Plans for metro train project in Sydney’s south-west to be revealed
The NSW government will reveal as early as Tuesday its plans for the troubled conversion of an existing rail line in Sydney’s south-west into one along which driverless metro trains will run.
The imminent decision on the fate of the 13-kilometre stretch of the T3 Bankstown line comes after the government refused last week to quell speculation that construction of the $25 billion Metro West line from the Sydney CBD to Parramatta could be cancelled.
The existing rail line that needs to be converted runs from Sydenham station, pictured, to Bankstown.Credit: Steven Siewert
The government has been considering recommendations in an interim report from a review into Sydney’s $64 billion metro rail projects.
The Bankstown line conversion is a key focus of the interim report, and one of the major considerations will be the number of months it will have to be shut to tens of thousands of train commuters to allow construction.
Experts doubt Premier Chris Minns will do an about-turn on his comments in April when he ruled out cancelling the Bankstown line conversion, which is part of the Metro City and Southwest project.
Transport and planning consultant Alex Gooding said the conversion was so far advanced that it was not worth cancelling, and ditching it would undermine one of the justifications for the City and Southwest project, which was to free up capacity on the CBD’s existing underground train line.
“Having got this far, if they don’t finish the line, you end up with a suboptimal result. Most of the money that would have been saved by cancelling the conversion would have been committed,” he said.
Transport Minister Jo Haylen says the interim report from the Sydney Metro review will be released “very shortly”.Credit: Jessica Hromas
Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the government was considering the recommendations in the interim report and would “release it very shortly”.
The 13-kilometre stretch of rail line planned for conversion to metro-train standards cuts through Haylen’s Summer Hill electorate, as well as Industrial Relations Minister Sophie Cotsis’ seat of Canterbury and Customer Service Minister Jihad Dib’s electorate of Bankstown.
The troubled track conversion is one of the reasons the Metro City and Southwest line, which stretches from Chatswood to the CBD and on to Bankstown, has blown out by $8 billion to $20 billion.
The outcome of how to fix the Bankstown line conversion will also be critical to the government’s decision-making on the Metro West project, which could involve building extra stations or delaying its opening beyond 2030.
Martin Locke, an adjunct professor at Sydney University’s institute of transport and logistics studies, said a critical aspect of the review was likely to be an assessment of how effective Sydney Metro had been in managing costs in a challenging market environment.
“They are complex projects, which means you need to be even more skilled in how you manage the contracts. The cost depends on how well you deliver the project,” he said.
Initial briefings in April to the government outlined a range of scenarios for converting the Bankstown line, which could add $1 billion to the cost and require the existing track to be shut for up to 15 months.
Senior bureaucrats from Sydney Metro also recently presented options to the government on how to complete the conversion, which was already at least a year late.
Canterbury-Bankstown Labor mayor Bilal El-Hayek has said it was imperative that the metro project was delivered as soon as possible.
However, independent Canterbury-Bankstown councillor Barbara Coorey said the conversion did not stack up financially and its advocates were proposing up-zoning and demolition of suburbs with low-rise housing.
“I want the government to terminate the metro at Sydenham. The conversion is totally unnecessary and was never advocated or called for by the commuters of the T3 line,” she said.
“The only way it will work is to demolish thousands of homes in that corridor to build these monolithic skyscrapers to justify the cost of the conversion.”
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