‘Joining the city together’: Metro connects Sydney to its future

The $21 billion Sydney Metro is the most important project for Sydney since the Harbour Bridge opened. Here’s why.

A city is only as strong as what holds it together. Not just in some abstract way but as in cold hard steel.

John Bradfield knew this when more than a century ago he designed the first Sydney rail network and that great backbone of the city, the Harbour Bridge.

Most of us don’t see the Harbour Bridge every day but it is still our most defining landmark, not just because of what it looks like but because of what it does: Joining the city together.

Civil engineer John Bradfield didn’t design the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the 1930s. He designed it for the future. Picture: Australia's First Century P/ Historical

A view from North Sydney of the Sydney Harbour Bridge under construction in 1930. Picture State Library of NSW

Bradfield’s bridge was far too big for Sydney’s needs at the time but that was exactly the point: He wasn’t building it for then, he was building it for now.

The gargantuan Sydney Metro project is the biggest thing to happen in the century since and like Bradfield’s grand vision it is a project not just for today but for tomorrow.

Generations from now future Sydneysiders won’t be combing over the cost or the timing of the opening. If anything they will wonder how we ever lived without it, just as today we might wonder how Sydney functioned when every Harbour Crossing required a boat.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge took eight years to build. Picture State Archives

Indeed, it is almost inevitable that ultimately the metro system will be the primary form of travel across all of greater Sydney and Bradfield’s heavy rail network will gradually fade into a primarily long-distance service — much as in London today.

And just as in London rapid travel will revolutionise the city. Knowing you can simply rock up to a nearby station, jump on a train within minutes and be at your destination faster will change the way Sydneysiders work and play.

It will encourage more workers to finally rejoin the office, boosting the CBD’s struggling daytime economy, and it will encourage more players to hit the town of an evening, boosting the CBD’s struggling night-time economy.

Sydney Metro will travel from Tallawong in the northwest to Sydenham in the inner-west.

Like the benefits of Pantene shampoo, it won’t happen overnight but it will happen.

Then there are broader economic benefits as well: Commuting time is dead time. People who get to work and back home to their families faster are happier and more productive people, while more decongested roads means that freight and other deliveries reach their destinations sooner.

With the service stopping at several stations in the CBD, people will be more eager to go back into the office.

The metro will also eventually be a gateway to the rest of the world via the new Aerotropolis, itself the biggest thing to happen in a century in air. It took decades for Mascot Airport to get a rail line. When the first jumbo lands in Western Sydney passengers will be plugged straight into the grid.

And this in turn will create a new economic and social explosion right in the heart of Greater Western Sydney.

In the meantime it will be bringing other worlds together — it’s a fair bet the battlers of Bankstown and the hipsters of Sydenham have much to learn from each other.

The Sydney Metro is built for tomorrow, but will make the commute easier for all today.

Because that is the greatest purpose behind a project like this. A city that is not connected is not a city at all, just a random assortment of bodies and buildings or a disparate collection of tribes.

But we are not Bankstonians or Marrickvillians, we are Sydneysiders. And we need to be able to connect with each other.

Perhaps now more than ever.

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