Sydney metro lines will spark economic renaissance, says New York’s ‘train daddy’

The man who ran the New York subway and oversaw the opening of London’s most significant railway in a generation says a $63 billion metro train network being built in Sydney will spark an economic renaissance but warns the government must keep investing in the entire rail system.

Andy Byford, a former chief operating officer of Sydney’s train network, said the high-frequency metro lines spanning the city would be transformative, generating economic spin-offs while spurring environmental benefits by enticing more people onto public transport.

Andy Byford, then-Transport for London commissioner, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Edward mark the completion of London’s Crossrail project at Paddington station in May 2022.Credit: AP

“These schemes lead the way to an economic renaissance, and I’m very confident that will happen in Sydney. There are myriad benefits,” he said.

“In terms of actual business impact, what we found elsewhere ... is apartment buildings becoming viable. Developers will take a punt on developing new communities where they may not have previously considered doing that.”

While lauding Sydney’s metro projects as city-shaping, Byford urged governments to keep investing in the rail system to avoid the network later sliding into unreliability. “You’ve got to keep investing. It will be all too easy to think, ‘oh good, the job’s done’, when the metro opens,” he said in an interview.

That included investing in the existing double-deck train network and what he described as “unsexy stuff” such as signalling systems, tracks and overhead wires which did not garner much public attention but had major benefits.

“In an area like Sydney where you get very intense weather, if you let that slide, you are in trouble. Sydney is well-placed, but you’ve got to keep spending,” he said.

“It’s a bit of a Pyrrhic victory to end up with a sexy new extension to a line that then grinds to a halt at the boundary because, oops, you’ve let the existing line that was there deteriorate. You’ve got to do both.”

Byford, who has never owned a car or held a driver’s licence, was chief operating officer of NSW’s RailCorp for almost three years until late 2011, when he left to run Canada’s largest transit system in Toronto for six years.

The affable Brit later ran New York’s subway and bus system for two years – affectionately earning the nickname “Train Daddy” for his campaign to fix the city’s dilapidated rail system – before serving as the boss of Transport for London from 2020 to late 2022.

Andy Byford, then chief operating officer of NSW RailCorp, with then-transport minister Gladys Berejiklian in 2011.Credit: Marco Del Grande

He guided London’s public transport system through the pandemic and saw into service the £19 billion ($33 billion) Elizabeth Line in May last year.

Byford said “huge lessons” encountered from building the Elizabeth Line, which was repeatedly delayed and overshot its budget, were applicable to Sydney’s rail projects.

One of the main lessons from London was that the specifications of the railway to be built, as well as the budget for it, needed to be “right in the first place, then locked down”. Second, the Elizabeth Line was more than a civil engineering job, and became “much more of a systems integration challenge”.

“It proved way more complex than anyone thought. The designs weren’t properly finished. So, you get scope creep, you get delay and delay means cost increase,” he said. “These are all valuable lessons for the likes of Sydney, where any mega project can fall into that trap.”

Andy Byford chats with subway workers on his first day as president of New York City Transit in January 2018.Credit: Hilary Swift/The New York Times

The second stage of Sydney’s metro network – the City and Southwest line under the harbour and CBD – is $6 billion over budget. A section of the project – a 13-kilometre stretch of track from Sydenham to Bankstown – will also be at least 12 months late opening.

The pandemic has also cast a shadow over targeted patronage growth for the Metro City and Southwest line in the early years after it opens in 2024.

However, Byford said he was confident about the future of new mass transit systems because they “are for the long term”, quipping that he wished he had a pound or Aussie dollar every time someone had asked him whether the Elizabeth Line risked becoming a white elephant.

“I never bought the ‘London is finished’ argument where people said, ‘that is it for central London, it’s going to be a ghost town’,” he said. “I don’t believe that whatsoever, and I don’t believe that for Sydney either. Global cities like Sydney and London ... still have a very bright future.”

Sydney’s rail network came under fire last year from commuters when a prolonged dispute between the state government and rail unions led to sporadic disruptions to services for months.

Having run several of the world’s largest transit networks, Byford said Sydney had built a “very strong system” over the decades.

“Sydney stacks up well. Certainly with the existing system, then adding in the light rail and the metro system, Sydney really is putting together a world-class transit system in its capability, in its geographical reach and complexity and in the modernity of its equipment,” he said.

Amid the threat of a global recession, however, Byford believes the era of mega projects worldwide will be put on hold for a period – albeit with some exceptions, such as China. “We’re all in a belt-tightening regime. So certainly, I’d advocate finishing off what’s been started. There’s no point leaving holes in the ground – get it done,” he said.

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