Sydney looks West For Rail IdeaL  

With the possibility of federal funding making an expanded Sydney rail system more likely, plans to increase the housing density along the western corridor are being floated and the Perth rail system is being looked at as a good example to follow - Perthlings, please take us to your railway system.

Most Australian cities now have serious rail projects; for me, it is an exciting time. Sydney has two metro rail lines on Infrastructure Australia's interim priority list for Commonwealth funding: the West Metro, a line which largely follows Parramatta Road, and the CBD Metro line to Rozelle.

The final list will go to federal cabinet in March, but much work is needed before then, as most projects submitted were poorly defined with weak economic analysis, did not look at alternatives and rarely considered land use. Sydney's new plan for land use around stations is thus welcome.

I say most cities have serious rail projects, because Perth does not. It has spent the last 20 years modernising and extending its railway, largely because of the political backlash to a conservative state government's attempt to close the railway down - in the middle of the first major oil crisis. It mobilised everyone and showed how important a modern electric railway was to the future resilience of the city.

Perth's new Southern Railway already is something of a model for other cities as they prepare their plans. It goes deep into the outer suburbs, places badly hit by last year's oil crisis (a foretaste of many more). Now, 50,000 people a day are carried along a corridor that before could only manage 14,000 on buses.

It cost $30 million a kilometre, including a one kilometre tunnel under the city and two river crossings. Sydney's recent Epping-Chatswood rail project cost $200 million a kilometre due to the extensive tunnelling.

The Southern Railway is a model in other respects, too. Most significantly for Sydney, some stations have transit oriented developments, or TODs. These are high density, mixed-use areas with homes, shops and offices, designed to integrate closely into the station and which can provide a local area with many city services.

In the US such developments can allow residents to reduce their car usage by 50 per cent and increase their household income by 20 per cent. They are popular therefore with those who can afford to live there (affordable housing can be built; Vancouver for instance, requires 15 per cent of each such development to be devoted to affordable housing).