If you’ve spent any amount of time in Sydney over the past decade or so, you may have noticed that our beautiful harbour city is under construction.

Whether it’s around Central Station or down at Darling Harbour, you couldn’t walk a city block without being confronted by hard hats and high viz.

It’s been frustrating for locals and tourists alike, but this gestational period has been necessary to posture Sydney in the same conversations as the world’s best big cities, such as New York City, Chicago, Tokyo and London.

Sydney’s claim as a world-class destination needs to be more compelling than it is right now. And it’s finally looking like meaningful steps are being taken to ensure this claim has some real weight, taking us beyond the harbour’s picturesque curves and architectural marvels like Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House.

That’s why the City of Sydney’s focus on an extensive light rail line and the much-discussed Sydney Metro Project is so important. Look into the history of any big city or country, such as Canada and New York City, and transport rests hand-in-hand with transformation.

During the 50s and 60s, Sydney boasted the largest tram network in the Southern Hemisphere, but by 1961 the focus was taken off these modes of transport to invest heavily in car infrastructure. Over the past few years, inklings of that tram network have started to bleed back into the city in the form of the much-hyped light rail. Yet we are still in the nascent stages of what could be the most significant urban transformation in Sydney’s 236-year history.

Although the Metro Project has been plagued with several delays, including the most recent false-start of August 1, Sydney has never been closer to significant transformation, bringing new suburbs into the fold, forming what Lord Mayor Clover Moore AO is referring to as “tech central,” and—importantly—shaving transit time for locals and tourists. Sydney has the space, but it’s not as connected as well as it should be. This is especially essential for tourists looking to explore this great city and its more up-and-coming lifestyle precincts in suburbs like Rosebery.

One of the major players here is ALTRAC, the consortium behind Sydney’s light rail network which designed, built, financed and operates the current light rail services. According to a recent proposal, affordable housing is a major selling point for the extension given the light rail will trigger significant investment in previously unloved areas.

“Sydney’s existing light rail network has had a massive impact on the way people engage with the city,” stated the consortium.

“It has also attracted investment in places people want to work, live and play. This new line will support new housing, connect key workers to job, revitalise communities, and add an important connection to Sydney’s public transport network.”

Numbers don’t lie. Since the start of the light rail network, Sydney has seen over $35 billion of development tracking 1,700 projects up and down the corridor, pulling in close to 725,000 jobs all within a 5-minute walk of the L2 and L3 lines. We don’t want to sound obsequious, and are aware of the myriad of issues and delays involved, but these are some impressive numbers and validates Sydney’s need for these changes.

Below, I’ve included a brief run down of the three biggest projects to help you make sense of Sydney’s lofty plans, either as part of the Metro project or the Light Rail project. Some of these developments are right around the corner (hopefully), and one is probably years down the track.

New Metro Stations

Six brand new metro stations have been built to support the metro line, several of which have seeded new lifestyle precincts like Martin Place Plaza (which I detail below).

The new stations are:

Crows Nest
Victoria Cross (North Sydney)
Barangaroo
Martin Place
Pitt Street
Waterloo
Central (new underground platforms)

Stations built adjacent to existing stations will have separate entrances for the Metro and regular services.

Undoubtedly, we’ll be getting more stations once the big Sydney Metro West project starts rolling along, but the timeline for completion is 2032. This should spell some temporary frustration for commuters living out west. The Bankstown to Sydenham train line, for example, will be closed for 12 months to support completion of the Southwest line.

Martin Place Plaza

The new Martin Place Metro station is just about ready to open to the public and start ferrying passengers across to places like Barangaroo and Waterloo. A target of August 1 was set, but safety checks have delayed a start-date and we currently don’t have any new date set in stone.

But we do know that the metro station is right around the corner, spurring a reimagined Martin Place Plaza with over 600 specialty stores located 25-metres beneath Sydney with a mix of public artworks and yet-to-be-confirmed hospitality venues. This is not only a great addition to the corporate-covered strip, but a good example of what can grow around new transit infrastructure.

It’s one of the several ways both the Light Rail and the Metro will make shopping around Sydney substantially different. For example, Rosebery is rapidly transforming into one of Sydney’s coolest suburbs, surrounded by great offerings like The Cannary and the exciting Rosebery Engine Yards, a brand new corridor-like precinct with off-shooting retail and dining options like Zimmerman, LUNE Croissanterie, and Oroton. Making Green Square more accessible will make Rosebery infinitely more accessible for both locals and tourists, unlocking a key part of Sydney’s dynamic lifestyle.

Green Square & Parramatta Road Corridor

The Green Square and Parramatta Road light rail corridor is the next big step for ALTRAC. Plans are ambitions and always subject to changes, but the vision is for 11km of track running through 21 stops along the length of Parramatta Road and Broadway—the most unloved fringe area of Sydney CBD and an unsightly sea of shuttered shopfronts.

The Central Station to Green Square section is poised to be the busiest section of the line, stretching 4.5km across Chalmers Street, Phillip Street, Gadigal Avenue, Crystal Street, Defries Avenue, and Zetland Avenue straight to Green Square Station.

Despite being the oldest highway in Australia, Parramatta Road has been a retail wasteland for quite some time. The road runs around 35km from Broadway to Parramatta, with the city-side of the highway once a bustling lifestyle strip peppered with shops, restaurants, bars, pubs, designer shops, and lifestyle outlets. Since 2005, Lord Mayor Clover Moore AO has been campaigning for this unloved artery to be better connected to Sydney, which should ideally bring this strip back to where it used to be.

Many variables are involved. Hospitality operators will play a big role, as well as a host of other small business owners. But the important part is that Parramatta Road being brought back into the fold, so to speak, would create much more space for arts, culture, and lifestyle, in addition to attracting both commercial and residential investment.

At a recent CityTalks event held at Sydney Town Hall, Lord Clover Moore AO spoke about Parramatta Road being an essential piece in the puzzle in creation of “Tech Central.” This refers mainly to the Camperdown and Ultimo areas, with a diverse set of wold-class research, health, and educational institutions around UTS and USYD. Providing a better, faster connection to these facilities for residents in high-density areas like Green Square is the general idea of what would be dubbed the Eastern Transit Corridor.

Although plans for this corridor extending out of Green Square have been on the table since the mid-90s, according to Lord Clover Moore AO, who recently hosted a roundtable discussion for the project and noted the “overwhelming support” from key businesses, industry groups and institutions. Given it took three years to plan, and four years to construct, for the first sections of the light rail (CBD and South East corridor), I do hope planning for this big change starts now.

How fast will the Sydney Metro be?

Based on current estimations, the Sydney Metro trains can reach up to 100km/h within tunnel sections and up to 110km/h on surface track sections. This supports the following travel times for Sydney Metro City and the Southwest line: