Parramatta city circle: MacPark/Global Economic Corridor as "middle ring"

Malcolm Turnbull has announced Federal funding for an extension of the Gold Coast light rail.

In NSW the top two candidates for the next light rail line (amongst an original short list of four routes) are Parramatta to Olympic Park and Parramatta to Macquarie Park.  At the moment, there is an intense competition between these two routes for which one gets funded and proceeds.    Could further Federal funding for light rail make it possible for both routes to proceed?

This blog has argued the Olympic Park route should have priority, on the basis of the CBD-scale urban regeneration and land-value capture possible there.  On the other hand, Macquarie Park should first implement parking levies to bring it into competitive neutrality with other employment centres like Parramatta and North Sydney before it gets any more government funded infrastructure.  TfNSW's 2031 travel modelling shows very little justification for the MacPark to Parramatta connectivity.  In contrast, TfNSW projections for travel between Parramatta to Olympic Park are an order of magnitude greater than Parramatta to MacPark:

Additionally, this blog has argued that a Parramatta "City Circle" incorporating Olympic Park is the smack-bang centrally placed "inner ring" commercial centre for the whole of Greater Sydney.  The "CBD mandate" for Parramatta City Circle are it's 120K jobs, and 145 trains per hour radial rail capacity (exceeding Sydney CBD's current 140 trains per hour, and within "striking distance" of it's 300K jobs).

In contrast, the so called "Global Economic Corridor" of Sydney (within which Macquarie Park is contained) is best viewed as a "middle ring" arc of commercial centres having a role servicing regional quadrants of Sydney.  That is, with just 60K jobs and only an single rail track pair, Macquarie Park's place in the metropolitan hierarchy is best viewed as a regional centre for the upper Northern region of Sydney.  Likewise, other non-CBD centres of the Global Economic Corridor should be viewed as other "middle ring" centres, ie: Chatswood/North Sydney servicing the lower Northern region, Norwest/Castle Hill servicing the Northwest region, Bondi Junction/Randwick servicing the Eastern region.  (Sydney CBD and "gateway" infrastructure like Port Botany/Sydney Airport should be viewed as shared by both the GEC and an east-west "Central Corridor").

This blog believes attempts to merge/converge the "inner ring" Parramatta city circle with the "middle ring" Global Economic corridor are misguided and will dilute the usefulness of both concepts. Instead, the Global Economic Corridor should be extended to Bankstown and to Liverpool, to service Southwest regions.  This is a better match for Sydney's existing and planned rail infrastructure, which has well defined outer, middle and inner orbitals centered on Parramatta city circle, as well as nine radial track pairs converging onto the inner circle of Parramatta-Olympic Park-Strathfield.  In contrast, the eight train stations of Sydney CBD currently have only 7 track pairs converging onto them, so (even today) Parramatta City Circle is the "rail centre" of Greater Sydney.