Sydney's bus network should follow the lead of cities like New York to support higher-density housing and a growing population.
Dozens of rapid bus routes similar to those in Manhattan should be rolled out across the city and surrounding areas to meet demand in growing communities and fix the broken bus network, an expert task force recommends.
Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the NSW government needed to look at best practices from around the world to improve ailing bus services.
"If other cities like Manhattan and Amsterdam can do it, so can Sydney," she said.
The recommendation for more rapid bus routes, which are already operating on Sydney's north shore and northern beaches, is among five measures put forward by the Bus Industry Taskforce in a white paper released on Wednesday.
It called on the state government to develop a priority list for 39 rapid bus routes that would run along key transport corridors.
Task force chair and former bus network chief John Lee said the problems currently facing Sydney's transport system were the same as those facing New York five years ago.
"They invested in the technology to get the bus regularity right, to actually get them moving through intersections better, therefore making the trips seamless for the passenger," he told a symposium in Parramatta.
"We should take the lessons out of New York and bring them to Sydney to allow a lot of the travelling public to get those benefits."
The task force also recommended that future, medium-density housing be added along "permanent, high quality" bus routes.
The state should provide "priority access for on-street transit when planning for population growth" in greater Sydney, as well as the lower Hunter, Newcastle, Central Coast and Illawarra-Shoalhaven regions, it said.
Mr Lee said a number of routes should be prioritised over the next decade in line with population growth in areas like the city of Blacktown, which is home to a similar number of people as Canberra.
"It's about getting lots of the residents and people who live in these big swathes of population of western Sydney to give them services so they can rapidly move to and from where they need to get to," he said.
But the opposition criticised the government for providing no extra funding for bus services or drivers as it carried out multiple transport reviews.
"This white paper cost more in graphic design services than it proves new funding for bus services in NSW," transport spokeswoman Natalie Ward said.
The release of the white paper comes ahead of the bus task force's interim report, which is due to be handed to the government by next week.
The task force's first report, delivered in August, recommended improving staff facilities and a driver-recruitment drive as initial measures to fix the state's ailing bus system.
Labor has been critical of the former coalition government for the privatisation of various routes, which have been hit by frequent cancellations and delays.
