Mackellar MP Jason Falinski calls for metro train on northern beaches

A DRIVERLESS metro train leaving every five minutes from Northern Beaches Hospital is being hailed as a future solution to traffic congestion by Mackellar MP Jason ­Falinski.

A rail link to the northern beaches was touted by the NRMA last year.

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A DRIVERLESS metro train leaving every five minutes from Northern Beaches Hospital is being hailed as a future solution to traffic congestion by Mackellar MP Jason ­Falinski.

The underground line would travel from the Frenchs Forest hospital to Chatswood, taking 45,000 people an hour each way.

In his maiden speech to parliament yesterday, Mr Falinski touted his first initiative as an MP as a solution to “crippling traffic congestion”.

Jason Falinski makes his debut speech in parliament.

However, he told the Manly Daily it would be decades away and done after a Mosman bypass tunnel was completed.

“It would open up access to Norwest Business Park, Macquarie Park, the second airport and the city,” he said.

Rail plans have traditionally been met with angst from locals, fearing that it would lead to high-rise.

Wakehurst state Liberal MP Brad Hazzard said it was “critical that we keep revisiting how we can improve public transport challenges”.

But he agreed that “the latest statistics are showing us every part of Sydney is going to grow including the beaches, so it is a timely issue”.

The State Government has planned to battle the growth with B-Line Buses.

Davidson state Liberal MP Jonathon O’Dea said he was interested in improving public transport in the shorter term and the solution was buses.

“I am interested in rail in the long term … but, if you are going to implement a metro line it has got to go further than Frenchs Forest,” he said.

Public transport to Sydney’s northern beaches needs to be improved.

The NRMA last year called for the fast tracking of a rail line on the northern beaches.

NRMA director for the harbour region, Tim Trumper, welcomed the train talk but said it needed to be done properly.

Mackellar MP Jason Falinski a day after he was elected to parliament enjoying a cup of coffee at a Collaroy cafe. Picture: Adam Ward

“Sydney transport has a history of piecemeal projects, that is why you get all these choke points,” he said. “Ideally, you would cover more of the peninsula, do it once and do it well.”

He offered to meet Mr Falinski at the hospital site “with a shovel in my hand” if it meant the work would get done.

Mr Trumper said: “Outside where the hospital is being built right now you can see where a rail line could go, you can actually see how it could work.”

Yesterday, Mr Falinski told parliament the peninsula was “in urgent need of transport infrastructure”.

He said three of Australia’s seven most congested roads — Warringah, Mona Vale and Pittwater/Condamine St — serviced Mackellar and he pointed to a metro as the solution.

He acknowledged long-held concerns by residents over a rail line on the beaches but said it could have benefits.

“A lot of people are sort of scared of a train or have opposed a train to the beach, but that one to Frenchs Forest actually opens up the possibility of a commercial centre on the northern beaches that is not Dee Why,” he said.

“It avoids some of the problems that they are worried about, which is overdevelopment on the beach and too many people coming to the beach, I think if you had a train line to Frenchs Forest, maybe Beacon Hill.

“It is a way to protect our environment as well. What you can do is look at housing in more strategic sense. At the moment we kind of just say 34,000 extra dwellings need to go into the northern beaches.

“Do we really want another 8000 dwellings in Pittwater? And we don’t want to encroach any green spaces. I am not suggesting everything is high-rise but if you have a different mix, that is not bad at all.”