Parramatta city circle: comparison with Simpson's 'Yamonote'-like circle

Rod Simpson last year presented the idea of a Yamonote-like metro circle for Sydney.  The key idea of his circle was to link up key centres in Sydney's north and central regions into a circle, such that anyone having access to one point on the circle can gain access to the the major facilities around the entire circle:

This year Rod Simpson has demonstrated thought leadership in relation to the Parramatta to Olympic Park & Strathfield light rail.  This blog has taken up the cause of the latter idea, but substantially reworks the former idea of the Yamonote circle for Sydney and instead proposes the concept of inner & middle ring orbitals.

Why is the Yamonote idea flawed?  For these reasons:

1.  South excluded: By joining up centres in Greater Sydney's north & central regions (but excluding centres in the south), it partly solves Sydney's east-west divide at the cost of creating a north-south divide.  In particular: Bankstown, Liverpool, Campsie, Marrickville & Kogarah are examples of centres that "miss" out on inclusion into the Yamonote circle.  As a result, the southern regions of Sydney become unfairly disadvantaged relative to the north and central regions.

2.  Travel times across this circle with the stops in the diagram above will be of the order of 45-60 minutes to traverse half the circle, which can be excruciatingly slow.  Instead there will be a need for an extensive system of radial links that allow faster connections from one side to the other.  However, if this circle is reduced and becomes a tighter, smaller, faster circle then yes it can be useful and in fact, this blog argues any world class CBD should be centred on a ring of train stations in the same way Sydney CBD has a city circle of 8 train stations.  However, this creates a tension with #1 above, where the need is for inclusion of more centres.  So in fact, a natural solution to both problems #1 and #2 is to create an inner ring (centred on the Parramatta-Olympic Park corridor) and a middle ring orbital (joining centres to the north, south and east).  The inner orbital should then be at the convergence point of a network of radial connections coming from all directions (north, south, east, west, northwest, southwest, north east, etc).

3.  Alignment with NSW Government strategy: The Yamonote circle as proposed by Simpson doesn't align well with either the existing rail network, or TfNSW's stated rail strategy.  In particular, according to TfNSW plans, the Sydney Metro stages 1 & 2 will link up the Chatswood-Macquarie Park corridor with Castle Hill & Norwest (not Parramatta/Carlingford as proposed by Simpson).  Sydney Metro will then continue from Chatswood to Sydenham and then Bankstown (not to Five Dock and Olympic Park as proposed by Simpson).  These plans (as well as plans for a road-only Westconnex) are already in late stages of planning and contracting and are unlikely to change substantially and will lock in rail expansion through to 2024.  There are not just cost but also capacity, governability and commercial/contractual issues in adding a construction program for the Yamonote circle alongside the Sydney Metro program.

4.  House prices: almost all the centres on the Yamonote circle have very high house or apartment prices and then land value capture of the cost of construction of the Yamonote circle metro on top of these prices would mean only the more affluent half of Sydney can afford to live directly on the Yamonote circle.  (None of the suburbs in the circle, except possibly a small part of Silverwater would have a median house price below $1 million).  Those less affluent will need to live further out, or compete for limited amounts of subsidised social housing (which only increases the cost of housing for everyone else... a zero sum game in my opinion).

So how should Simpson's Yamanote circle be reworked?  Easy: go ahead with TfNSW's Sydney Metro plans exactly as the Government has outlined, creating a "middle ring" orbital that includes not just the northern region, but also circles around to Marrickville, Campsie and Bankstown in the south.  Potentially extend this to Liverpool via Bankstown airport, which will create a game-changing reconfiguration of Sydney's rail network as the Liverpool extension will naturally flow into a Cumberland line on steroids.  Including these centres brings in substantially more affordable housing.

Then create an "inner ring" orbital, pretty much as proposed by Simpson in his Westline report, that connects Parramatta to Olympic Park, Strathfield and Rhodes - ie: the Parramatta "city circle" proposed by this blog.  As a bonus, the existing North Shore line, East Hills line, SWRL and the Badgery's creek reserved rail corridor form an "outer ring" orbital.  The result is a comprehensive rail network with inner, middle and outer rings and a series of radial lines converging onto the Parramatta inner ring.

The Parramatta city circle includes some affordable suburbs like Auburn, Lidcombe and Granville yet is extremely infrastructure rich and is centrally placed within the entire rail network.  In fact, the Parramatta city circle (even today, without building any new radial tracks) already outgun's that of Sydney CBD's city circle in relation to "hub & spoke" connectivity.  It has nine radial track pairs versus only seven for Sydney CBD.  It has a radial train track capacity of 145-160 trains per hour versus just 140 trains per hour for Sydney CBD.    Plus there are the northwest & southwest T-ways and future BRT along Victoria road as well as a Northeast BRT from Burwood to Macquarie Park and East BRT from Burwood to Sydney CBD, and South BRT from Burwood to Bankstown/Hurstivlle.   So the BRT network provides an additional eight "hub & spoke" routes, although arguably the Burwood BRT routes should be extended by one station to Strathfield to make it truly connect into the "city circle".

So there you have it - job done: you get three orbitals instead of one, with the only critical missing link being the Parramatta to Olympic Park and Strathfield connection.