Parramatta Centric Revisualisation: Geographical Accuracy

Key features of the Parramatta Centric revisualisation of Sydney's rail network are the middle and outer orbitals centred on Parramatta.  These orbitals were diagrammatically shown as ellipses.  However, as seen in the map below, this is surprisingly accurate geographically, as key railway stations and centres are located very close to a "best fit" ellipses drawn through them.  The long axis of these ellipses is restrained to perfect east-west by my drawing program, and it may be that the fit would be even better if there was a slight rotation to the ellipses.  Either way the fit is very good:

Parramatta Centric Revisualisation: "City Circle" equivalent

The previous blog post outlined a revisualisation of the rail network with Parramatta at the centre.  It also identified an outer orbital and also a middle ring orbital.  But in Parramatta's case, does it have an inner orbital?  Is this a "missing link" in the network.

In the case of Sydney CBD, a inner orbital is formed by the "city circle", ie: Sydney CBD does not comprise a single station but instead has a number of stations linked into a "circle".  So what is Parramatta's equivalent of a city circle?

After some thought, it's clear that the inner orbital for Parramatta comprises:
* Western rail line from Westmead to Strathfield
* Northern rail line from Strathfield to Rhodes
* Olympic Park reserved light rail corridor (currently bus route)
* Olympic Park heavy rail station

This is now what the resulting three orbitals look like:

This now completes the Parramatta-centric rail network.  The outer orbital comprises mainly double deck heavy rail.  The middle orbital is Sydney metro for the most part although the section around Blacktown is a bus link/T-way.  The inner orbital is then predominantly the Olympic light rail reserved corridor.  The previous situation of radial lines not quite converging on Parramatta is also now resolved, in that they now converge on the Parramatta city circle.

Parramatta Centric Revisualisation of Rail Network

Parramatta has been made Greater Sydney's dual CBD in the latest Sydney Metro Strategy.

One criticism of the existing Sydney rail network is that it is too Sydney CBD centric and consists mainly of radial lines with poor inter-regional/orbital connectivity.

But this is not so if you revisualise the network (plus officially announced reserved rail corridors and existing rapid bus T-ways) from a Parramatta-centric point of view.  As can be seen in the network diagram below, Sydney's rail network forms a very nicely balanced combination of orbital rail routes and radial rail lines around Parramatta at it's centre.  Surprisingly, these aren't just fantasy "lines on a map".   Already existing (or under construction/reservation) today are a comprehensive and coherent set of inner and outer orbitals plus western, eastern, northern and southern radial lines converging into the vicinity of Parramatta.  The missing links are relatively minor.

The yellow central area is the Central Corridor previously discussed on this blog.

Acknowledgements: the diagram below is my realisation of the network, after the initial conception of a Parramatta-centric rail network came from Bob Meyer at Cox Achitecture.

This type of visualisation should be used by TfNSW so as to change it's mindset and paradigm for future transport planning, as well as to educate the public and importantly, developers/business decision makers, on Sydney's transport geography and Parramatta's central role therein.