Why Sydney Still Needs Sydney Trains

Every major Australian city is significantly improving its rail network, but Sydney seems to have forgotten about it. In today's video, we discuss why that's a problem, and what can be done to save it.

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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

[shoallasoala]

As someone from Sydney, I'd also add that a big reason metro has been favoured over suburban trains is a goal to crush the transport unions. Since metro is driverless, that means no unionised drivers, so lower union influence overall. Maybe the new Labor government may take a different view, but this was a driving factor for the planning by the previous government

[sylviaelse]

As a Sydney resident, I've been reduced to just being happy that something actually gets built. The recent(ish) history has been full of announced projects (sometimes reannouced at that) that never happen. This, of course, included the link from Epping to Parramatta, that was originally part of the Chatswood to Parramatta line (of which, as the video indicates, the Chatswood to Epping section has been converted to metro).

[PatSmashYT]

The baffling part of the airport is that the leppington lines weren't extended. They're literally within spitting distance from the airport and if the metro goes down which happens on weekends there would still be a reliable train service to the city

[dungandonuts]

Great video! You did a very good job of articulating the issues with the government's current attitude of "all new lines should be metro because metro is modern" as opposed to actually choosing the right tool for the job and expanding Sydney Trains where it makes sense.

[Azzap]

Fantastic points here. Completely agree.

As an infrastructure planner in transport planning in Sydney, it’s becoming difficult to encourage investment into Sydney Metro and Sydney Trains as the costs are absurd.

The problem is that all our land released and re-zoning is occurring before infrastructure planning happens, so there is a significant misalignment in infrastructure identification and delivery and actual development.

[GarethWalton]

As someone who has lived in Sydney all my life, I can say you’ve done your research, great video Reece 👏🏻 in my opinion there needs to be a northern Beaches Metro, Mr Bradfield, the man who built the Sydney harbour bridge and the Sydney underground train network had plans to build to the northern beaches but due to a world war and lack of money, it never happened.
I also believe Sydney’s Legacy network to Bondi Junction needs to be extended to Bondi beach, down and around to Randwick, Maroubra, East Gardens and back up to Redfern and Central, affectively making another Sydney loop line. It seems like the smartest plan to use the line we already have and to make it much better

[brianmorris]

This young lad doing the videos, has a better understanding of our rail system in Australia, than any of our transport ministers state and federal, and he doesn't even live here. Maybe they should be advised by this lad, and not the pretenders they have in their departments. He's certainly in tune with our transport psychi. I'm 72 now, and get where this lad is at completely. And that is the trick, tuning into the psychi of the people who use transport in whatever country. Come to Australia lad, and live here. A fresh pair of eyes won't hurt our pollies one bit. 🙂

[lindsaydonovan]

Sydneysider here. Headways can be improved by the new automated signalling system they are trialing. We will get to 24 trains per hour eventually.

[Majenta_Turkeysandvichs]

Thank-you for this video. As a former New South Welshman, watching our city seemingly abandon our wonderful suburban rail network is heartbreaking. I completely agree that SydneyTrains needs to end its love affair with double-deckers. They'd be perfect for express subruban and intercity trips, but the more frequent all-stops services should be single-deck trains.
Now I'm imagining some single-deck trains with a SydneyTrains design and livery. They would look so cool.

[lachd]

Another great video Reece, it's great to see someone from overseas doing so much homework on our railway network!

One challenge with reintroducing single deck trains is that one some lines, outer suburban express trains use the same track pairs as inner city all stops trains. If you converted inner city lines to single deck, but left the outer suburban lines with double deck, you'd have two different pieces of rolling stock on the same line (with different acceleration and different dwell times). This would be a nightmare for signaling. It's for this reason that Sydney trains has decided to stick with the same rolling stock for both purposes.

Take the T4 line for example. I'd love to see single deck all stops services running from Bondi Junction to Hurstville - and south of Redfern that might actually be possible right now because they run on separate tracks. But at present, all of the double deck Cronulla and South Coast services all also go through the same track pair on the eastern suburbs line tunnels to Bondi Junction. Realistically it would mean that between Redfern and Bondi Junction, the single deck trains would have to operate at speeds and headways similar to what the double deck trains could do, until the line separates beyond Redfern. That's probably not worth it.

[thebats]

Great Video Reece! The reason Sydney Trains isn't getting expanded is 3 main things. The government wants to focus on Sydney Trains meeting their targets which are set by Transport for NSW (TfNSW).
1. In 2017 TfNSW set the current timetable which absolutely maxed out the headways, to the point that if passengers delayed boarding, trains would run late. This is evidenced by Sydney Trains meeting their on time running KPI's during the COVID lockdowns, but not meeting is when normal patronage is in play. There was no give if a train left 10 seconds late, then the next train would be late, so on and so forth until a 5 or 10 minute delay stacked up that was unrecoverable. Off peak gaps need to look at to allow the timetable space to recovery should the infrastructure or rollingstock or customer impact (think security, public safety, and yes, slow boarding customers etc) occur.
2. Reliability, while recently the infrastructure reliability has been improving dramatically, some of the infrastructure is still 100 years old. Stitching together the patchwork of 100 year old, 50 year old, 30 year old, 20 year old, 10 year old and new infrastructure more than already has been done with current upgrades to try to get Sydney Trains to adopt European Train Control Systems (ETCS) and not the home grown interim plan that was started 20 years ago Automatic Train Protection (ATP). The network needs to remove it's maintenance backlog and remove improve long term infrastructure reliability with improved preventative maintenance regimes. While the company can chew gum and walk at the same time, you can't add a whole new line to the situation as this would soak up much needed resources (a lot of which, including some of the best and brightest have already gone to Sydney Metro)
3. Drivers and labour inputs. The reason metro is put in place rather than Sydney Trains is honestly, the years of industrial action and strike that have been going on. The current Government is a pro-labour movement political party. Even it is apprehensive to put of the the mass transport system under the influence or control of these bodies. Unfortunately public transport in Australia is very political, and the labour movements are beholden to their members, not the travelling public, for better and for worse (please note I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just saying it has good and bad for the wider community). Driverless trains remove both Guards and Drivers from Sydney's Train system. Essentially, mass movement with 2 less labour inputs per train.

None of these 3 reasons are insurmountable, but all of them individually add up and combine into an environment where expansion of the existing network is just not on the cards, politically, or from a capability perspective. Give it 5 years and hopefully all of the above will be resolved enough to move forward. The above list is not exhaustive, just the 3 top issues in my opinion.

[Floods-uytl]

Great video I really enjoyed it!
I’m a Sydneysider but live in Melbourne.. Sydney trains are a marvel and I can’t imagine what the city will look like in 20 years

Keep it up!

[kanderson]

The reason why Sydney trains is double deckers is because the suburban trains share track with Freight and interstate rail so its not possible to increase to metro frequency but you can instead increase train capacity.
Which is why Western Sydney Airport metro is a huge missed opportunity. It should of been part of a new north-south Greater Western and 2nd Hawkesbury crossing freight corridor that uses Sydney Double deck passenger trains that work well sharing track with freight. That way freight can be taken off the T1 Western and the T9 Northern, Bypassing the choked Parramatta-Strathfield corridor and the narrow Strathfield-Hornsby corridor which isn't completely quad tracked. This can also complete the not yet planned St Marys-Schofields service.

Then with freight out of the way you can transition western and northern line suburban all-stops services to metro rolling stock and frequency and repurpose the double deckers for more NSW Trainlink Services to make a V-line/RER Intercity service into the Tablelands and using the existing Intercity and regional lines which can then be made medium-speed with rail straightening and track duplications. With the freighters gone there is also more room for night trackwork and maybe late night services

[bucket]

WHOOHOO ANOTHER RMTRANSIT AUSTRALIA VIDEO THIS IS A GOOD DAY

[wavecentral]

Great video RM. And I agree with you - the new Airport line should have been an extension of the Sydney Rail Leppington line, and should have introduced single-deck carriages.
Ironically for your suggestion at 6:00 to use mixed rolling stock - Sydney used to have this. I'm old enough to have ridden around in the Tulloch cars that were mixed in with the single deck red rattlers when I was a kid, and that setup worked pretty well.
As for the Epping to Chatswood line - it was a shockingly bad piece of planning. Not only did it dive too deep (thanks to people protesting about a needed bridge over a river nearby), but it could only run at 4 trains per hour since at either end it met a higher capacity line that was already fully utilised. Once it was converted to metro it could be fully used, and now one of the stations (Macquarie Uni) is in the top 20 busiest on the network

[rorythered]

4:04 small correction. The Redfern second concorse project was finished about a month ago, and it's really great!

[timor]

The real reason is that metro requires no driver and no guard. NSW Treasury wants the running costs lower.

[mandonov]

What I find promising for Sydney Trains’ future is the signalling upgrades to the network to enable 24 trains per hour. T4 is the first line being upgraded, and is already an isolated line operationally, so the future Tangara replacement will be a perfect opportunity to run it as more of a metro.

[Kilraeus]

Happily surprised that you covered this.

Unfortunately there is a bit of a political football going on with the sydney rail systems, with a lot of disdain being thrown towards drivers and their union, which makes the driverless metro much more appealing to your average sydneysider.

[seankenny]

Operating single level carriages on the Sydney airport line would be marvelous. My family and flew to Sydney at the beginning of the year and while the service is excellent, the rolling stock isn't. Carrying luggage up or down a level from the vestibule, while train is moving is cumbersome and potentially dangerous, as there are no heavy luggage racks. Doing while shepherding children is a feat in itself and of course, no one is prepared to relinquish their vestibule seat to assist travellers…take stock of their surroundings, observe the stations at which you're arriving, to ensure you don't miss your stop, and just catch your breath.