Prediction: announcement soon on St Leonards Quadruplication

I am making a prediction that TfNSW will soon be making an announcement regarding extension of the Northwest Rail-link to St Leonards, by quadruplicating tracks between Chatswood and St Leonards.

This prediction comes from digging into the NWRL OTS (Operations, Trains, Systems) contract documents.  The project deed, on page 210-212 outlines the process by which modification to the NWRL project can proceed, namely:
1. TfNSW requests a modification.
2. "OpCo" (the winner of the OTS contract) must provide a modification impact proposal "as soon as practicable" after receiving the request.  This impact proposal must include details such as costs, timing, approvals required and operational impact.
3. TfNSW then has "(blank) business days" to decide whether to accept/reject the proposal.

Increasing train length is most cost effective capacity solution

The CBD & Southeast Sydney light rail line will have the world's longest vehicles at 67m.

For heavy rail, 10 car trains were revealed in internal Transport NSW documents as one of the most cost effective measures for increasing capacity - a 25% capacity increment for only $149m for Western line station lengthening, and $149m for Richmond line station lengthening:

Land price data inconsistency: is RBA using wrong data?

Is the RBA using wrong data for it's macro-economic policy setting?

This graph shows the RP Data median land prices, ie: north of $150K and even higher in capital cities:

These numbers match my general impression of land prices, with land lots at Edmondson Park in Sydney's South West Growth centre for sale at approx ~$320K.

Yet last year (2013 speech) the data the RBA cited had unusually low land price contributions to overall development costs:

RBA puts non-Sydney land prices at under $50K?

CBD & SE Sydney Light Rail to increase capacity by 50%

Even before any construction has started, the NSW Government is already aiming to increase the CBD & SE Sydney light rail capacity by 50%, presumably to 13500 passengers per hour.  This illustrates that the original design was underwhelming in it's vision or ambition.  I'm also not sure if George St is really the best alignment for the CBD light rail, as it necessitates using up not one but two precious Central station street frontages (Eddy Ave and Chalmers St).  Despite using up so much valuable Central station real estate, it's interchange with trains terminating at Sydney terminal is quite suboptimal, requiring passengers to cross all the way over to Rawson Place (what's wrong with having stop in Eddy Ave?).

The Connecting Sydney consortium, consisting of Transdev Sydney, Alstom Transport Australia, Acciona Infrastructure Australia and Capella Capital, was named the preferred bidder for the project.

Details of how the 50% capacity increase is achieved are unclear.  Presumably because final contract has not closed, it remains confidential information.  If anyone can provide a tip on this matter, please post a comment below.

Wozniak migrating to Sydney, hired by UTS

Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak is set to join the University of Technology, Sydney, in December as an adjunct professor.He will become a key part of the UTS "Magic Lab", the university's centre for innovation and enterprise research, which conducts research into robotics and artificial intelligence.  ....Mr Wozniak has harboured intentions of moving to Australia since 2012, when he said he was going through the process of becoming an Australian citizen. (SMH)

For more details read the announcement by UTS.

This will cement Pyrmont/Ultimo as an emerging technology hub.  This district was the fastest growing employment centre in the City of Sydney Local Government Area, with a 46% increase in employment (from 19,869 jobs in 2007 to 29,010 jobs in 2012).  One example of this growth is Google, which currently occupies 20,000sqm of office floorspace in Pyrmont, but is reported to be looking to grow to as much as 100,000 sqm beyond 2018.

Along with the construction of Sydney's own "Highline", an elevated walkway along the disused Ultimo goods rail line, this area is really starting to add to the growing momentum for the expansion of Sydney's CBD westwards.

Bays Precinct an opportunity to right the wrongs of Barangaroo

Mike Harris in his comparison of the planning of Barangaroo to other global megaprojects reports the following:

"In the case of Barangaroo transparency, participation and accountability have all been heavily criticised from academia, government, professional and popular media quarters... 

Technical vagueness has been exhibited in the transport planning for Barangaroo. 23,000 people are expected to live and work at Barangaroo and another 33,000 are expected to visit daily. In 2011, four years after the approval of the Barangaroo Concept Plan - acting as the statutory master planning instrument - the transport planning was described as little more than vague ideas (Withnell, 2011). This is despite the publicised goal that 96% of employees during peak will travel by public transport, bicycle or foot (Barangaroo Delivery Authority, 2013). The number of employees anticipated to travel during peak is not provided but in a worst case scenario (they all do) 96% is 22,000 people. To consider this by transport mode capacity that would mean 368 busses, 73 trams or 18.5 double decker heavy rail trains. The question that this raises is how was such major development (“Sydney’s largest redevelopment project this century”, by BDA’s own admission) approved and progressed without a well defined transport strategy, including commitment for investment in new or upgraded public transport infrastructure. In September 2012 the Barangaroo Integrated Transport Plan was released. The plan primarily proposes “viability investigations” and “feasibility studies” for increasing capacity on existing infrastructure. 

By global megaproject standards transport infrastructure provision at Barangaroo could be considered very poor. The Ørestad and Nordhavn megaprojects in Copenhagen, Hudson Yards in New York, HafenCity in Hamburg, Zuidas in Amsterdam and Kop van Zuid in Rotterdam included commitments for new rail lines and stations as part of the early planning phase. In the case of Ørestad the metro line was constructed first, funded by the future sale of the public land (Book, Eskilsson, & Khan, 2010). This strategy of funding a new metro line with the revenue raised from selling public land is now being implemented at Copenhagen’s next megaproject Nordhavn."

Bays Precinct is an opportunity to right these wrongs.  I have proposed using the Rozelle Railyards as a heavy rail corridor to connect Barangaroo into the Western Sydney commuter rail network.  However, even if there is no agreement on the exact rail transport plans, it is important that a corridor for heavy rail as well as light rail be preserved in the Rozelle Railyards - not just light rail.

Station for Sydney University: Reading Between the Lines

The following was speculated by blogger OzRails:

"I really hope that this means that they are reconsidering their removal of the Inner West line from their plans.  It was originally discarded because of the complexities where the tunnel was to surface at Redfern, well that's not happening and they are considering a path that runs in the exact direction to allow a branch to join the inner west line between Newtown and Stanmore where there is space for the tunnel to meet the existing line to Homebush. So that would see 15 tph for the Bankstown line (confirmed by TNSW) and 15 tph for the inner west line. This would not only provide a much improved service to the inner west but would free up space on the Main South line and a faster journey to the CBD for those trains as they run express from Homebush to just before the CBD other than Strathfield and Burwood. The tunnel for the Inner West SRT line would have the SYD uni station.
...
One may then ask, what happens with the Hurstville branch? It would have to stay as it is right now but if youre looking to convert the ESR to Metro then you use the Hurstville and Revesby branches to feed that line along with the stations from Sydenham to Erskineville. So 15 tph for each branch plus 30 tph for the ESR (extended to supplement the Light Rail). "

This could explain a lot of the discrepancy between the Rail Futures 2012 document and the 2014 SRT documents.  If the above speculation by OzRails is correct, then TfNSW have basically discarded their Rail Futures 2012 plan (to link Hurstville local tracks to the SRT), and have gone back to an earlier plan to connect the Inner West locals to the SRT....  Yet another TfNSW reversal!  (Not that I think plans should be fixed forever and never be reviewed).