Any delay to our city’s much-needed Metro West rail line would be a disaster

During its previous years in state government, delay became Labor-speak for never going to happen. This regrettable history makes the Herald nervous about Premier Chris Minns’ repeated refusal over recent days to guarantee the Metro West line from the CBD to Westmead will go ahead as planned.

For a month now Minns has been suggesting that some infrastructure projects could be put on ice as his new government tries to rein in spending in the face of a record state debt of $180 billion. But on Monday and Tuesday he refused to quarantine the Metro West project from delay or even cancellation in the September budget. Labor claims the line has cost overruns of $12 billion. The premier will not speculate on the fate of the project while it awaits the findings of a review into the whole Sydney Metro program by Mike Mrdak, a former senior federal bureaucrat.

Before the election Minns was admirably upfront about the future of some infrastructure projects: Labor would pause the Great Western Highway tunnel in the Blue Mountains, and the business cases for two Sydney Metro line extensions – the Metro West from Parramatta to the new airport line, and the Southwest Metro from Bankstown to Glenfield – would not proceed. But Minns had no such doubts about the Sydney Metro West line, not least because the line ran smack dab into Labor heartland, and ditching it could have inflicted major political pain in the booming western suburbs.

The government’s sudden refusal to endorse the project looks like an attempt to soften up the people of NSW for possible deferment of this sorely needed infrastructure project.

When opened, the 24-kilometre Metro West line will run from Hunter Street in the city and feature stations at Pyrmont, The Bays, Five Dock, Burwood North, North Strathfield, Olympic Park, Parramatta and Westmead. It is expected to move 40,000 people an hour in each direction, effectively doubling the current stretched rail capacity. Infrastructure NSW’s 2019 business evaluation for Metro West projected the rail line would account for more than 50 per cent of planned population growth in the corridor and more than 70 per cent of expected jobs growth by 2036.

The idea of a 20-minute journey from the CBD to Parramatta is a revolutionary change for Sydney, which has historically made it as difficult as possible to travel east to west. Equally revolutionary is a 15-minute trip from Olympic Park – a notoriously hard destination to get to and from – to the city.

So, the future of the Metro West line cannot just become a binary choice between go ahead at whatever cost, or delay. A way has to be found around the budgetary constraints that threaten such a vital infrastructure development. The new stations along the Metro West present an opportunity that should be seized.

Minns himself put a finger on it last May when he said building up – not out – would be key to creating a vibrant, young metropolis. Then, on Tuesday, Minns floated the idea that the current Metro West line design may not have enough stations. The government could consider using the development of more apartments and shopping precincts above the new stations as a way of offsetting infrastructure costs. This may be part of Minns’ bigger strategy: to allow Metro West to proceed as planned, but on the condition the line is accompanied by more intensive over-station development. The Herald would support such an approach.

Labor’s historic habit of walking away from major projects must not be revived. The Metro West line must go ahead. Clearly the government would need to be creative about how to fund the development, but a delay or cancellation cannot be contemplated. It would not only constitute a massive broken election promise, but prove economically hamfisted and extraordinarily short-sighted.

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