Premier flags potential for extra stations along Sydney’s Metro West line

Premier Chris Minns has flagged a major overhaul of the Metro West line between Sydney’s CBD and Parramatta, saying his government will consider building more stations along the route despite the cost of the project already hitting $25 billion.

Announcing a wide-ranging review into Sydney’s metro rail projects, Minns ruled out cancelling the troubled conversion of a stretch of the existing Bankstown line, which is part of the $20 billion City and Southwest project, but said its completion is likely to be “beyond 2025”.

NSW Premier Chris Minns and Transport Minister Jo Haylen announce the review on Thursday.Credit: Steven Siewert

The new government has raised the possibility of rezoning land along a rejigged Metro West line to allow for increased housing density as it grapples with a rental crisis.

Led by former high-ranking federal transport bureaucrat Mike Mrdak, the review into Sydney’s metro projects comes on the back of a string of cost blowouts the new government says it has uncovered during briefings with transport officials.

While the review will examine how much the projects will really cost, Minns did not discount adding to the overall price tag. He said he would not “rule out” changes to the 24-kilometre Metro West line, along which the previous government planned to build nine stations.

Asked if that meant adding extra stations, Minns said the review would “look at whether it’s appropriate to have more stations”.

“The truth of the matter is we need to make sure that a major investment decision of that scale is having maximum impact in terms of delivering people to work and to home,” he said.

“I’ve always looked at that Metro West line … [which] straddles the two biggest employment centres in the entire state – the Parramatta CBD and the Sydney CBD – and it only transports people that live in six suburbs between those two major employment centres.”

A seven-kilometre stretch of the proposed line between Parramatta and Olympic Park is easily the longest section without a station under the existing plans. The industrial suburb of Camelia was touted as a potential site for a station, but the previous government decided against it.

Underground stations are one of the biggest costs of Sydney’s new metro projects. Credit: Brook Mitchell

Business Sydney Western executive director David Borger said the lack of a station between Parramatta and Olympic Park was a “glaring omission”.

“Camellia is a no-brainer. It must be revisited as an option,” the former Labor minister and Parramatta lord mayor said.

In 2019, the former Coalition government also dropped plans for a Metro West station at Zetland, which forms part of the highly populated Green Square precinct in the inner city.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, who had urged the previous government to reverse its decision, said Zetland was likely to be a cheaper and easier location to build a station.

Labor MP for Heffron Ron Hoenig demanded two years ago that the-then government explain why it scrapped Zetland, arguing “metro rail is the only solution for Green Square”.

Any extra stations for Metro West will push up the cost of the project, already estimated at more than $25 billion.

Internal documents obtained by the Herald have previously revealed the cost of underground stations for Metro West ranged from $640 million for one beneath Hunter Street in the CBD to $350 million at Five Dock.

Minns conceded that adding new stations would mean “the cost will change” but flagged the potential for offsetting it through development along the rail corridor. “Obviously, there are building partners that are very interested in that process as well,” he said.

The previous government admitted last June that converting a 13-kilometre stretch of the Bankstown line into one for driverless metro trains had been delayed by at least 12 months, pushing the completion date into 2025, due to the pandemic, industrial action and wet weather.

However, new Transport Minister Jo Haylen said it had become clear that even the revised completion date was an “impossible task”.

Briefings to the new government about the rail conversion have revealed a range of scenarios, which could add an extra $1 billion to the cost and require the Sydenham-Bankstown section of track to be shut for 15 months.

The track conversion has become the most challenging part of the entire Metro City and Southwest project.

Minns said he had been unable to get a final figure on the cost of converting the Bankstown line because it was “effectively contested inside government”.

An interim report on the metro projects is due to be handed to the new government before the state budget in the coming months, while a final review is expected by the end of the year.

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