For many years, the Rozelle Railyards have been woefully underutilised, despite being a vast (12 hectare) infrastructure asset strategically located in close proximity to the Sydney CBD. Formerly used as a freight corridor, it became disused and then partially converted into a light rail corridor for the Inner West light rail. There have been proposals to use it a a depot for the aborted CBD Metro project and other organisations such as Ecotransit have proposed extending light rail through it under Victoria road into White Bay and then through to Barangaroo. Whilst there certainly is ample room to extend it's light rail function, my fascination with the Rozelle Railyard is the potential it has for connection into Sydney's heavy rail system.
A major flaw of the aborted CBD Metro project was that it was essentially a stand-alone line that did nothing to improve the capacity of Sydney's existing rail system and that required extensive and costly additional lines west/northwest before it actually could take passengers anywhere useful. The current light rail line has a role in local transport and connectivity, but is slow, taking 40 minutes to reach Central from the Dulwich Hill terminus due to it's tightly spaced stops and convoluted course through Pyrmont.
I propose instead that a heavy rail line be built adjacent to the existing light rail line, connecting with the Main West line at Ashfield through a 3.5km tunnel. This heavy rail line then proceeds through the Rozelle Railyards, under Victoria Rd, to White Bay and then continues to Barangaroo. Unlike the prior CBD Metro, it will be double deck heavy rail (to connect to the West Main line), and have it's terminus directly at Barangaroo rather than proceed through the CBD to Central. (However, it does open up opportunities for metro conversion of the Western all stops local track pair, which I will explore in a future post). I'd also envisage to taking the most direct route and not having an intermediate stop at Pyrmont (given it's position adjacent to the existing light rail line that stops at multiple stations in Pyrmont, an interchange station at Lilyfield is a better choice).
The major advantage of terminating at Barangaroo (at least for the initial stage) is that expensive tunnelling through the CBD is avoided. This also means my proposed Main West line extension will enter the CBD directly at it's northern end.
In terms of raw track pairs, this additional line would essentially add a fourth track pair to the existing three track pairs of the Main West line. Given that the existing three track pairs already offer excellent southern CBD access (via Central), and two track pairs that offer access to Town Hall, tunnelling an additional CBD through-route to the south is unlikely to be of much incremental benefit, for the multi-billion additional cost. Instead, the major "bottle neck" capacity constraint is access to the northern CBD, especially around Wynard.
Another benefit of having four instead of three track pairs is that it allows the Western rail lines to be substantially untangled. As a result, the capacity increment is more than 33% implied by raw track numbers. This is explored in a later post.
In fact, the capacity increase is up to 80%, and can provide wonderfully improved CBD access for Western Sydney commuters, of the order of 80-90 trains per hour, versus the current limit of under 50 trains per hour. Imagine commuters from Penrith having a train every 3 minutes to the CBD, and from Blacktown every 1-2 minutes. I've dubbed my proposal "Blue Sky" Western Express to reflect this enormous capacity increase!
2 comments:
1 - ANY heavy rail proposal for Sydney MUST START with consideration of its impact on the existing heavy rail network as a whole. The converse of this principal is - "how can the existing heavy rail network be tweaked for maximum cost-benefit, with due weight allocated to short and long term costs and benefits.
Seeing a disused block of land and trying to put heavy rail on it is the antithesis of this principal.
2 - Terminating at Barangaroo, even in the short term, grossly wastes potential connectivities.
These are certainly important points.
1. Agree the rail network as a whole is the most important consideration, and that is why I believe heavy rail in Rozelle Railyards is a better choice than a local light rail (which does not do much to enhance broader Sydney heavy network function, eg. for Western Sydney commuters). The impact on the wider network was examined in this post
One finding is that an extra pair of tracks from Ashfield to Barangaroo would improve efficiency, reliability and capacity through more effective sectorisation. The all stops inner west line would have it's own dedicated pair of tracks from Ashfield, removing the current conflict between express and all stops services. Also, by having four pairs of tracks into the CBD (instead of the current three), the Inner West, Northern and other two Western lines can all run at full capacity. As a result, capacity goes up to 90 trains per hour (vs the current 50 trains per hour), and trains can become more frequent - as little as every 3 minutes even on distant ends of the Western line.
2. There have been additional proposals to connect Barangaroo to Circular quay and hence city circle (by breaking the city circle into 2 parts at Circular Quay, with the Wynyard part becoming a 2nd harbour crossing), eg. see blog by James Hansen:
http://jameshansen.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/2nd-harbour-crossing-3-for-price-of-1.html
There are a lot of advantages to his approach, but it requires the NSW Government to change it's second harbour tunnel mindset and instead use additional lanes on the Harbour bridge...
My choice to terminate at Barangaroo was essentially "political", to keep my proposal as easy to understand as possible, and to keep it as consistent as possible with current government policy, reduce the complexity of political decision making. Once there is the political will to proceed with (and fund) the Blue Sky Western Express, definitely the next step is to look into ways of optimising it further and making additional connections where possible.
My approach of terminating a Barangaroo was also based on Kym Norley's Wynyard/Town Hall catchment analysis.
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