TheHerald’s Matt O’Sullivan recently went 30 metres underground to the construction site of the new Victoria Cross Station at North Sydney,a 170-metre-long cavern through which hundreds of thousands of commuters will pass when the new Metro City and Southwest line opens next year.
It is just one of 46 stations and 113 kilometres of new metro lines that will open in Sydney by 2030.
While Victoria Cross and other new CBD stations,such as Barangaroo and Martin Place,will transform the city,the impact will be just as great in the existing and new suburban stations in the north and south-west and out beyond Parramatta.
The areas around these stations should play a vital role in housing Sydney’s growing population.
They can serve as the hubs for thriving new communities which will be much more closely connected to the rest of the city.
When the south-west section of the new metro line is completed,Bankstown will be 25 minutes closer by train to the jobs hub of Macquarie Park.
Yet,if the benefits are to be maximised,the hinterland around the stations must change dramatically.
There must be more high-density development,especially within a walkable 400 to 500 metres.
This development will upset some local NIMBYs who complain that the character of their leafy suburbs is being lost to the ugly high-rise towering over their quarter-acre blocks.
Before the 2019 state election,then-finance minister Victor Dominello broke with his own government and demanded a freeze on new development close to train stations in his seat of Ryde.
Not heard in these debates are the voices of those who desperately want to live near transport and services. The cost of preserving leafy suburbs around train stations is borne by those renters and first home buyers who are forced to move further out into sprawling suburbs with limited services and access to jobs.
The federal government’s Centre for Population projects that after pausing during the pandemic,Sydney’s population will rise from 5.3 million now to 6 million in 2033.
Without adequate,well-located new homes,this growth in population will only drive up the cost of buying and renting homes.
Increasing housing supply is too often neglected in the debate about the housing crisis.
It is just as important as subsidies to first home buyers and investment in social housing which dominate political debate.
The Grattan Institute’s calculations suggest that if an extra 50,000 homes were built each year for the next 10 years,national home prices and rents would be 10 to 20 per cent lower than otherwise.
If the state government is to realise this dream of a city knitted together by a network of train stations which are new community hubs,it must radically improve its haphazard planning processes.
Too often developers gather windfall profits buying up land around future stations while contributing little to the community.
Stations are opened before other vital infrastructure – such as schools,hospitals and bus interchanges – which will be required to service the new residents.
NSW will spend about $63 billion on the new train network,including the Metro City and Southwest and planned Metro West line. The investment is justified,but the state government needs to do more to ensure it delivers on its promise.
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