Reader Proposals & Questions – Sydney Metro

We often receive some great submissions from our readers – and those particular readers love seeing their work get shared on the blog. Today we have two maps showing potential future rail plans for Sydney. Scroll down further to see a few of the Sydney Metro related questions we have also received recently.

This map provides a very comprehensive concept idea for a future Sydney Metro network. We like it very much, particularly for the passion and ideas that it brings, however feel that there are some improvements that could be made to the network.

The ideas presented to fill the gaps in the Sydney rail network are most commendable – lines to the highly dense and large South East and Northern Beaches regions are excellent and in reality should most certainly form part of actual governmental policy. Lines to Mona Vale and extensions of the ESR are constantly talked about and this concept shows a potential way forward for these ideas. I also like the proposals shown for already announced lines such the extension of the South West rail link and Sydney Metro West – the station locations along these lines are very well thought out and match existing research of the best station locations.

I am finding some of the concepts presented intriguing. In particular the idea to convert both the ESR and Airport lines to Metro standard and run those lines together is bold and could create issue surrounding the capacity of the City Circle and Redfern Stations (one of the issues Sydney Metro City is attempting to fix). Additionally, the idea to use existing station in the CBD such as Town Hall and Wynyard could prove problematic yet could also help to provide situations to redevelop stations into more effective interchanges.

My biggest issues with the concept come down to the station locations and the workability of some of the proposals. Obviously this comes down to lack of local knowledge in some areas on behalf of the map creator. Stations on some lines aren’t exactly located in the major centres and often have picked less important locations over more important ones. On the Northern Beaches line Narrabeen and Warriewood have been included despite being smaller suburbs yet major centres like Warringah Mall and Collaroy have been omitted or on the Bankstown line where Chester Hill has been omitted despite being in the 10 busiest stations on the line. Still on the Bankstown line – the idea of running express services seems odd, as based on the frequencies the line would run at it would be impossible to gain any time without quadruplicating the line (which is not possible based on space constraints). I am also confused as to why the first three stages of Sydney Metro are being shown as seperate lines whilst later proposed stages are being shown as through lines.

With Metro lines I would advocate for one stopping pattern with station located relatively close together (2-3km apart is usually a good measure). Some of these lines such as those in the East meet this criteria to a large extent but some lines have stations locate much further apart, which is as much due to exiting governmental policy as personal preference of the map creator.

Overall we really like this map and the visionary concepts that it proposes.

This map is very simplistic yet very effective. It is designed to show the potential for an expanded rail network in the Eastern Suburbs. I have been informed that the Blue line would serve as an extension for the existing T4 Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra Line whilst the red line would be intense to be an extension of the proposed Sydney Metro West project.

I like how the two lines provide an interchanging point at Kingsford (where they would both also connect the with CBD and South East Light Rail), helping to provide a comprehensive north-south rail corridor in the region. I also highly commend the link to Bondi Beach and the metro line through Zetland, which based on recent high density development in the area, would likely be sorely needed.

This line suggests a diversion off Anzac Parade to Eastgardens and Matraville before coming back across to Little Bay. I actually believe this is very effective as it allows for the line to serve the most highly dense and major centres in the area instead of the lower density Anzac Parade corridor which is often suggested. I would imagine Harry Triguboff would be more than happy to help partially fund such a line given his Pagewood Green investments (although that might require a station name change from Eastgardens to Pagewood).

We love seeing things like this and encourage our readers to have a go at making your own maps. Professional maps are usually made with Abode Illustrator, but you can make one at home using a website such as this.

Why have they chosen the Bankstown line to convert to Metro, over any other line? – Hilde Risseeuw 

There is a very specific reason for choosing the Bankstown Line for conversion to Sydney Metro and it all has to do with line capacity. The T3 Bankstown Line creates a significant bottleneck in the existing Sydney Trains network. Effectively it slows down the network because of the way it merges with other railway lines close to the Sydney CBD.

Existing Sydney Trains train lines can only have 20 trains an hour (one train every 3 minutes) pass along them. 40 trains an hour can use the two City Circle tracks if they are used at maximum frequency (which they are). At the moment trains from the T2, T3 and T8 lines all use the City Circle, with 14 trains and hour from both the T2 and T8 lines and 12 from the T3 line. The T3 line creates conflict between the T2 and T8 trains and essentially limits the ability for all of these lines to run at full capacity. As these lines become more and more busy they need more and more trains to run on them, but as the lines through the City now all run at full capacity this is an impossibly without either terminating trains at Sydney Terminal (more conflict) or Redfern (too inconvenient). By removing the T3 from the City Circle and rerouting it through the new Metro line, we can allow for a full frequency on all lines as each City Circle track would be fed by only one train line and the Bankstown line would run through a separate metro tunnel, essentially eliminating this major bottleneck.

This isn’t unprecedented, with the Illawarra Line being merged with the ESR in the 80s to provide more City Circle capacity.

When’s the metro starting, whats happening to Chatswood station and will Macquarie trains start again? – Veronica

Sydney Metro Northwest is due to open in Q2 2019, with an estimated date of May 4 2019 being touted for the opening. Chatswood station will become an interchange station with cross platform interchange between Sydney Trains T1 North Shore services and Sydney Metro Northwest trains. These new services will operate via the old ECRL including both the Macquarie Stations before running along the new line to Tallawong.