As the architect of Sydney Metro, I’ve led a boring life with a gold-digger named Elizabeth

The dawn of Sydney’s new public transport era actually started closer to midday: just after 11.27am on September 8, 2014 in a paddock at Bella Vista, 33 kilometres north-west of Sydney CBD.

I was standing 20 metres underground as the mega tunnel boring machine – dubbed “Elizabeth” – launched eastwards, its tungsten steel cutters chewing up the sandstone and shale. That was the exact moment I was completely convinced Sydney Metro would come to life and change our city for the better. Not when the project was announced in 2011. Nor when we awarded the $1.15 billion tunnelling contract in 2013. Or even when the giant tunnel boring machines arrived in Sydney earlier in 2014.

Rodd Staples at the new Martin Place metro station.Credit: Nick Moir

Boring machines can only go in one direction – forwards. The concrete tunnels these mechanical worms leave behind them are smaller than the cutterhead up the front. There’s no effective way to stop and pull them back out. You have to keep digging – forwards.

Given the chequered history of mega projects in this state, that cold spring morning in 2014 in the booming north-west would become our point of no return: Sydney was finally on track to get a world-class mass transit system that would make the city fit for future generations.

A decade before, the original metro plan had been cancelled, the victim of NSW politics mixed with the global financial downturn. With a new government in 2011 came a different commitment – to add an extra line to the existing Sydney trains system from Epping out to the north-west.

But just as quickly an old argument resurfaced – to metro or not to metro. Some of the most intense debates I have witnessed in government followed as transport and treasury officials argued the merits of how – and even why – to expand Sydney’s railway system to keep up with the city. Did we want to keep adding to a complex 160-year-old railway or invest in a separate metro that would grow with the global city above it?

The boring machine ‘Elizabeth’ was used to create many of the tunnels for the metro lines.

Ultimately, the benefits of a new tier of metro rail would hold their own: high-frequency and high-capacity trains, a fully accessible network and leading safety systems like platform screen doors. Then there’s the resilience – when delays or breakdowns impact the existing suburban system, the metro runs separately, and keeps running.

From that paddock in Bella Vista, Sydney now has two completed metro lines and two others well under construction.

Our key task was to create a new mass-transit spine that moves people easier and faster around a big city, giving them access to more opportunities.

For all its scale and complexity, metro is very personal. When it opened to north-west Sydney in 2019, I was overwhelmed by the reaction from many new customers as I rode the service with them every day. I remember one woman fighting back tears as she told me she now has enough time in her life to have breakfast with her family in the morning, and the flexibility to leave at different times – all thanks to the fast turn-up and go service that metro offers. Even better, her son was able to use the metro in his wheelchair with as much convenience as any other customer.

With the metro now extending into Sydney’s CBD, we are about to see many more lives changed. For instance, if you live at Hurstville and are considering a job at Macquarie Park, that’s currently a 60-minute public transport trip each way. With Sydney Metro, it’ll be about 40 minutes – enough of a time saving to put that job idea firmly on the table.

My children, for example, can now seriously consider higher education at Macquarie University and jobs in North Sydney or the Hills because it’ll be much faster and easier to get to these places.

That’s why my message to government is simple: like tunnel boring machine Elizabeth, keep digging. Don’t lose the once-in-a-century momentum sparked by the national infrastructure boom of the 2010s (which, in many ways, was ignited by Elizabeth and the success of Sydney’s Metro Northwest).

With the city’s metro railway spine now firmly in place, it’s time to bring strength and flexibility to Sydney’s public transport system. Start planning the cross-city metro rail connections like Rouse Hill to St Mary’s, Parramatta to Western Sydney Airport and Hurstville to Bankstown to Olympic Park. And extend Sydney Metro West from the city towards Maroubra.

For Sydney to be fit for future generations, we need to give more people across the wider city the choice to leave the car at home, or not own a car at all, like true global cities.

Now is the time to get the next metro lines into the infrastructure delivery pipeline and take advantage of the incredible skills base that we’ve created – or risk losing that talent and, with it, the major economic benefits these people and projects bring to Sydney.

In recent years I’ve been working partly overseas, coincidentally and predominantly on mega railway projects. One overriding impression has been clear: Sydney Metro is a world scale and world-class project that has put our infrastructure, engineering and construction expertise firmly on the map. This new skills base simply didn’t exist in Australia at this scale just 15 years ago, and its future is far from secure.

More than 100,000 people have so far worked on Sydney Metro, from engineers, planners and designers to tunnellers, electricians, welders, plumbers, concreters and traffic controllers. And me. Not only does this city-shaping infrastructure redefine Sydney for coming generations, but it will also define careers, as it has mine.

When I walked through the extraordinary new Martin Place metro station with the Herald recently, it was the first time I’d been there since the boring machines went through in a crash of sandstone last decade. The station was exactly as I had pictured it all those years ago when we planned it. Integrated with the existing suburban station, as well as the city around it, and with the driverless trains running like clockwork every few minutes, it was very satisfying to experience and a testament to the work of so many.

So, get ready, Sydney, for the new opportunities that metro will bring. And in future generations, I hope Sydneysiders look back and think, wow, we can’t imagine this city without one.

Rodd Staples is the architect of Sydney Metro and led the delivery of Australia’s biggest public transport project from 2011-2017. He was Secretary of Transport for NSW from 2017-2021.