Analysis: post SRT, 30+ storey highrise at Lindfield and Gordon is inevitable

My previous post made the case that the NSW state government now has a clear upper house path towards funding and rapid commencement of construction of the second harbour crossing.  Whilst the second harbour crossing will increase rail capacity across the whole Sydney network, it is the North Shore line and the Epping-Chatswood line stations where the greatest capacity addition takes place.  The current combined limit for both of these lines is 20 trains per hour - whereas after the second harbour crossing, total capacity will increase to 40-50 trains per hour on these two lines.

It would be a major failure of urban planning if zoning for additional housing doesn't go alongside such a huge capacity increment.  We have already seen how urban planning and rail infrastructure go hand-in-hand along the Epping-Chatswood line:
* North Ryde station has become an urban activation priority precinct, with 3000 additional apartments planned in towers as high as 30+ storeys.
* Macquarie Park station remains "commercial core" and off limits to residential development, but plans for commercial office blocks of up to 17 storeys have been approved.

* Macquarie University Station has significant development anticipated through the Macquarie University masterplan, Macquarie Centre retail redevelopment, and Herring road urban activation/residential development.
* Epping station is an urban activation precinct, for which mixed use developments of up to 22 storeys is anticipated.
* Numerous stations along the northwest rail-link extension of the Epping-Chatswood line have been rezoned, with 29000 additional dwellings anticipated along the corridor.
* Chatswood, St Leonards and North Sydney have continued to have numerous additional residential towers proposed, approved and under construction.

To date, north shore line stations beyond Chatswood (from Roseville to Wahronga) have "escaped" residential development of the same scale (they did get a number of 5 storey apartments, which as we will see below was not enough, yet used up much precious & scarce station catchment land).  In the absence of a second harbour crossing, this was understandable as the Bradfield-era single existing rail track pair on the Harbour bridge would not be able to cope with the combined passenger load coming from the Epping-Chatswood, Northwest and North Shore lines.  However, once the second harbour crossing is in place, this bottle neck no longer applies, and there will be enormous spare capacity along the upper north shore line.

Prediction: NSW upper house to pass electricity privatisation, 2nd Harbour Crossing is going ahead

The Baird Liberal government has been re-elected in NSW.

Importantly, it has secured 9.5 quotas in the upper house (as of 55% of votes counted).  Due to NSW's optional preferential voting system (that usually results in about 9% of the vote exhausting all preferences and expiring as a result), a quota of 9.5 will be sufficient to re-elect 10 seats (a gain of two seats) in the half of the upper house that faced re-election this year.

This means the make up of the upper house (42 seats in total) is likely to be:

LNP: 21
Labour: 12
Greens: 5
Shooters: 2
Christian Democrat: 2

As one LNP seat is taken up by the speaker, the LNP will need an extra vote to pass legislation.  This means with the support of Fred Nile (Christian Democrat Party), the LNP will be able to lease 49% of the electricity network, and raise the funds to pay for the following projects:

* Second harbour crossing and conversion of Bankstown line
* Parramatta light rail
* Various road, school, hospital, and cultural projects

The other legislation that may pass this time around is the planning reform bill, but I'm not aware what position the Christian Democrat Party has taken up on this issue.

Archive of pulled SMH "Secret Plans" article

Yesterday's post referred to a pulled off SMH article as the source of the information about TfNSW's "secret plans".  Courtesy of SnowBoard99, an archive of the original SMH article has been found.  A brief extract and link to the article archive are included below:

SMH: Secret rail plan for Sydney would create massive and costly upheaval

Could this be the future of Sydney's train system?

Secret Rail Plans part 1: TfNSW‘s post-SRT rail system

Up to now, the NSW Government has been very vague on how the wider Sydney Trains & NSW Trainlink system would work post SRT.  An article on the topic of "Secret rail plans" was briefly published today in the SMH but got pulled down very quickly before I could read it in full.  A bit more digging was needed to get the complete picture:

Western & Northern line
* New tunnel between Granville and Croydon.  Currently there are only 2 pairs of tracks between Granville and Strathfield - these are shared by a multitude of train services, including South line semi-express, all stops Inner West, Western line semi-express, and Blue Mts/Penrith intercity express trains.  This section of the rail network is perhaps the most unreliable of the whole system, and when things go down there, virtually the entire rail system shuts down (except for Illawarra/Eastern Suburbs line, which runs separately to rest of the network).
* Longer (?12 carriage) trains with new signalling system for express intercity services from Blue Mountains and Penrith.
* Enhanced flyover at Strathfield ($600m) and full quadruplication of tracks between Epping and Strathfield.

Airport line and East Hills line
* Airport line apparently to be fully separated from East Hills line, and terminate at Central.  New platform to be constructed at Central to allow transfer of airport line passengers onto SRT trains (for access to CBD).  Presumably this new terminal would need to be designed to handle train turnbacks as well.  (In terms of how airport line will be fully separate out, it has it's own tracks from Revesby to Central but currently then merges into the City Circle line with the East Hills line and Bankstown line.  By terminating at Central, it will no longer merge into city circle but have a new platform for transfer to SRT).

Inner west line
* To have high frequency services

Illustrative map of current/officially planned Sydney rail network (does not incorporate the "secret plans" above)... this map is for those who don't know what the various lines are: