Why does installing laravel not work?

I'm trying to install laravel. I'm following the instructions which currently state:

Via Laravel Installer

First, download the Laravel installer PHAR archive. For convenience, rename the file to laravel and move it to /usr/local/bin. Once installed, the simple laravel new command will create a fresh Laravel installation in the directory you specify. For instance, laravel new blog would create a directory named blog containing a fresh Laravel installation with all dependencies installed. This method of installation is much faster than installing via Composer.

So I:

1. cd ~/bin
2. wget http://laravel.com/laravel.phar
3. mv laravel.phar laravel
4. chmod u+x laravel

However when I go to webapps/myapplication directory and issue laravel new test nothing happens. The bash command prompt just comes back and there are no changes to the directory.

At the moment I have the following in my .bashrc

alias php='php55'

Why doesn't this work? And how can I get it to work?

UPDATE

Found my answer but would still like to understand the WHY