Sydney will always be my hometown, no matter how many years I have lived away from it. I grew up in Sydney of the 1990s, a halcyon era in some ways (remember the hype and excitement leading up to the 2000 Olympics?). However, the public transport network was anything but. In an era that saw rapid growth, Sydney's transport languished. Every couple of years, a former railway executive (Ron Christie is the one that always comes to mind first) would publish yet another blueprint to "take Sydney's public transport network to the millennium". Cue the press fanfare. Cue the buzz and excitement. And then the pollies (politicians) will come in, reality hits, and at the end, we only end up getting motorways instead (and fairly substandard ones at that - look at the M5 East debacle!).
What do these prefatory comments have to do with this latest iteration of my diagram showing my vision for what Sydney's railway network should look like in the future? Two things.
First is that Sydney is currently going through a public transport infrastructure boom that has not been seen for decades. We are amidst several huge city-shaping metro projects, and one - the City and Southwest Metro - is about to become a reality in June 2024. This is an era where one has the license to dream, and this diagram represents my dream for what a fully decked out railway network should look like. It joins lots of other diagrams from other cartography hobbyists and public transport enthusiasts that have been released in this public transport renaissance, and I hope it promotes a bit of healthy debate as to whether my ideas are good or not.
Second is that Sydney is infamous for the amount of delay and inerita when it comes to public infrastructure, and many a proposal has been chopped and changed before ultimately being cancelled (think of the way West Metro was handled by the previous labor government - who ended up only committing to building a stub to Pyrmont(!) before abandoning even that idea). This diagram has also been through multiple ultimately unfinished and unpublished iterations before I decided to put on my best persistence pants to complete version 9.2.
This excerpt showing most of Sydney metropolitan area shows some of my ideas in diagram form:
1. A comprehensive metro network sits alongside the heavy rail network. The metro network consists of two east-west spines (i.e. the R2 West Metro plus R4 South East Metro, and the R1 North West Metro plus R3 South West Metro) plus three orbital metros that connect key regional centres (i.e. R5 Inner Ring, R6 Middle Ring and R7 Outer Ring).
2. As for specific Metro lines:
- R1 North West Metro extended to St Marys via Schofield to complete the outer orbital
- R2 West Metro extended to Western Sydney Airport to serve the South West and to provide a superior connection betwen WSI and Parramatta / Sydney CBDs
- R3 South West Metro extended to Liverpool from Bankstown via Milperra
- R4 South East Metro as a through service from R2, serving densely populated parts of the Eastern Suburbs, before heading south to serve new development areas
- R5, R6 ad R7 are in the realm of near fantasy (at least in parts), but would provide Sydney with fast, cross regional connections that are sorely needed. (Try to catch a bis from Bankstown to Parramatta and tell me how painful that is...)
3. An expanded Light Rail network:
- L3 extended along Anzac Parade to Maroubra, and then Maroubra Beach
- L4 serving Zetland, Rosebery and Botany Road
- L5 serving Barangaroo, a revitalized East Darling Harbour and then Parramatta Road
- Splitting L1 into two routes, both terminating at the Bays Precinct
- New light rail routes around the Olympic Park area
- Completing the Epping to Parramatta Rail Link by taking over the former Carlingford Line alignment (T35, as an extended and separately run Cumberland Line), and diverting Light Rail to Macqaurie Park via Kissing Point Road and land reserved for trunk road extension through Eastwood and Marsfield
- Converting North West T-Way to Light Rail
4. And finally, for the Heavy Rail network, which remains the backbone of the network, playing a complementary role to the new Metro lines:
- T35 Cumberland Line as a standalone, cross-region line from Epping to Glenfield via Parramatta, Fairfield and Liverpool
- T45 Airport Line - a one-seat ride between Sydney's two airports
This diagram shares some of the design language you would have seen from earlier versions of the diagram I have published on Behance. Here are some things you might notice:
1. I have used the same font that TransportNSW has adopted for public transit signage for continuity and to enhance the consistency of branding.
2. I have adopted a colour hierarchy to give each form of rail transit shown on the diagram its own identity. Metro colours are neon-like against a dark background, with a nod to being futuristic. Rail colours are bright and saturated. Light Rail colours are pastel and subtle.
3. Heavy Rail lines have been renumbered to allow more granularity in service patterns to be shown. The numbering has a sector-based approach so passengers have a fair idea of where the train is going to, based on the first of the two numbers (1 = north, 2 = west, 3 = south west, 4 = south west via East Hills Line, 5 = Illawarra).
This diagram makes an effort to show the myriad of service patterns, predominantly on the Heavy Rail network. To be honest, this level of detail isn't really necessary in this day and age, where one would simply rely on the computerised transit planner to tell you where to go and how to get there, but I thought there was a certain pleasure in being able to show how complex the Sydney network really is.
The other big change is something that I should ahve done ages ago, and that is to put the Sydney network map in context with the Intercity network that surrounds it. While, operationally speaking, the Intercity Network and the Sydney Suburban Network are quite separate, there is something pleasurable in putting Sydney in context of the population centres that surround it. The two diagrams are connected by dashed lines and shading, which conveys that the Sydney diagram is embedded in the Regional diagram, and then magnified on the right.
Those of you who are well-versed in Sydney's rail network would notice that there are a few ideas shown on the diagram that have been talked about for years but have yet to come to fruition, including fast rail (new tunnels that cut out winding and steep sections of track) up to the Central Coast and Newcastle, and down to the Illawarra, and a much expanded Light Rail network for Newcastle.
