Sydney’s transport and land use blunders

It is important that agencies fully comply with the business criteria and ensure that all these aspects are addressed in a well-articulated and unambiguous manner. Agencies also need to be held accountable against the appropriate key performance indicators if the proposed asset investments are undertaken.

iA has found continuing breaches across various administrations while the Grattan Institute published Roads to Riches in 2016 and concluded that Ministers should be taken out of decision-making streams right up to Parliamentary debate (removing the stench). (iA also made its own mistakes: the post-Eddington iA is a very different beast to Sir Rod's impeccable professionalism.)

Those commonsense thoughts are the opposite of Sydney's sometimes mistaken and sometimes clever experience with Labor's Metros, the gap-filling freeway program WestConnex, the NW heavy rail-then-Metro in 2012, second Harbour Crossing (metro trains), the Bankstown Metro, the Eastern Suburbs and Olympic Park tramways, the long Spit tunnel in the Northern Beaches, and the mythical West Metro. The Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission was reported to be shocked that heritage homes in the model "planned estate" of Haberfield were to be demolished. Some 200 community groups have formed.

The total expenditure is well over $50 billion so this is not chicken feed. Moreover, a careful look at old and new ideas produced the conclusion that some $30 billion can be discussed as the current level of wasted money – with the precious once-off proceeds of electricity privatisation going into substandard system options (routes, vehicles, timing, integration and so on).

The Government is refusing to reveal the "hidden costs" of cannibalising the Bradfield rail system, sections of which can be expected to close and the whole deprived of adequate Budget allocations. If the move is designed to rid the State of the rail union, as has been long-rumoured, taxpayers have had no chance to judge the policy nor the expensive method at elections – maybe the Coalition should be required to pay for the political intent.

The most obvious indicator that something is wrong is cost overruns. The Chairman of iA Mark Birrell said this in June 2016:

Cost blowouts on big projects such as Sydney's new WestConnex motorway have led to calls for fuller analysis of projects before they get under way.

In August 2009 it was revealed that Labor's CBD Metro had blown out to $7 billion, to which then Leader of the Coalition, Barry O'Farrell, said, "the estimated blowout was more reason to have the project scrapped". Fast forward to iA's analysis of WestConnex and the lack of pre-panning had unnecessary cost and community impacts. (The agency has ignored sensible and other route improvements including from Rockdale and Sydney City councils.)

Then, on 12 May '16, The Australian's Mark Coultan wrote that:

The cost of Australia's largest public transport project - the Sydney Metro rail line - has blown out to $12.5 billion, raising questions about how it will be funded. It has refused to reveal how much it hopes to recoup from property sales, with speculation it will approve massive high-rise buildings above the stations in an attempt to maximise returns.

The government has already announced it wants to redevelop a public housing estate in Waterloo to accommodate 10,000 new homes near the proposed station.

Transport Minister Andrew Constance said the full details would be revealed when the business case was released.

NB: Constance was wrong, the "summary" business case had 110 redactions and many important gaps, and was near useless in this context.