Sydney Metro - on the move

Development of the CBD Metro is well underway now with the development approval application to NSW Planning and the release of a Preliminary Environmental Assessment of the project.


The agency in charge of gaining approval for the project is Sydney Metro, who have a new website about the project here.


I wrote about the CBD metro, here, after it was announced just prior to the November Mini-Budget.  At the time I called the project a white elephant because it provided yet another high speed service to the city to those lucky Pyrmont residents.  There are also a few other points that may impact negatively on other planning projects, but I'll get to them later.


In response to the Preliminary EA I have a few additional comments about the project.


White Bay Station
After completion, the construction site at White Bay will be safeguarded as a potential future station which "would provide opportunities for any development that may be planned in the future for this important inner city area."


I suppose this makes sense given the uncertainty surrounding the development of the White Bay area.  I mentioned here that the use of White Bay as a construction site for the CBD Metro precludes any other development on the site until at least 2015 when the CBD Metro is due for completion.  However, given the lack of any progress or consultation on the entire Bays Precinct, even if a concept plan were developed for the site it would probably be 2015 before planning approval was granted anyway.

I will point out that this is the second White Bay development rolled out by the State Government without any consultation with the community or the Bays Precinct Taskforce.  The other being the new cruise ship terminal I discussed here.


Stabling and Maintenance Depot
The use of the Rozelle Marshalling Yard seems to rule out any possibility of a light rail extension to White Bay.  Although it looks like it would still be possible to extend it to Dulwich Hill.


Property Acquisition and Development Impact
Sydney Metro is planning to adopt a "flexible approach to property requirements...with a focus on minimising property acquisitions."  Under the current preferred option it looks like Sydney Metro is planning to acquire around 30 commercial properties, mostly in the CBD, to facilitate station construction and optimal location of station entrances. The NSW Government is not planning any high-rise development above Rozelle or Pyrmont stations.


Mode changes
Despite my opinion that the metro will be a bit of a white elephant, I have to say it is well integrated into existing transport modes.  Metro stations will be connected to existing CityRail stations via underground walkways at Wynyard, Martin Place, Town Hall and Central.  A bus/taxi/kiss-and-ride layover will be integrated into the Rozelle terminus and the Central terminus will be used as a main intermodal station.  The Government plans to use more of the underutilised train terminus platforms at Central to terminate more suburban services at Central and free up extra capacity on the city circle and other CBD CityRail stations.  CityRail commuters will have to terminate at Central and change to the Metro for Town Hall, Martin Place and Wynyard.


Rail Corridors
Last month I blogged about the CBD Metro plans to use the MetroPitt route under the CBD and whether it would rule out any chance of a further heavy rail tunnel through the city.  Sydney Metro has taken these alignments into consideration and determined that "the development in the future of the Interim Rail West corridor...would not be precluded by the development of the CBD Metro."  At least they're keeping their options open.  Although I get the impression that they are freeing up "CityRail CBD capacity" in the hope that they won't need to build another CBD heavy rail tunnel.

Town Hall Square Station
The Town Hall Square station, planned to run parallel to Pitt Street under Park Street, takes into account the City of Sydney's plans to create a square on the site of the Woolworth's Building.  It's good to see the intergovernmental acknowledgement and co-operation on these types of projects.  A lot of what the City is trying to accomplish can't get done without State dollars and the State can't get their projects right without local consultation.

Rolling Stock

All trains would be automatic and driverless, controlled from an operations centre at Lilyfield.  They would also be run through an automated train car wash every three days.  Cool!  The trains would have a wide central aisle and rows of twin seats on either side of the aisle.  The seating would cover around one third of capacity, with the other two thirds standing.  There would be plenty of wheelchair and pram space.  The carriages would be joined by a wide, open partition (like a bendy bus) with no doors separating cars.  Oh, and if you're interested they would be powered by overhead wires like CityRail trains.

Overall, the CBD Metro's real raison d'être is a backbone to the full metro network consisting of a Western Metro, North West Metro, South East Metro and North East Metro.  And that's fine.  When the State Government conceived the idea for the metro system, they clearly designed a full network.  When it was time to put down the money, they staged the network development with the most critical arm - being the North West Metro - at the top of the list.  When that became unfeasible, they went with what they could afford - the central spine.

What irks me is the spin doctoring.  Firstly, they simply haven't clearly articulated their ideas for the full network, not even in the now defunct SydneyLink website (broken link).  Show us what the full plans look like and you'll get some buy-in from the likes of us little people!  Secondly, the CBD Metro doesn't have enough merit to exist as a standalone project.  It's obviously a network component and nothing more, but they sell it like a brilliant piece of congestion-busting infrastructure in its own right.


Now we get down to the business of planning approval.  Right now what we have is a preliminary EA.  After the Planning Department provides its statement of needs, Sydney Metro will be able to produce a full Environmental Assessment and put it on exhibition for public comment.  The schedule has this down for fourth quarter, 2009, so I'd estimate actual approval in third quarter, 2010 and construction commencing in first quarter 2012.  If previous NSW rail projects are any indication we should see full operations commence in the second quarter of never.