Walking in Sydney is quite stressful and definitely not as easy or pleasant as in Tokyo. Motorized traffic in Sydney is visibly more accommodated for than pedestrian traffic in most situations, which is the reverse of Tokyo where pedestrians, being the most vulnerable, are given the highest priority. There are a lot of figurative but also quite literal obstacles awaiting pedestrians in Sydney. Below is a list of some of them along with ideas for improvement.
Infrastructural ones:
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Narrow sidewalks.
Especially outside of the strict city center they're often unkempt, not only with vegetation spilling out from the adjacent gardens and green areas, but, to make them even narrower, with trees planted on them. Funny how the car section of the road doesn't have trees planted in it (I'm being sarcastic).
Overtaking other, slower pedestrians on such sidewalks is challenging (you have to wait for the right moment, usually at intersections with streets) so your walking speed may be reduced from the desired one. Walking hand in hand with someone is also not pleasant as it's often broken up by the sidewalk becoming to narrow or by having to let other people pass.
Fix: widening the sidewalks would not be an easy undertaking, not just due to obvious labour and material costs but because there is often no physical space to make them wider. Removing ubiquitous on-street parking provided to cars on almost all of Sydney's streets would easily solve the space issue but that might be a hard sell to car-dependent population.
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Extremely short pedestrian green light cycle at pedestrian crossings
Shortest I've ever seen anyone in the world, green light switches to blinking… RED! Not exactly sending a friendly message to pedestrians.
In Tokyo green lights for pedestrians are as long as the car cycle. Not so in Sydney - here the cars have much longer cycle and pedestrians are given much less time to cross.
On most of the crossings I take to work, the green light turns to blinking red after 5-6 seconds and you're not supposed to enter the crossing when it does. That means that if you're not at the crossing exactly at the light change, you'll have to wait (so you're almost always waiting at the lights).
Fix: why not make the pedestrian cycle as long as the car cycle? Sounds like an easy change.
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Not enough marked pedestrian crossings.
Majority are a dropped curb type without any markings, where car drivers feel they have absolute right of way.
I've inquired with NSW Road Authority about the right of way and legality of pedestrians’ crossing in such places but no response yet they gave me a non-binding and rather laconic response, simply pointing me to a few specific paragraphs of the Road Rules and referring to the Police for interpretation of those rules.
Most of the crossings I use are on roads perpendicular to the main road (I'm moving along the main road) and, if I interpret the Road Rules correctly, it seems that pedestrians crossing that perpendicular road actually have the right of way before the car turning into it however the car drivers don't think so and force their way before pedestrians or honk at them.
Fix: like the point above, properly marking the crossings (with vertical and horizontal signage) should be a relatively easy change.
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“Beg buttons” for pedestrians.
All crossings, even in the strict city center, have a push button to activate the pedestrian light.
However it has a major design flaw that there is no indication that they've been pressed. It makes everyone press it, regardless if it's been pressed before (because you can't tell), making pedestrians’ lives much harder than necessary. It is also very inefficient because everybody needs to press the bloody button. I've been in situations when nobody pressed it, even though there were some people at the crossing (because everyone assumed it's already been pressed) and the lights didn't change for pedestrians at all, only for cars. Apparently nobody cares how much more effort the necessity to push those buttons means for the disabled, the elderly, people in wheelchairs, etc, not mentioning the no-indication design.
Fix: the first step towards improvement could be adding touch indicators - doesn't sound like a massive change.
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No countdown indicator for pedestrians.
In Tokyo each (and there are many, many more than in Sydney) pedestrian light has a visual indicator (a sectioned bar or a countdown timer) of how soon the cycle will switch. In Sydney I haven't seen those at all.
Fix: again, a rather easy and obvious improvement.
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Poor public transport
People choose their cars for personal transportation needs rather than walking + public transport.
I seriously feel for all the people in Sydney who commute by car - I imagine it must be very stressful (because of honking, poor infrastructure, intensity of traffic) and you don't have a great alternative from some of the areas.
On the other hand I guess some people who'd at least give public transport a try might discover it's actually a viable alternative to cars. That ties in to the topic of that post too - if walking was made safer, more efficient and more pleasant maybe more people would switch to it instead of driving. The city might then become nicer for everyone.
Societal/cultural ones:
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Sydney drivers are aggressive.
They're honking at pedestrians on the most trivial of occasions, quite often chasing people off the crossing while the walk signal is still blinking. There is not a single day while walking to work that I don't hear someone honking, either at pedestrians or at other cars.
Sydney's drivers don't seem to understand when it's appropriate to use the horn signal - they use it more often to vent their frustration, to punish other drivers with it or to teach them “the law” rather than to issue a legitimate warning. It's clear that honking is severely overused in Sydney, increasing noise pollution and decreasing the quality of life for everyone.
Drivers also often display behaviors that would be considered unacceptable if they did them outside the confines of their car: shouting, waving hands, swearing. Very aggressive acceleration and excessive speeds within built-up areas is also the norm here.
Fix: how do you fix people? Not a short task, but probably doable through a mix of education, incentives for good behaviour and punishment for bad behaviour.
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Lack of police enforcement of traffic laws at any capacity on streets and sidewalks.
I have seen a major pedestrian ticketing campaign in CBD for a week or two, but no similar policing of car traffic.
Naturally drivers feel unsupervised and free to violate many rules. I understand that a long time ago Sydney may not have had the traffic it has now but the police and authorities need to adapt to the increase in motor traffic over time and police and control it more, they should not give a free reign to careless drivers who don't care about pedestrians.
Drivers actually should be more careful for their own sake as they may find out they may not be in the right under law in a lot of circumstances they think they are: Supreme court of Queensland case (Perfect vs MacDonald)
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Poor driving manners and sometimes even blatant law-breaking
One of the pedestrian crossings I pass is blocked by turning cars almost every day at peak hour. There is absolutely never any police to enforce the law and fine or at the very least instruct the drivers not to do so. There's a man on the wheel-chair crossing frequently using this crossing and twice I've seen him get blocked by the bumper-to-bumper cars stuck at the pedestrian crossing. The gap between the cars was wide enough for footed pedestrians to pass but too narrow for his wheelchair. He looked resigned to this reality and didn't kick up the fuss and it was painful to watch - it doesn't have to be this way.
I'm sure the list above is not even close to exhaustive as it's made from one person's limited point of view and set of experiences. A survey of pedestrians in Sydney would probably reveal many other problems and deficiencies in the city's support of foot traffic, depending on their age, location, routes and other variables.