Belated boost for NSW train timetable

This week’s NSW budget saw the political cycle complete a full revolution, with Treasurer Andrew Constance announcing: “We now seek to implement the policy position of Bob Carr, Michael Egan, Morris Iemma and Michael Costa to release the value in the electricity distribution network.” The NSW government is planning to sell electricity businesses to finance new transport infrastructure for Sydney, just as their predecessors once proposed.

Building new railway lines in Sydney was the persistent unresolved challenge for the previous Labor government. The biggest problem has always been the need to spend a great deal of money where nobody votes. While newspapers and local MPs demand more track be laid in places with no track, all of those new tracks eventually lead to the CBD where they force a growing number of people through the same number of gates.

The total operating capacity of the network is effectively determined by how many people you can funnel through Wynyard and Town Hall stations during the morning and evening peaks. The time it takes everyone to get in and out of train carriage doors, up and down escalators and through the ticket barriers is what determines how many trains per hour you can run on the network. Over the past decade or so, every transport minister and premier have been told by their transport departments that new lines could no longer be simply bolted on to the existing network. The CBD stations were choked. What the city needed was another line under the CBD.

Back in 2001 the co-ordinator-general of rail Ron Christie recognised this in his Long-term Strategic Plan for Rail. He noted a key constraint was, “the long train ‘dwell’ times required at several of the busiest stations, including the main CBD underground stations, as passengers leave trains and others wait on overcrowded platforms to board”.

In 2005, then Labor premier Carr announced a Metropolitan Rail Expansion Program including a North West Rail Link, a South West Line and a new CBD railway line between Redfern and Chatswood. Of the $8 billion required, $5bn would be for this new cross-city underground.

These and future rail plans under Labor always faced the problem that the first $5bn or more of any available budget would be spent adding no new suburbs to the network. It’s one reason why Carr’s MREP and Iemma’s subsequent North West Metro were never built.

Another reason they were never built was that the then head of Unions NSW and now Opposition Leader John Robertson campaigned successfully against the sell-off. While in ideal circumstances a government should never sell a monopoly asset, NSW has depressingly limited options when it comes to paying for new train lines. Like all states, it has very few revenue raising opportunities — a grab bag of land and payroll taxes and relatively trivial regulated charges. The bulk of taxation is collected by the commonwealth and parcelled out to the states as the federal government sees fit and large amounts of spending are tied to health and education agreements. Public transport struggles for scraps, especially for new growth.

It’s argued that these assets pay dividends that can be borrowed against. That’s true but two decades of bipartisan rhetoric about debt makes this politically difficult. It’s also true that their value has been declining since Egan tried to sell in the late 90s. The uncertainty of policy around these expensive and long-term investments has impacted value and the going rate will likely continue to decline. In this climate long-term dividends are also uncertain.

Given the Opposition Leader served as transport minister under premier Kristina Keneally, he surely understands the bind Premier Mike Baird is in. The nation’s most important city, its engine of growth, is itself unable to grow without better public transport services. There is simply no room left above ground for more cars or even buses. Underground trains are vital to keeping Sydney working.

Over the past decade a half dozen plans for new train lines came and went. Each failed for lack of a leader who would bite the bullet and invest billions of dollars into an independent-held seat for assets most people would barely notice in the rush to get a coffee on the way to work or anMXon the way home. There is a long way to go between announcement and completion. However, as Iemma once said, “there’s more to be done but we’re heading in the right direction”.

Cassandra Wilkinson works for The Centre for Independent Studies.