James O’Doherty: Make the Metro 24/7 and we’ll cure Sydney’s work from home blues

If Sydney wants to become a grown-up city, we need a grown-up metro system. And there’s two good ways to get our money’s worth from $21 billion metro line.

Just after 5pm on Wednesday, a lone figure was perched on a bollard next to Martin Place station dressed in a turquoise T-shirt that implored commuters to “Ask Me About Sydney Metro”.

Obviously, not a single person among the peak-hour rush (thinned out as it is in the post-Covid world where WFH still reigns) was interested.

That bored-looking man is one of about 300 temporary workers who we are paying to stand around new metro stations over four weeks to tell people how they can use the brand new rail line when it opens on August 4.

They have been deployed “across the network to inform and support passengers ahead of, and during, the opening of the new Metro City line,” a Transport for NSW spokesperson tells me.

“The street teams are there to address specific questions, issues and queries from passengers that may not be delivered by advertising and other notifications.”

No need to work from home, a 24/7 Metro will let people work and play in the city far more easily.

Sure, a handful of passengers might find the temporary turquoise-clad workers some help.

But if Sydney wants to make $21.6 billion worth of taxpayer spending worth it, “customer service street teams” telling people how to hop on a metro ain’t going to cut it.

To take full advantage of this gleaming bit of new public transport infrastructure, we need to do two things:

1. Run the service 24 hours a day, and;

2. Use the fast and convenient rail link to banish working from home culture for good.

For those who live north of the bridge, the new metro line will be nothing short of a revolution when it comes to commuting into the city.

When we got the first-ever look at the never-before-seen Crows Nest Metro station last year, it took us just seven minutes to get to Martin Place in the heart of the CBD.

The same trip, at the same time of day, took 14 minutes by car.

Nick White, at his bar Since I Left You, in Sydney CBD, wants the metro opened 24 hours a day in a bid to get the city’s night-life roaring. Picture: Justin Lloyd

The metro will be able to move more people across the harbour during peak periods than the Harbour Bridge and Harbour Tunnel combined; it is now up to workers — particularly public servants — to use it.

Back in April, I revealed that attempts at getting state government workers back into taxpayer-funded office spaces had stalled.

Incredibly, Premier Chris Minns’ department has no idea how many bureaucrats are still working from home.

“There is no centrally-held data available to capture public service employees’ office and work from home practices, either at a department level or across the sector,” a spokesman said.

That is despite multiple warnings that working from home could cost young workers career opportunities and reduce innovation, including from Productivity Commissioner Peter Achterstraat.

In 2022, Achterstraat told me that office staff working from home risked having their jobs sent offshore.

“If we were to continue just working from home, we would end up just doing tasks a bit better, but no new thinking, and that work could be done offshore,” he said.

“If you can do the work from Hornsby, you can do it from Hungary.”

For his part, Minns is not helping things. He abandoned a campaign from predecessor Dominic Perrottet to get desk-bound public servants back to the office last year, amid fears it would cause mass resignations.

That campaign was paved with good intentions.

Why should these beautiful stations stand empty half the time? Picture: Richard Dobson

Way back in April 2021, Perrottet — as Treasurer — vowed to get office workers back to the city by bringing back the long lunch.

Perrottet promised to find a “creative” way to scrap fringe benefits taxes (FBT) as a way for bosses to get workers back to the office.

The pledge — made to the Sydney CBD Summit — was among one of the more ambitious ideas to get workers back into the office in a post-Covid world.

Perrottet later dropped the idea after being told it was impossible, as FBT is a federal tax.

A far easier way to give workers a reason to go back to the city is the promise that they won’t get stuck or forced onto a cumbersome NightRide bus if Friday after-work drinks run into the early hours.

The driverless metro trains will eventually run until 1am on weekdays, and 2.30am on weekends. They will shut up earlier than that while things “bed in”.

The government argues that the metro line needs daily down time so it can be maintained. Even though the metro vehicles are run by computers, apparently they still need their beauty sleep.

Businesses fighting for their survival in the CBD are right to call for those hours to be extended.

“If we want to be a global city we have to walk and chew gum at the same time – we can’t let something like logistics stand in the way of activating a 24 hour economy and all the benefits that come from that,” Night Time Industries Association CEO Mick Gibb says.

According to data reported by my colleague Lachlan Leeming on Thursday, more than half of people heading out late at night earn less than $83,000 per year – making a cheap way home a necessity.

If Sydney wants to become a grown-up city, we need a grown-up metro system.

Taxpayers have spent more than $21 billion on this Metro line; we need to get our money’s worth.

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