Project Sydney: Dig deep to fix Sydney’s transport woes
THEY’RE tunnelling far from the light of day to ensure Sydney’s future is bright. Meet the 2000 workers toiling away deep under Sydney on the $20 billion, 65km-long North West Rail Link.
Project Sydney
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THEY’RE tunnelling far from the light of day to ensure Sydney’s future is bright.
There are 2000 workers toiling away beneath our feet on the $20 billion, 65km-long North West Rail Link. And the state-of-the-art super-tunnel, which will be at the edge of the Harbour in less than two years, will pass the two-thirds marker this week.
With the first deadline a mere 18 months away, four tunnel-boring machines have burrowed twin tunnels 15km to Epping, dragging 4.47 million tonnes of Sydney sandstone — enough to fill 1800 Olympic swimming pools — out through the new Bella Vista station in the Hills District and onto trucks to be recycled.
Across Sydney, building sites are disrupting traffic, blocking roads and filling the air with noise and dust — but that is just a fraction of the work that is being done underground. The Bella Vista station looks like any other building site from the surface but beneath the ground it is the starting point for a massive 30km-long tunnelling operation.
“One of the great things about tunnelling is that we can contain the disruption,” Sydney Metro chief Rodd Staples said.
“The work is being done underground so a lot of Sydney can get on with their day without being disturbed … It is so deep underground they will never feel the trains.”
Trucks are scheduled to move plant and rock out of peak hours.
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“People are putting up with all the disruption on the roads every day but when we are done we are going to have an absolutely fantastic transport system for the city of Sydney,” Mr Staples said.
The tunnelling is up to 60m underground, under parks, roads and rail lines as much as possible to avoid disturbing homes and businesses.
The $8.3 billion Sydney Metro will deliver 31 new metro stations along 65km of new track from Rouse Hill in Sydney’s northwest to Bankstown in the southwest.
At the end of 2019 a specialised boring machine will begin digging two tunnels through sandstone and sediment beneath Sydney Harbour. When it is finished the automated train will deliver people from a station in the heart of North Sydney to Martin Place in just over four minutes.
The giant tunnelling machines will then weave under the city with GPS-guided laser precision, avoiding existing tunnels and the foundations of giant tower blocks. On the surface the disruption will be minimal as rock is sent back along train tracks to be dispersed away from the CBD.
“When (John) Bradfield was building Wynyard station the whole of Wynyard was dug up and the city was shut down. Imagine that today? The disruption would be tenfold,” Mr Staples said.
“But with new technology everything has changed. We have gone through a situation where Bradfield did open-heart surgery while we are doing keyhole surgery, which allows us to avoid the impact of Bradfield’s day.”
That is not to say tunnelling through the city will be easy.
Civil engineer Pete Church, executive director with Transport NSW, was responsible for the “incredibly complex” construction of the Wynyard Walk tunnel from Wynyard station to Barangaroo.
“The first step was to demolish a 12-storey building in Clarence St to give us a small footprint to begin tunnelling,” Mr Church said.
Engineers then had to underpin a 20-storey building on Margaret St and Railway House, which is covered in fragile, heritage-listed green tiles. “We were tunnelling through Sydney sandstone five or six storeys below and worrying about vibration,” Mr Church said. “We also had to time the work around lectures that were being given in the building at the time.”
The 110m tunnel took 3½ years to complete at a cost of $306 million.
At the Barangaroo end, engineers were faced with loose material and reclaimed land that revealed a treasure trove of historical artefacts — including 5000-year-old Aboriginal stone knives and 200-year-old English pottery.
According to research by PwC the pain will be worth it. When the Sydney Metro is finished it will deliver a benefit-cost ratio, or monetary return, of $1.53 for each of the $8.5 billion spent. It has employed over 6000 workers and will stimulate 44,245 new jobs when completed.
NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance said “the Sydney Metro project ... will transform this city in a way not seen since the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge”.
“Come 2019, we will be able to give train customers a turn up and go service, with a train every four minutes in the peak and the capacity to move more than 40,000 people an hour,” Mr Constance said.
Expansion is being constructed on solid foundations
WITH Sydney’s construction boom showing no signs of slowing down, the state government is promising to back the city’s growth with essential infrastructure.
The Berejiklian government yesterday pledged the schools, roads, hospitals and open space to maintain Sydneysiders’ quality of life for the next 40 years and beyond. “I don’t believe, and this is based on extensive community engagement by the Greater Sydney Commission, that Sydneysiders are against growth per se,” Greater Sydney Commission chief executive Sarah Hill said.
In a rebuke to the NIMBYism that has sprung up in some quarters, Ms Hill said Sydney was continuing to flourish.
“What they have told us is that growth needs to be supported by infrastructure delivery in the right places at the right time and that we protect and enhance the livability of our suburbs. Sydney is growing for all the right reasons … This is a measure of Sydney’s success and livability”, she said.
She said the growth was part of a “once-in-a-lifetime infrastructure investment program”.
And Planning Minister Anthony Roberts yesterday insisted housing was not being developed in isolation. “Without increasing housing supply, including by supporting more diverse housing types, our children and their children will simply find it far more difficult to live and work in Sydney,” he said.
NSW Finance Minister Victor Dominello, whose electorate spans Sydney’s fastest-growing regions, declared he was not “anti-development”. “Sydney is booming and we must deliver on appropriate development that caters for our city’s current and future growth,” he said.