NSW premier Kristina Keneally’s new transport plan to do nothing in her political lifetime about Sydney transport shows she knew not to step on the minefield of policy obligations left by past disastrous policy decisions.
When she killed off the metro plans yesterday she also assiduously avoided any commitment to finish the Chatswood-Parramatta heavy-rail underground line, which was only completed as far as Epping.
This sidesteps the risk of litigation by the private public partnership interests in Sydney’s motorway projects, and specifically the M2 motorway, who were sold guarantees of non-competition by rail projects by the Unsworth and Greiner administrations.
The dead hand of feasibility studies, such as those that vastly misrepresented the probable success of the Airport Railway and the Cross City Tunnel, two of the worst failures of that financing model in Australian infrastructure history, lies heavy over the Keneally “plan”.
Those failures have poisoned the investment environment for the roughly $150 billion worth of projects (including a new Sydney basin airport and expanded port facilities) that are prerequisites to saving Sydney from relegation by strangulation to a minor role as an Australian centre for commerce and industry within 2-3 decades.
NSW is incapable of raising the money to fund a fraction of them. Terminal gridlock for all transport modes is drawing ever closer.
The Keneally deferrals (mercilessly summarised here) “commit” to $11.2 billion in heavy-rail expansions, including a forgotten century-old tunnel, $500 million in light rail or tram extensions, $2.9 billion in new buses, and about $22.4 billion in rubbery plans for more roads.
Two fixed-term elections from now, in 2015, Keneally promises to start work on a five-kilometre tunnel from Eveleigh near Redfern to Wynyard that would include two new underground platforms at Redfern, Central, Town Hall and Wynyard stations.
But almost lost in the mists of time, the foundations of the extra platforms, at Redfern, and the ghost platforms 26 and 27 at Central, and a tunnel the public never sees, which actually runs from Eveleigh to Central, have all been built.
The mystery tunnel is still used to shunt empty country trains back from Central to the Eveleigh cleaning yards.
Back then, before the opening of the first city underground stations in 1926 and the Harbour Bridge in 1932, Sydney had mature visions of an extensive metropolitan rail system. They influenced the design of the Redfern and Central stations and saw tunnelling work begin not just at Eveleigh, but under Sydney University, and at North Sydney for the Mona Vale railway, which would have run along the original tram tracks on the eastern side of the coathanger and down into the tram platforms at Wynyard, now used as a hotel car park.
The significance of the “unglamorous’ Eveleigh-Wynyard project was lost on the media. If ever completed, it would compel much needed improvements in the death trap peak-hour crowding conditions that make Town Hall and Wynyard so unpleasant today. Reconfiguring those stations is desperately needed.
And while the Keneally abdication avoids the obvious need to provide a second harbour rail crossing, in competition with the sacred interests of the private investment in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and M5 East tollway, the so called “western express” tunnel to Wynyard would do something successive NSW state government have yearned to do.
It would completely destroy “the block” and the focus its legacy has given Aboriginal disadvantaged and associated crime in Redfern and South Sydney in general.
Redfern would be transformed by modern rail services into a much more efficient hub for many commuters than Central. The station sits in the middle of an area that is a logical zone for the southwards expansion of the CBD, and is well placed for a tram connection to Darling Harbour as well as the western side of the CBD right up to the Hungry Mile, er, Banging roo, development.
I am 28 and have lived in Sydney all my life. I don’t drive, so rely on public transport every day.
I have witnessed plans for the MetroWest, Action for Tranport 2010, Long-term Strategic Plan for Rail for Sydney, Metropolitan Rail Expansion Programme, Integrated ticketing plans, Double-decker Harbour Bridge plans, 2nd Harbour tunnel plans, talk of extending the Eastern Suburbs Line, Various metro plans, 2031 Sydney transport blueprint and now Keneally’s ‘Connecting the City of Cities’ plan.
Simply put, i do not believe anything that comes out of Macquarie Street regarding transport policy since the early 2000’s. In fact when i do hear something announced i pretty much assume that it is -NEVER- going to be built.
This plan has hit new heights of ridiculousness though.
2 terms to build a tunnel that is already there?
Twice as much money spent on roads than rail?
45 times as much money spend on roads than metros?
It truly beggars belief.
Thanks Ben. I thought I must be missing something. It seems to me that the only thing Sydney residents get in the next few years is 1000 new government buses. Even then, I couldn’t determine how many will be added to the size of the fleet and how many will replace existing worn out buses.
There is no silver bullet for the transport issue; it will be expensive – transport always is. I think that is why the NSW Opposition is so reluctant to make any transport commitments. The structure of the NSW Budget will be the same for them as it is now. I recall reading that the original Sydney train system cost something like five times the total NSW government budget at the time but back then, the State Government rather than the Feds collected the income tax take from NSW residents.
Who ever is in power, it’s clear the Federal Government will need to fund a significant portion of big transport projects or they just won’t happen.
Ben’s customary credibility on aviation matters extends to most of this: but there seems to me to be one howler and at least one major question mark.
The howler first: The existing Eveleigh – Central tunnel is totally irrelevant to getting trains from the West through the area free of interference from other traffic – except that getting under it means the announced North Eveleigh tunnel needs to dive deeper to get under it than would otherwise be necessary. This tunnel – called the engine dive because it was installed to get steam engines between the former Eveleigh shed and the country platforms – does very little more than provide a single track underpass from one side of the tracks to the other at either end of Redfern Station (you can see the exhaust vents for it along some of platform 1 at Redfern and then between the tracks at the southern end). It’s still useful for Countrylink as Ben says but not part of the bigger picture at all except as a site constraint. So, the new tunnel – which was recommended by Ron Christie years ago – will be genuinely new and useful even though, of course, it ought to end in a new Harbour crossing instead of terminating at Wynyard.
Now the question mark: given that the western express tunnel will of necessity go underground not far north from Macdonaldtown, what evidence is there for the claim that the western express tunnel, which will be well underground before it gets to Redfern from the southern side, will involve demolishing the Block – which is of course north from Redfern station? Does not sound a helpful claim in terms of getting the project built.
David,
I was referring to the impact on ‘the block’ that the economic activity driven by Redfern as a much more efficient rail interchange would have with the linking and completion of an extra two underground platforms. Successful railways help drive economic change on a significant scale. I don’t think the effect this will have on the ‘hood will be a negative in the bigger picture, and I want nothing less Indigenous Australians to share in a Sydney that drags itself out of the many pits into which various parts of it have fallen. But there won’t be a ‘block’ when Redfern starts to resemble the mid city, and especially not if it adds another one to two million people by mid century. It’s a city I love. Central 26 and 27 in the ‘under mezzanine’ level of the eastern suburbs line under Chalmers Street were in one of JJ Bradfield’s original plans going to serve the Southern Suburbs Railway, which was to exit onto the surface and head down the line of Gibbons and Wyndham Streets through what are now two partially built platforms at Redfern.
Thanks Ben , agree with all that.