You can now use a MyMulti 1, 2 or 3, a MyMulti Day Pass, a Pensioner Excursion Ticket (PET) or a Family Funday Sunday ticket on the light rail. All these tickets have to be purchased prior to boarding a tram.

However, CityRail single-trip, return or weekly tickets are still not valid, nor are any bus-only tickets or concessions apart from the PET. Metro Light Rail also continues to issue the full range of its own tickets which are valid only for its own services. More on ticketing issues in my next post but first, how are the new arrangements operating and what has been the impact on patronage?

Trams don’t have ticket validators, so when you board a tram and show the conductor a My Multi or other valid ticket, he or she will usually issue a zero-value ticket. This is simple in practice but a ticket showing “$.00” value is a very odd thing to receive.

MyMulti zero ticket (image from Wikipedia)

This brings us to patronage. I don’t have any figures (and if any are released, bear in mind the method of counting) so my evidence is based on my observations and anecdotal evidence, but there seems to be a small but noticeable increase in the number of tram users, particularly older users who qualify for PETs.

In particular there seems to be more people using the tram for short-haul trips, especially between Central, Capitol Square and Paddy’s Markets. For most people this is a walkable distance, but if you are infirm, carrying a lot of shopping or just in a hurry, the tram provides by far the best public transport connection between these points, especially if you already have a PET or MyMulti.

While the overall patronage increase seems relatively small, I was struck by the large number of passengers who did produce MyMulti and PET tickets on the tram, especially coming from or going to Central. This would seem to indicate that a significant proportion of people are already using the light rail in combination with trains; now they can use their MyMulti and other valid tickets without having to pay an additional tram fare.

Given the location of the current MLR terminus at Central, this is hardly surprising, but it also reflects the fact that the current ticket integration model tends to favour passengers transferring from trains rather than those who catch buses. For many train users, purchase of a weekly MyMulti costs little more than a weekly rail ticket but provides much better value – including now the light rail – and doesn’t lock them into travel between two stations on a particular corridor.

For bus users, especially in the inner city, it’s a different story. Even a Zone 1 MyMulti is relatively expensive, especially if passengers don’t have any opportunities to use trains or ferries. For these users, Travel10s are a cheaper alternative and offer reasonable flexibility – but these tickets, like all bus tickets, are not recognised on the light rail.

Part of the problem lies in the “unfinished” nature of the MyMulti ticket system, which I’ll look at in my next post.

The announcement also echoes many of the governance recommendations of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) Independent Public Transport Inquiry. This called for a similar coordinating transport authority, though the government’s ITA will have a much bigger remit. There are other key differences, but let’s start with the similarities which are striking (and pleasing for those of us who worked on the SMH Inquiry).

The SMH Inquiry proposed a transport coordination authority managed by an independent board to plan and manage all aspects of Sydney’s public transport. Rail, bus and ferry operators would have been contracted on a contestable basis to provide services to the authority, which would have taken over and integrated their planning powers.

The SMH Inquiry report also proposed that the authority would prioritise customer service and the importance of providing each public transport user with a complete journey to meet their requirements rather than a set of disconnected bus, rail or ferry trips. This would have involved a branch dedicated to integrating all aspects of service provision including fares, ticketing, timetables, interchanges and information provision.

While the SMH proposal did not incorporate the management of car-based transport, the authority would have had a strong say in the approval of major new road projects.

The government’s ITA is very similar in that it will also integrate all aspects of public transport. It also emphasises customer service; there will be a division specifically dedicated to “Customer Experience”, which in the words of the Ministerial media release, “will make sure journeys are as simple and seamless as possible”.

There are other structural similarities, with divisions responsible for planning, services, projects and policies. The ITA will also take over planning powers from the individual transport agencies, much as the SMH Inquiry proposed, and use these resources to develop a comprehensive transport “masterplan”.

There are however some significant differences. These can be summarised as follows:

• The ITA will not be managed by an independent board, although an independent advisory board will be appointed by the government. The exact relationship of this to the ITA is unclear.
• The ITA will take over procurement, long-term planning and policy-making from the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) as well as from public transport agencies, thus giving it direct oversight of major road projects.
• The ITA will also manage freight transport and oversee transport across the State, not just in greater Sydney.
• However, it will not have the final say on major infrastructure projects, with the government intending to establish a state infrastructure body.

Despite these differences, the government’s new body is a huge step forward for transport planning and management in NSW. It is hard to disagree with the sentiment in the joint ministerial media release about the need to replace the current disconnected transport “silos” with a “streamlined agency which plans and delivers for all modes” and to concentrate on improving the transport user’s experience.

There is also compelling logic in integrating and extending the planning and management of transport statewide and to include road and freight transport as well as public transport. However, the government’s new approach is very ambitious and not without its risks:

• The first challenge for the new body will be getting on top of this enormous range of responsibilities and the associated expectations. While the primary reason for not including roads planning and transport management outside Sydney in the SMH Transport Inquiry recommendations was that these areas were outside its main terms of reference, there was also a desire to keep the proposed authority as lean as possible and focussed on Sydney’s public transport, which is a big enough challenge in its own right. The ITA has been handed a much more complex role and will need to be able to balance the competing demands of city and country, roads and public transport.
• Taking over planning powers from the current piecemeal collection of agencies and in particular the RTA will involve not just a short-term period of dislocation but also a long-term process of major cultural change, both within the agencies and at the political level as well. This will not be easy; for example, the attempted merger (by the previous state government) some years ago of infrastructure, transport and landuse planning had similar aims. However it began to unravel soon after the departure of the responsible Minister and was quietly dismantled shortly thereafter.
• Indeed, the Roads Minister has openly acknowledged the need to change the public perception of the “arrogance” of the RTA. Given the dominant role it has played in NSW infrastructure planning for decades and its success in getting motorway projects built, it will be fascinating to see if the RTA meekly accepts its new role of being just another transport provider.
• Having created a “mega-authority” with such far-reaching powers over all aspects of transport, it is understandable that the government has decided to separate the process of managing the state’s overall infrastructure program from transport planning. However, it will need to clarify the relationship between the two authorities and also how the additional funds required to meet the huge shortfall in public transport infrastructure will be provided.

Despite these concerns, the Government is to be congratulated on what is, in “Yes Minister” parlance, a “courageous” decision.  Given the widespread public cynicism regarding previous public transport plans and announcements, it will need to be equally courageous in ensuring that the planning and prioritisation processes to be implemented by the authority are also credible and transparent and above all, that the resulting projects are funded and built.

The piggery is located in the corridor for the South West Rail Link currently under construction and close to the proposed Leppington town centre, which will form the centrepiece for the south west growth centre’s planned 100,000 new homes. Not only is it the only piggery left in Sydney, it also has a pathogen-free herd which means that it supplies hospitals with organs for research and use in transplantation.

While the government wants to resume only a portion of the site, the area required is essential to the piggery’s waste management procedures and if it is resumed the piggery will have to close. Unfortunately even if its owners received full compensation it would be unlikely to reopen anywhere near Sydney. As one of the owners observed, few councils would agree to approve an application for a new piggery; “we’re just above, or below, nuclear waste dumps on the scale of developments that governments want. It’s the smell.”

As I pointed out in my response, intensive animal farming has its limits in an increasing urban setting – even if it was there first. This is particularly if the farm is close to a new town centre or other planned high-density development; obviously more people are affected and it is more difficult to either screen the farm area or provide a significant buffer zone, especially if the farming operation involves noise or small.

However, I was also at pains to point out that it was vital to retain agricultural land in the Sydney basin, especially for the city’s food security. As Sinclair, Bunker and Holloway note in their 2003 paper, the Sydney basin (at that time) produced the greatest amount of perishable produce in NSW. They also observed that as land became more valuable because of its potential for conversion to residential use, agricultural uses also became more intensive, especially as farmers relocated from other areas as they were developed.

However, as more and more land is turned into housing lots, farms start to close down. From my observations, the resulting collapse in agriculture can happen surprisingly quickly. Farmers rely upon a range of support services such as transport providers, farming equipment and other specialist suppliers and in some cases packing and distribution facilities. In turn, these suppliers rely on a “critical mass” of farms to provide demand.

As farms cease to operate these support services become unviable and also close down. Without these specialist services in the local area the remaining framers struggle to hang on and in turn also decide to shut up shop, a decision aided by the increasing value of the land in terms of its potential for urban development.

Another point which I raised briefly when I was contacted by the paper but which wasn’t included for space reasons was that the way in which the planning process for the south west and north west growth centres had been rolled out had resulted in these issues not being adequately addressed. The original plans had included “green wedges” which would preserve some high-amenity natural bushland and farming areas within the growth centres.

North West and South West Growth Centres (from Planning NSW website)

However this caused a furore when the plans were released. The problem was that those property owners whose land was directly affected by the new development would be fully compensated whilst those in the “green wedges” would receive no compensation at all. Not surprisingly the latter objected. The government went to water and announced it would acquire all the land including that which was set aside in the plan to be preserved as rural.

To “compensate” for this the government also increased the number of dwellings it was proposing to develop in the growth centres, in part to off-set the additional land acquisition costs involved. As a result the green wedges disappeared overnight.

Without a detailed comparison of the piggery’s location with the original growth centre plans it is impossible to know whether it was located in one of the original green wedges or would have been acquired for development anyway. However this is beside the point; a proper planning and land acquisition process for the growth centres would have at least attempted to identify and protect key aspects of agriculture within an urban setting.

This hasn’t happened and the new state government has announced that it was to expand development at the urban fringe even further. Unfortunately it now looks increasingly likely that food production will fade away on the urban frontier.

The new Premier has got off on the right foot by announcing that he will implement a first 100-day action plan which will have a primary focus on transport issues. Although there is some debate about whether the electorate regards transport or health issues as the highest priority for action, there is no doubt that the previous government’s underinvestment in public transport infrastructure and its chaotic administration of the transport portfolio were the most public symbols of its failure.

Just as success has a thousand parents while failure is an orphan, new governments find themselves with lots of new friends and plenty of people offering free advice about their policy priorities (unlike new oppositions, which only get post-mortems for free). I’m joining a long queue, but in this spirit I’d like to offer seven suggestions on what the Premier should do in the next 100 days, specifically relating to planning and transport:

1. Don’t reinvent the wheel – just get it turning. There is no need for the new government to restart all transport and metropolitan planning from scratch. Transport in particular has been the subject of exhaustive planning processes, through the previous government’s transport strategies and those prepared independently, most notably the Sydney Morning Herald’s Public Transport Inquiry (in which I participated).  These have identified the key infrastructure projects required in the next 10 to 15 years.

While existing plans will need to be updated and the whole planning process rebuilt in the longer term (see suggestion no. 3), there are already more than enough planned projects on which work can begin. What we really need is a commitment to their funding and implementation, the things that have been sadly lacking in the past three decades. In the first 100 days the new government needs to consolidate the existing plans as a basis for immediate action.

Epping Station (from Wikipedia)

2. Repeal Part 3A – but clarify what it will be replaced with. The new government’s commitment to repeal Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, which allows the government to take over from councils the assessment of “state significant” development applications, is very welcome. Under the previous government the definition of “state significant” had been increasingly widened to the point where it no longer had any meaning.

This commitment can easily be implemented within 100 days. However, there will still be some need for government input on the really major project proposals that will have a significant impact on a wider region.  To deal with these – and to reduce the temptation for future governments to reintroduce Part 3A-type powers via the back door – a collaborative framework between state and local governments needs to be established at the same time Part 3A is abolished (see next suggestion).

3. Set up a real partnership with local government to run the planning process. The promises made by the new government and reiterated by shadow ministers in the run-up to the election to consult and work with councils and Regional Organisations of Councils (ROCs) are also welcome, especially in the context of regional and metropolitan planning.

This initiative requires a meaningful and sustained commitment from both sides. The new Government should establish a dialogue with local government in the first 100 days to develop a new medium and long-term planning process as well as a mechanism to handle major development proposals – a difficult task with over 150 councils. This means that councils will also need to cooperate through the ROCs or other structures to present a coherent and strategic response.

4. 50:50 or 30:70 – it’s also a case of where people want to live. Mr O’Farrell has already made a commitment to change the target for the ratio between the population urban redevelopment in existing suburbs and new housing in greenfields areas from the current 70 to 30 percent to a 50:50 balance.

This needs to be carefully considered. Population movement is usually gradual process – people tend to move outwards in a “shuffle” as they change houses in Sydney, and not by leaps and bounds. While cheaper housing at the urban fringe might cause an initial flurry of interest, this demand may not be sustained as people increasingly consider the cost of transport and limited range of services available in these areas.

The new government therefore should commit in the first 100 days to a process to examine whether people actually want to move out to the outer suburbs in such numbers. And if the government proceeds, it must to commit to providing all the infrastructure required when these new suburbs are developed. To do otherwise would be to continue the vicious cycle of backlog and underinvestment that has plagued development in Western Sydney since the 1950s.

5. Sort out who’s going to prioritise transport infrastructure – and make sure the RTA doesn’t get in first. The new government has proposed the establishment of a new body called Infrastructure NSW to oversee all major infrastructure decisions as well as a separate Independent Transport Authority to oversee all public transport planning and operations.

While the infrastructure authority concept has drawn on the Herald’s Transport Inquiry’s recommendations, the proposal to create two separate authorities is an important difference. The Inquiry’s proposal was for a single authority to oversee all aspects of public transport, including infrastructure.

Having two bodies instead of one creates a potential for duplication and even conflict. The new transport authority will presumably have to pitch its proposals to the infrastructure body, competing with other departments including experienced hands such as the Roads and Traffic Authority. There is also a danger that public transport could be disadvantaged if Infrastructure NSW adopts narrow assessment frameworks to assess these projects.

To avoid this happening, the new government needs to move quickly to clarify the relationship between the two authorities. It also needs to ensure that public transport receives the priority it deserves and that Infrastructure NSW uses a broad range of environmental and social criteria in project assessment.

6. Recognise that the money for infrastructure has to come from somewhere. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Public Transport Inquiry not only identified and costed a range of transport options, it also looked at how to fund these projects.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, or a free transport system.  The Inquiry nominated a mix of funding options to raise the funds required, including fare increases, parking, registration and other levies, congestion charges and Commonwealth Government support. While at first glance none of these would seem to be very popular, the Inquiry also found that a significant majority of people are willing to pay for the redevelopment of the public transport network, so important do they regard this issue. The 100-day plan needs to include a commitment to identify funding sources for public transport infrastructure.

If both governments dig in, there is a strong risk that the Federal Government will simply trouser the $2.1 billion it has offered for the Parramatta-Epping link and use the money elsewhere. This would be a dismal result for NSW and Mr O’Farrell and the new Transport Minister should quickly exercise some nimble footwork to reach a compromise.

One solution would be to treat both links as a single, staged project, effectively providing a link from Parramatta via Epping to Rouse Hill and incorporating the full extension of the North West link to meet the existing Richmond Line.

The total cost would be considerable, but (along with the South West Link under construction) would be a major investment in Western Sydney’s future. It would mean that all major employment centres and residential release areas in the region would be linked by rail to each other, as well as to major destinations in eastern Sydney.

There would also be major savings in combining the projects, which lend themselves to a staged approach. Planning for the North West project is much more recent and considerably more advanced than for Parramatta-Epping, especially as the route for the latter is yet to be finalised.

This means that tunnelling could start in the North West and then continue straight after completion onto the Parramatta-Epping Link once planning for that is finished. Fit-out of both sectors could proceed in the same way and then North-West line completed to the Richmond Line.

The first is a Fairfax article which reports that a survey by research firm UMR shows that almost 80 per cent of Australians would consider using high-speed rail if it was available for holiday travel, while almost 9 per cent of those surveyed support the reopening of country railways. Perhaps not surprisingly, 60 per cent strongly supported the concept of cheap $1 rail tickets for individuals and families during holidays, while 30% supported the idea.

The survey appears to have been undertaken in the context of reducing the national holiday road toll; the distances involved and whether the questions were put in relation to rural or metropolitan train travel (or both) was not indicated in the article. However, even allowing for this and the fact that the research was commissioned by the national rail union, the results show a striking level of support for rail travel.

In the second rail-related news story to emerge today, Downer EDI has announced that the next generation of Sydney commuter trains will not start operating until late May or early June because of production delays. The company will also take a $250 million hit on the Waratah train contract, on top of a $190 million provision made last year.

Although the company claimed in December that it would hand the first Waratah trains to RailCorp by early January, it now says it has found bugs in the train’s electronics and has had to recruit “more senior staff with experience in train-building” and change its production schedule. This delay will make delivery of the trains to RailCorp 14 months behind schedule.

Contrast this state of affairs – a rolling stock order continually deferred and the unfulfilled desire of Australians for high-speed rail travel – with what is happening on two other continents, Asia and North America.

In China, the 1,318 kilometre high-speed link between Beijing and Shanghai has just opened, cutting travel time in half to less than five hours.  This is the longest high-speed line in the world – the entire French TGV system totals 1,700 kilometres.

Chinese High Speed Train - courtesy Wikipedia

 In little over a decade China has constructed the world’s largest high-speed rail network, at over 8,350 kilometres. It is expected that the system will reach 16,000 kilometres by 2016. Thousands of kilometres of urban railways are also planned to add to the systems and lines already opened.

China is not alone. Other Asian countries from Thailand to the Middle East have recently opened or are constructing major metro lines and high speed rail links, with even more ambitious plans for the future.

Los Angeles metro trains - courtesy Wikipedia

Even in North America, the land of the private car, 21 new light and heavy rail systems opened over the past decade and many existing ones were extended. In the next 12 months five new light rail lines or extensions will open, along with two new commuter rail corridors. A dozen public transport projects will begin construction, joining over 25 projects already underway.

So, in less than the time it has taken the (previous) Australian Government to announce and abandon an extensive feasibility inquiry into high speed rail – and then its successor to convene another “strategic study”  – the Chinese have built over 8,000 kilometres of high-speed track.

And in the time it has taken the NSW Government to build one suburban rail extension (Epping to Chatswood), commence another (South West Rail Link) and announce, cancel and re-announce about half a dozen other metros and heavy rail links, scores of North American and Chinese cities have built major rail extensions, new lines and in some cases constructed complete metro or light rail systems.

I know that Australia has greater distances and lower population densities than either North America or China, but surely we can do better than this. Judging by the UMR research, the Australian public certainly think so.

However, before the New Zealanders start to look at the record books (and leaving aside for a moment the question of whether amalgamations are a good thing or not), even the Auckland amalgamation is dwarfed by media reports of plans in southern China to create the world’s biggest mega-city with a population of 42 million by amalgamating nine existing municipalities. These include Guangzhou, which already has a population of around 25 million and is currently the world’s second-largest city.

Even in area the new city will be vast, at over 41,400 square kilometres.  This is an area described in the online articles as “twice the size of Wales” – or to put it in Antipodean terms, 60% of the size of Tasmania. This is China’s manufacturing heartland, comprising almost 10% of the Chinese economy.

The proposal seems to be aimed at standardising a range of services such as public transport and health care which are offered at the municipal level in China, making it easier for citizens of each of the existing cities to access services across an area where huge population growth is rendering existing boundaries largely meaningless.  It is also intended to give the region an advantage over competing urban areas around Beijing and Shanghai.

The merger will be supported by around 150 major infrastructure projects which will integrate and expand the existing transport, energy, water and telecommunications systems. These plans include 29 rail lines including an express line to Hong Kong. The total cost is around $196 billion.

Just how these projects will be financed is unclear and perhaps not surprisingly there is little news of any opposition to the amalgamation in the Western media, but at least it is refreshing that council amalgamation is seen in China as a basis for additional investment on a vast scale – and not just an excuse for governments to save money!

As part of this growing pattern, a key factor has been what turned out to be a huge over-estimation in forecasts of the tunnel’s use. According the Sydney Morning Herald, the projection for the Clem7 was that 91,000 vehicles would be using the tunnel every day by now, with numbers exceeding 100,000 by late next year.

However, even with a prolonged toll-free period and a current halving of the tolls, less than 28,000 vehicles are now using the tunnel.  As a result the owner, RiverCity, has slashed tunnel’s value by $1.56 billion to only $250 million and is still losing $10 million a month. The Herald article claims the company has just $106 million in cash reserves and needs patronage to double and tolls to return to their normal levels just to meet its interest bills.

The Herald concludes that the forecasts turned out so wrong mainly because they were shaped by the financial models required to fund the project and not vice versa, a problem exacerbated by their apparent reliance on peak-hour demand. As Melbourne Urbanist also points out, this sort of exaggeration is not confined to infrastructure companies – lobby groups and other project promoters are sometimes guilty of the same sin, resulting in a climate of hyperbole in which such exaggerated claims become plausible.

Whatever the cause, investors are going to be understandably more reluctant to go anywhere near private-sector toll-road projects for the foreseeable future. It seems we are at last reaching the end of an era in which toll-roads and motorways were embraced as the answer to all our transport problems.

For a long time they seemed like the ultimate solution. Governments, construction companies and investors combined to give punters what they wanted, or thought they wanted – better roads – and they then got the punters to pay for it through tolls. The toll companies also ran the roads themselves, which was another attraction for governments who didn’t want to put money into boring, unsexy things like railways which they increasingly disliked because of their ongoing costs, unions, public complaints, etc.

Like all get-rich schemes, however, the toll-road bonanza was ultimately good to be true. The music was always going to stop sometime and now it has – leaving the owners of the Clem7 and similar projects holding some very expensive babies.

However, there are a few hopeful conclusions that can be drawn from this mess. First is that there appears to be belated recognition of the need for some rationality and planning to be applied to process of developing major infrastructure proposals. If governments are ultimately going to carry the can – which one way or the other, increasingly seems to be the case – then surely they should exercise more say over what gets built and when, where and how it is built. After all, that’s what they were once elected to do.

One alternative investment approach is the so-called “availability model”, which is being used for Melbourne’s Peninsula Link. Under this arrangement, the Victorian government will make periodic payments to the road’s builder irrespective of volume, thus leaving the government to bear the consequences if the project is a white elephant.

Although at first glance this approach may seem more expensive to governments, it will lessen the incentive for toll-road promoters to exaggerate patronage forecasts or to make the outrageous demands that that accompanied some projects such as Sydney’s M2 that operators be compensated if “competing” public transport projects are constructed to serve the same corridor.

It will also force politicians to be more realistic about some of the hard choices that have to be made about transport funding. For too long the obsession with lower taxes has swept the problem of infrastructure funding under the carpet, which is one of the reasons why toll-roads were seen as such an attractive option. Ultimately, as the Independent Inquiry into Sydney’s public transport (in which I was involved) established, there is no easy way out – extra money will have to be found, from taxes, levies and increased fares – to pay for new infrastructure.

And if governments are going to explicitly shell out the funds for major road infrastructure, either upfront or on an ongoing basis, then from a financing perspective these road proposals lose a lot of their perceived advantages over the proposed rail projects that these same governments have neglected over the years.

Without the hype of exaggerated patronage projections, project costs and anticipated rates of return, both road and rail projects can be considered on a more equitable footing, one that takes into account externalities such as environmental impacts and social outcomes as part of a proper planning process. One result of that should be the realisation that the government abdication of its responsibility to plan and provide public transport in favour of a user-pays toll-road model has grossly distorted transport investment decisions over the past 30 years.

*     Clem Jones (1918-2007) was Lord Mayor of Brisbane, from 1961 to 1975. Although he did much to modernise the city, he also presided over the closure of its tramways in the late 1960s, very much part of an era that saw trams as an impediment to the modernist ethic of the car –based city. There is an obvious irony in a major road project named after him facing financial failure over 40 years later.

According to the NSW Bureau of Transport Statistics  (BTS – formerly the TDC) forecasts, the Sydney Greater Metropolitan Area (GMA) will be 37.8% (the average growth rate per council will be slightly higher, at 39.5%, but for the purposes of this exercise I will stick with the GMA average). There are 16 councils which are forecast to experience growth higher than this average rate.

The average increase in population per council over this period is 37,225 persons and there are 15 councils whose growth in terms of total population will exceed this figure, according to the BTS forecasts (the usual caveats and qualifications as outlined in earlier posts apply). I have decided to bring together these two groups – those with projected higher-than-average growth rates and those with above-average population growth numbers as a highly arbitrary but quite interesting way of identifying “high growth” councils.

SYDNEY

As shown in Table 1, seven councils are forecast to experience above-average growth rates but below-average growth in terms of numbers, while six councils are forecast to demonstrate the reverse below-average rates but higher-than-average increases in terms of numbers. Nine councils belong to both groups.

This group of 22 councils (42% of the GMA’s 53 councils) is an interesting bunch. 74% of all of Sydney’s population growth will occur across these councils and the average rate of growth will be 53.8%.

 Not surprisingly, all 12 “200,000 plus” Councils I identified in previous posts that are forecast to be added by 2036 are members of this group as well. One of the two existing 200,000 plus councils, Blacktown, will also grow strongly, leaving only one council, Sutherland, which is currently over 200,000 but not on this list as it will grow comparatively slowly over the next 25 years.

Greater Western Sydney (GWS) tends to dominate this list. Table 2 summarises regional figures for these councils (don’t forget the numbers refer to the “high growth” councils in each region, not the total numbers of councils, anticipated total population increases or forecast regional rates of growth).

SYDNEY

Twelve of the GWS region’s 14 councils are in this group and these councils account for over 70% the high-growth council increase, 52% of the total GMA increase and 95.4% of GWS growth. All these figures are substantially higher than those in the remaining 10 high-growth councils, which are spread across four other regions.

In summary, the picture of Sydney’s future growth is of an arc, or crescent, starting in the north with Hunter councils such as Cessnock, Lake Macquarie, Maitland and Port Stephens, moving down through Wyong to a thick band around the Western edge of Sydney containing almost all the Greater Western Sydney councils and tapering off into Wollongong and Shoalhaven in the Illawarra.

Meanwhile other, smaller clusters of strong growth will occur in Sydney City (which will increase substantially both in numbers and rate of growth) and around Burwood and Strathfield (which will show strong growth rates but off a small population base).

What is equally significant are the councils not shown in these tables, the other 31 that are forecast to experience below-average growth rates and comparatively lower increases in total populations. For example, there are no councils from Sydney’s north and south, none from the eastern suburbs and only two comparatively small councils in the inner west.

I’ll discuss some of the overall implications of the BTC population forecasts in a future post.

To reiterate, the projections I’m discussing are based on forecasts released by the NSW Government Bureau of Transport Statistics (BTS – formerly the Transport Data Centre) and the usual caveats apply about their reliability or otherwise.

In the last article I discussed the 14 Sydney councils that will have populations over 200,000 in 2036, compared to the two we had in 2006. As I noted, no less than nine of these councils are located in Greater Western Sydney (GWS). However, the story of forecast growth in GWS does not end just with these “mega-councils”.

The table below shows the projected population increases and growth rates across the 14 GWS councils. In total, the BTS forecast predict that the region will grow by over a million people or over 58%, significantly higher than the projected Greater Metropolitan Area (GMA) growth rate of just under 38%. This will result in GWS having over 40% of the total metropolitan area population, compared with 35.5% in 2006.

GWS Councils population forecasts

It should be noted that the GMA includes the Hunter and Illawarra; if these are excluded, Greater Western Sydney would hold about half of Sydney’s population by 2036.

Not surprisingly, the councils with populations over 200,000 each will experience the lion’s share of the region’s growth and in fact the average size of a GWS council would be just over 209,000 by 2036. Five of these councils (Blacktown, Camden, Campbelltown, The Hills and Liverpool) will also experience growth rates above the metropolitan average – in the case of Camden, Liverpool and Blacktown, substantially so.

Of the five councils not expected to grow to over 200,000 by 2036, Auburn, Wollondilly and Hawkesbury will still experience growth rates above the Sydney average. Only Blue Mountains and Holroyd are expected to reach neither 200,000 nor an above-average growth rate, though Holroyd’s forecast growth rate is only just under the metropolitan average.

I’ll discuss the implications of the high rates of growth in Greater Western Sydney and elsewhere in a future post.

To reiterate, the projections I’m discussing in these articles are based on forecasts released by the NSW Government Transport Data Centre (TDC – now renamed the Bureau of Transport Statistics) earlier this year and the usual caveats apply about their reliability or otherwise. I should also stress that I’m not taking a position about population issues or the optimum size of councils, but just pointing out some of the more interesting implications of the distribution of Sydney’s growth as forecast by the TDC. 

In the last article I noted that if we accepted the TDC’s projections based on the current boundaries, the number of councils in Sydney with populations over 200,000 would grow from just two in 2006 (Blacktown and Sutherland) to 14 in 2036. OK, so which councils will be over the 200,000 mark by then? 

The following table identifies the councils in this group and their projected growth over the 30 years from 2006 to 2036. Its important to note that the “top 14” in 2036 were not necessarily the largest councils in 2006 and they are not all necessarily the fastest-growth Sydney councils – although their average rate of growth is well above the Sydney average of around 38% and the average forecast numerical increase is almost 50,000 more than the average for Sydney councils. Combined, they will house just over half of Sydney’s population in 2036.

Councils forecast to be over 200,000 in 2036

The other interesting aspect is their location. All but Sydney City Council are in outer-ring – or at least on the outer edge of the middle ring – suburbs. They form a “donut” around the city from Wyong and Lake Macquarie to the north, through Greater Western Sydney (where nine of the 14 are located) to Sutherland and Wollongong to the south. 

In summary, the 14 councils forecast to have over 200,000 people each by 2036 will: 

• Be home to over 1.2 million additional residents, or nearly 62% of Sydney’s overall growth;
• Grow by an average of 50% or over 87,000 people, compared to a city average rate of around 38% and 37,300 per council, with Camden set to grow by a staggering 390%;
• As a result, accommodate over 3.6 million people or over half of the city’s forecast population of just under 7.19 million.
• Have average populations of nearly 260,000 each (almost double the forecast Sydney average of 135,600), though this figure is skewed by the projected size of Liverpool (over 324,000) and Blacktown (over 48,1000)
• With the exception of Sydney city, be located around the city’s middle to outer suburban ring, with nine of the 14 in Greater Western Sydney. 

I’ll explore a few more implications of Sydney’s projected population growth at the council and regional levels in future posts.