A rail corridor to Camden could soon extend to Campbelltown

The rail corridor from the south west rail link through to Camden has been secured and now the next step is to connect Campbelltown with the rest of the region.

A rail line between Camden and Campbelltown will be next on the list after Camden is joined with the South West Rail Link. Picture: Ian Svegovic

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The rail corridor from the South West Rail Link through to Camden has been secured and now the next step is to connect Campbelltown with the rest of the region.

Camden state Liberal MP Chris Patterson said that although it ‘won’t be something that’s done overnight’ a rail corridor between the Campbelltown and Camden LGAs.

“We’ve secured the corridor between the South West Rail link and Camden,” he said.

“The actual route has not yet been determined but I can tell you that it will not be going through houses. Anywhere there is housing, it will go underground.

“The next step is picking up from somewhere in Narellan and looking to preserve a corridor to Campbelltown.

“It’s definitely on the agenda for the near future.”

Mr Patterson also believes a proposed link between Campbelltown and Rouse Hill outlined in the draft Western Sydney Rail Options Paper would be a good move for the region and encouraged community feedback.

“The report is about hearing from the community, we want to know what people want,” he said.

Campbelltown state Labor MP Greg Warren was supportive of the Camden to Campbelltown link and believes it needs to be planned quickly.

“There needs to be land put aside for that rail corridor soon,” he said.

“What needs to happen is the area where it is planned to go needs to be put aside early so people know where it’s going to be.

“We don’t want another situation where you had people in the Camden area and particularly places like Harrington Park panicking because they thought rail was going to come through their houses,”

Hume federal Liberal MP Angus Taylor, who is the cities and digital transformation assistant minister, said linking the region together was an important step and was adamant that it needed to be done before massive housing development.

“The rail options paper lays out a series of options and I broadly put them in two categories, one of them is connections for the western Sydney airport and the current Sydney CBD,” he said.

“The second is north-south options, so rail options that connect the western sydney airport and the employment options that will be around that.

Picture: Ian Svegovic

“All of that is not just about creating massive new job centres, which we need to, but also we have 400,000 people commuting out of this region every day to get to work and if we want to have a 30-minute city then we need to have people within 30 minutes of where they work.

“We want the roads and the jobs to be coming before the housing.”

Mr Taylor said he doesn’t believe there is a need to slow development down to accommodate infrastructure.

“The important thing is that the infrastructure investments speed up, that is the key,” he said.

“And not just infrastructure, it’s jobs, it’s parks and green spaces. All of that needs to happen ahead of or in parallel with development not behind.”