‘Metro mania’: Former top NSW rail exec says train mega-projects lack rationale

The man who masterminded the train timetable for the Sydney Olympics warns the city’s multibillion-dollar metro rail projects risk delivering limited benefits to commuters despite their staggering price tags.

In what he terms “metro mania”, former top NSW rail executive Dr Dick Day argues the state government is rushing to commit to massive rail projects in Sydney for which there is “little rationale”.

One of the twin tunnels on the Metro City and Southwest rail line.Credit: Brook Mitchell

He describes as a “gross misuse of public funds” the $11 billion to be spent on a 23-kilometre rail line from St Marys to Western Sydney Airport because it would “see quite limited use”. Infrastructure Australia also warned two years ago that the cost of the airport line would far outweigh the benefits.

Day, a former general manager of planning and timetable development at RailCorp, expects people will travel primarily by car to the new airport after it opens in late 2026, and that a network of express buses would initially provide the best form of public transport access.

In a paper for Sydney University, Day said Sydney’s “metro mania” was destined to be an “extremely expensive and poorly thought through experiment” which would be “found wanting as a cost-effective means of enhancing” the city’s public transport network.

“Sydney’s proposed metro projects represents very poor use of what were once considered scarce public funds,” he warned. “The willingness to commit public money to such poorly conceived projects raises disturbing questions about financial governance within NSW.”

The cost of constructing three new metro rail lines in Sydney, as well as the Metro Northwest which opened in 2019, is estimated at $63 billion.

Day argues it is reckless to keep committing vast sums of money to extra metro rail lines because of a “very real possibility” that peak-hour commuting by train never returns to pre-pandemic levels.

He warns Sydney is out of step with London, Melbourne and Brisbane, where new rail tunnels under the heart of those cities will accommodate existing train services at improved frequencies and offer relief for their networks. Sydney’s metro rail lines run driverless single-deck trains, and other types of passenger and freight trains cannot operate on them.

Day, who was responsible for mapping out and planning train services that contributed to Sydney’s successful 2000 Olympics, is also critical of plans for a $27 billion line from the CBD to Parramatta known as Metro West.

He warns that most passengers travelling towards central Sydney from the outer west by rail will have boarded double-decker trains at stations further west of Parramatta, and will not change there to catch services on Metro West, which would have only one main station in the CBD. In comparison, the existing western line serves three CBD stations.

Premier Dominic Perrottet, centre, with Metropolitan Roads Minister Natalie Ward and Sydney Metro chief executive Peter Regan last week.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“There has been an unprecedented rush by the government to lock in the construction of these projects despite a very poor understanding of their costs and benefits. This has taken place at a time when commuting patterns have shifted considerably following COVID-19,” he wrote.

Premier Dominic Perrottet last week re-committed to planning for an expansion of metro rail in Sydney’s outer west, including between St Marys and Tallawong, near Rouse Hill, if his government is re-elected, four years after his predecessor Gladys Berejiklian outlined similar plans.

In his paper, Day warns that plans to link an “orphaned line” between the new airport and St Marys to the Metro Northwest line at Tallawong cemented Sydney’s position as a city that built “high-capacity metro lines in peripheral areas with very low demand”. He co-authored the paper with his son Christopher Day, who is completing a PhD at Sydney University’s Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies.

However, Sydney Metro said in a statement that investment in major transport infrastructure was designed to respond not only to “current circumstances”, but ensure growing areas had access to fast and reliable transit networks into the future.

The agency said the new airport line was designed to support the growth and success of a city planned for Sydney’s west, while the Metro West line would double rail capacity between greater Parramatta and the CBD, “transforming Sydney for generations to come”.

“This once-in-a-century infrastructure investment will have a target travel time of about 20 minutes between Parramatta and the Sydney CBD,” it said.

Day was one of four former NSW rail executives to warn in 2017 that the $18.5 billion Metro City and Southwest line under Sydney Harbour and the CBD would lead to “degradation of the robustness and reliability” of the existing heavy rail network. They feared a “takeover” of the existing rail line between Sydenham and Bankstown for metro trains would remove “the relief valve for the network”.

Transport Minister David Elliott’s office was approached for comment.

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