Today’s announcement confirming the next steps of the nation’s first high-speed rail project has been welcomed by leading advocacy group, the Western Sydney Leadership, which also warned that ignoring Western Sydney could put it on a fast track to failure.
Dialogue CEO Adam Leto said the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA), which is overseeing the planning and delivery of this mega-project, had to ensure that the rail-line’s Sydney interchange was located at Parramatta, not Central Station, as currently slated.
“High-speed rail is an opportunity to look forward, not backwards. If planned right, this could prove the doubters wrong. But it’s Western Sydney that makes economic and geographical sense.
“The choice to anchor the Sydney interchange at Central, rather than in Parramatta, is not only short-sighted, but will put high-speed rail on a fast track to failure if it doesn’t take into account how and where the city is growing.
“This is a high-speed rail plan that is more focused on what the city is today and not what it will be tomorrow – an outdated view that will look even more outdated by the time this project is delivered.
“Governments, at all levels, have spent the past decade trying to recalibrate the city’s transport network so that it responds to future growth, especially in the West. This plan for high-speed rail is a throw-back to the days when all stations led to Central – things have changed rapidly in recent years, and you can bet they’ll look a lot different in 20 years.
“While we’re told that future stages of the high-speed rail line will eventually link from Central to Parramatta and then to the Western Sydney International Airport, given the massive additional costs and complexity required to make that work, many of us remain highly cynical that it will ever happen.
“When completed, high-speed rail needs to strengthen national productivity, accelerate regional growth and cement Sydney’s future.
“A Central Station interchange will complicate delivery, extend timelines, increase costs and ignores a lot of the current planning and future growth of Sydney.”