closing time, confusing hundreds of people who want to move to the other side of Mrs Macquarie’s Point without going down to the bottom of thegardens, where people are being allowed to exit but not enter. After consultation with police, all gates reopen at 9.30pm

2. 8.45pm: A four-car pile-up on the Sydney Harbour Bridge slows traffic, compounding gridlock in the CBD,the inner-east and Darling Harbour

3. 10.35pm: The Cross City Tunnel – connecting the inner-east with the inner-west under the CBD closes for cleaning

4. 11.45pm: The last ferry to Manly departs early after reaching passenger capacity, leaving people stranded at Circular Quay