Sydney Metro West part 3: Strathfield interchange key to viable patronage

The West Metro to Parramatta has been announced as the preferred next metro line, with stations confirmed for Parramatta, Olympic Park, White Bay and Sydney CBD.  Other stations are to be considered but have not been mentioned.

For the announced scope (ie: terminating in Parramatta), the biggest question in my opinion is how to fill up the announced 40K/hr capacity without hitting bottlenecks elsewhere in the "old" rail system.  To see how big 40K is, have a look at the left bar chart below (source = TfNSW).

Sydney Metro West part 2: complementary metro and light rail catchments

The first part looked at one proposal to replace the Parramatta light rail line with a metro.

However, the Parramatta to Olympic corridor, at over 1600 hectares of potential renewal lands, in the geographic heart of Greater Sydney, could easily support both a light rail line and a metro, as shown in the catchment map below (blue circles = light rail stations, purple circles = metro stations).  The metro would have stations at Silverwater and at Pippita as the key intermediate stops between Parramatta and Strathfield.

Note that Olympic Park is not an intermediate stop for the metro, as it actually has very limited value capture opportunities - sufficient for light rail but not for heavy rail... more on this later - first what needs to be explained is the concept of a "continuous walkup catchment".

Sydney Metro West Part 1: detailed scoop on WestLink proposal

The SMH has an "exclusive" story on Sydney West Metro, but was light on detail, apart from speculating it could replace parts of the Parramatta to Strathfield light rail network.

Below is one proposal that gives more "inside" detail on how one proposed West Metro line would work (effectively directly replacing the proposed Parramatta light rail to Strathfield).  This proposal has gone through a few iterations over the past few months, possibly due to feedback given to the private consortium by TfNSW.  The drawings below were taken from the February 2016 iteration, but there have been some subsequent refinements (such as an extension to Maroubra and deletion of the station at North Strathfield).

It is definitely pleasing to see the involvement of land owners and property companies becoming involved in transport planning.  The old "transport first" approach relies too much on Government capital grants and operational subsidies to be viable - as user fares cover only a minority of operating costs - let alone funding capital costs.  The result is that many worthwhile transport projects can't be funded.  It also results in lack of integration between stations and surrounding retail/commercial uses (resulting in dark, poor lit, inactive stations outside of peak hours).  In contrast, land owner led transport planning can create stations with better pedestrian access and more retail and commercial activation and allows the matching of funding with more intensive land use.

However, one controversy is whether this West Metro proposal would undermine the business case for a light rail line also.   Part 2 of this thread will demonstrate this is not the case by looking into an alternative metro alignment which will allow light rail and metro to co-exist in the same corridor (but with complementary value capture catchments).

Note: images below are an iconic interpretation of the West Metro Link only.

For actual maps sourced from the WestLink private consortium,

go to City of Parramatta website at this link:

http://www.cityofparramatta.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/John-Kinsella-Billbergia.pdf

Sydney Metro EIS: Central Platform 16 (T1 Northbound) to become dual faced

The Sydney Metro EIS was released today at (majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au)

More analysis to come in future but a quick note to highlight that the T1 Northbound line (Platform 16 at Central Station) will become dual faced.  This has critical importance to improving the efficiency of the Western line by allowing passengers to alight from both sides of the train doors, potentially halving dwell time at Central.

This was a prediction that was made in November....

Sydney Metro NW: higher cost than CityRail if no branching (part 2)

The previous post established Sydney Metro NW will have very poor cost per pax metrics (even worse than Sydney Trains!).  We now look at the case if Metro NW also connects an additional branch by taking over the (existing) North Shore rail line tracks between Gordon and Hornbsy as follows:

This will improve cost metrics as follows:

Sydney Metro NW: higher cost than CityRail if no branching (part 1)

Branching of railway lines have a bad name from an engineering perspective (but often are a good thing from an economic perspective).

They can cause overcrowding (especially at inner urban stations) during peak hours, they can increase complexity and they can cause unreliability if they are on the surface (ie: if they are not in a tunnel or in an overpass).

They are also (wrongly) blamed for low frequencies (eg. every 15~30mins) during off peak periods.  However, as we shall see below, in fact it is the high operating costs of unbranched lines that make high off peak frequencies uneconomic.  As shown below, branching in this case **helps** improve off peak economics and is either neutral or positive for better off peak frequencies.

As for the issue of decreased reliability, this is so for surface ("flat junction") rail lines, where branches need to cross over the other rail line (of the bidirectional track pair).  But the flat junction problems disappear completely when rail lines are in separate tunnels.

Without a doubt, Sydney's network has far too much branching, with each end often branching not just to two branches, but often into three or four branches.  Clearly 3-4 branches are too much, but this does not necessarily mean a single branch point (into two branches) is bad.    In fact, around the world, numerous modern rail systems use branching - typically to a moderate degree of one branch at one or both ends.  Crossrail, RER, even Hong Kong's East Rail line all have branches.

So should Sydney Metro have branches?  Previously, a case was made that Sydney Metro SW does not need a branch.  Instead, by extending to Liverpool and then to Parramatta (via taking over the Cumberland line tracks), this would bring in enough patronage to fill up the 45,000 pax/hr capacity of Sydney Metro without branching.

On the other hand, Metro NW is a different story.  There is massive spare capacity and the many "string of pearls" employment centres strung up at Chatswood, MacPark, Castle Hill, Norwest and Rouse will all serve to reduce & even out the peaky, unidirectional passenger flows seen in Metro SW.  So for the foreseeable future to 2060 and beyond, capacity of 22,000 pax/hr will be the most that is ever needed.

Metro NW without a branch will also have very poor operating cost metrics.  The CIE (Centre for International Economics) Report released by IPART in December 2015 shows that all the hype about Sydney Metro's low maintenance driverless trains (that get rid of drivers and get rid of train guards completely), is just that - hype.  Benchmarks from around the world show that even the most "technically efficient" rail systems are only around 30% more efficient than Sydney Trains (in terms of cost of moving one carriage over one km).  For example, Singapore's Metro has a cost of $7.55 (to move one train car for one km) vs Sydney Trains $9.13.  Where the real inefficiencies lies is not lack of fancy train hardware or maintenance cost inefficiency, but in "allocative efficiency" - which is about patronage, rail catchments, service differentiation and demand side measures - ie: measures to ensure train carriages are kept full.  Allocative efficiency (ie: cost per pax trip) is where Sydney Trains underperforms by 300%, as shown below:

The Singapore benchmark of $7.55 to move one train car along one km provides an excellent way to cost Sydney Metro NW's operating expenses:

Sydney Metro: extension to Liverpool will untangle Western line

In December 2015, TfNSW confirmed it was considering an extension of Sydney Metro to Liverpool via a direct route that would pass through the vicinity of Bankstown airport.  This announcement also marks the first (major) departure of Sydney Metro plans from the 2012 Transport Masterplan.  However, most people would consider the Parramatta to CBD corridor to be higher in priority, so why is so much being poured into the Bankstown & Liverpool corridors and not the Parramatta/Western line corridor?

As it turns out, the Liverpool extension would not only speed up Liverpool to CBD journeys, but it can also untangle the Western line and create a 200% capacity increment, which should be enough for a Sydney of 10+ million people.  Plus it would also provide a Cumberland line "on steroids", that would have trains running every 2 minutes instead of the current every 15-30 minutes.  The diagram below shows an example of how the Western line "untangling" would work:

WestConnex Stage 5 & 6??? When does WestConnex end?

We know WestConnex has these stages either already under construction, or in planning:

Stage 1: M4 widening (east of Parramatta) and tunnel to Harberfield
Stage 2: M5 duplication
Stage 3: M4-M5 link
Stage 4: Western Harbour tunnel and possible Northern Beaches link

The latest report from Infrastructure Australia shows yet another stage is under consideration:

Stage 5: M4 motorway upgrade - Parramatta to Lapstone

(Source) page 7 from this report:

Could this be a case of fattening up the WestConnex business case (by pumping in even more cars from Penrith & Blue Mountains) - so as to ensure all the expensive road tunnels east of Homebush will be filled up and hence generate the tolls to make selling of the WestConnex toll concession more lucrative (or less loss making)?