On Sydney’s most hated road, idea of adding light rail takes root

Parramatta Road on a weekday: boarded-up shops, a bridal store, wafting diesel fumes and deafening traffic noise.

“I have known Parramatta Road to always be like this,” says Skye Maika, who has run a tattoo store on the road with her husband, Roki, for the past seven years.

The Art of Tattoo owners Skye and Roki Maika like the proposal but have seen how other businesses were destroyed by the ongoing delays of the George Street light rail.Credit: Rhett Wyman

So when she on Thursday heard about a plan to lay down 11 kilometres of light rail track from the inner west, along Parramatta Road to Central Station and on to Green Square, at a cost of billions, she realised it has the potential to finally transform Sydney’s most-hated road.

It would come at a cost, she says, citing businesses on George Street in Sydney’s CBD that endured years of construction work and were forced to close.

“We like the idea but don’t like the amount of rent we would be paying in regard to the exposure to disruption to our business.”

The plans presented to the state government on Thursday by ALTRAC, the consortium behind Sydney’s existing light rail network, would mean trams would continue on to Green Square in Sydney’s south.

Legacy Brides owner Corina Galdames said customers simply cannot park nearby.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Leichhardt resident Mariette Lewis supported the plan for light rail, saying the area was underserved by public transport, and it was almost impossible for a diversity of businesses to survive.

“It takes 40 minutes to get to Newtown because you have to walk to a train at Petersham,” she said.

“None of the businesses can survive along this road unless you’re a wedding shop.”

The owner of Legacy Brides, Corina Galdames, also backed better public transport such as light rail, saying the lack of parking for customers was not helping business. “It is definitely a good idea,” she said.

NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen this week said the government was focused on delivering better bus priority on Parramatta Road – despite having rubbished a similar proposal from the previous government in a 2016 speech.

In that speech, she said Parramatta Road was the “perfect place” for light rail and dubbed rapid-transit bus services a mistake.

Similarly to the plan put forward this week, she suggested light rail could run from Strathfield to Central Station and connect with existing services in the inner west.

“If we want Parramatta Road to be more than a characterless, polluting, noisy, log-jammed road that divides the inner west in two, then light rail is the answer,” Haylen said at the time.

Labor did not take the Parramatta Road light rail proposal to the 2023 poll, nor was it an election commitment.

NSW Premier Chris Minns rejected the proposal at an Urban Development Institute of Australia luncheon on Thursday, citing the cost of transport infrastructure.

Committee for Sydney chief executive Eamon Waterford said, with the opening of WestConnex and the Metro West, the government should be focused on transforming Parramatta Road.

“The beauty of the proposal from ALTRAC is that it doesn’t need to come with a huge price tag and can be delivered in partnership with local government and the private sector,” he said.

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