A Review of Sydney Metro: Sydenham to Chatswood
A brief foray into Sydney's new dark underbelly
When Sydney Metro first opened from Tallawong to Chatswood in 2019, I reviewed it. Now numbered the M1, this teal-coloured line has survived COVID, been extended from Chatswood through the City of Sydney to Sydenham, and is now open (as of Monday morning, August 19, 2024, at least a year later and $10 billion dollars more than planned).
I will review the new section. We rode out from Arncliffe by train and transferred to Metro at Sydenham, riding Metro to Chatswood at ~5:30 am, we boarded and it was a number of minutes before it got going (I think the second run of the day). At Chatswood we got breakfast, then turned around and came back, stopping and alighting at each Metro station along the way. There were dozens of rail fans on-board initially, and then regular users on the way back, which was during the actual peak.
I am not going to comment on:
the planning of the network and station locations (which largely duplicate existing services, providing redundancy, but not really opening up new corridors or connections or serving existing underserved customers1, while continuing to reinforce the CBD at the expense of the periphery), or
station spacing (which is too far apart), or
choice of technology (single-deck with seating along the the direction of motion vs. double-deck with traverse (and more seats, which is especially valuable on long trips) ), or
cost2 (which is more per km than comparable systems in Denmark, Italy, or Spain, or almost anywhere except New York, and means we get fewer km per dollar), or
capacity (Of the new section of Sydney Metro opening Sunday, Minister Haylen is quoted in press releases as saying, “It’s going to double rail capacity across our harbour, take pressure off our heavy rail network and deliver a fantastic new transport service for passengers right across our city.” My rail friends are not happy about this claim. “Going to” is doing a lot of work here, since that doubling is in the distant future, not today, requiring many more carriages. Fortunately capacity does not need to be doubled quite yet.) 3
The Good
Clearly automation is a good idea, even at the cost of some back-compatibility and jobs (though sure seems like a lot of people are employed by Sydney Metro). And that brings higher speed and more trains per hour.
The Metro trains were fast (up to 100km/h)4 compared to existing Sydney Trains (which has a top operational speed of 130km/h) (oh wait … but actually only gets to 80km/h in urban areas, and less in the City proper). This knits the city closer together than before, and now some places in North Sydney that were a pain, requiring two transfers for me can be reached with only one transfer (and for other people, one transfers may be replaced by direct service).
Once we got to “peak hour”, the Metro trains were frequent. (No more frequent than existing trains in some services, but apparently they can be more frequent than existing trains which haven’t been upgraded to modern signalling, if there were enough capacity).
The sliding glass doors are an important safety feature, reducing the number of future tragedies of someone falling onto the tracks.
Unlike 5 years ago, there were no opening day issues that I noticed.
The Media team has done a good job, with all sorts of puff pieces and press releases printed in the local newspapers and shown on TV,5 but if it were a really good job would I notice?
The number of people in Teal Shirts offering information is also good for opening, and they have been at other stations as well for weeks now.
There was still plenty of seating and room at the stations. So there is definitely a capacity uplift associated with the lines (from another point of view, this of course is bad, because if the trains aren’t crowded, they aren’t generating revenue).
The Bad
I suspect somewhere along the way, someone value engineered away digital bus (and ferry) connecting services signs at some stops (missing at Crows Nest, Victoria Cross, Baragaroo, Martin Place, Gadigal). It’s a transit system, people, not a Metro system or even a train system, make it easy to transfer, reduce the friction, inform your customers.
The stations are mostly missing services like shops. Where’s my in-station Brekkie kiosk. Some are clearly planned for and not yet delivered, but one would also hope that they were closer to opening than apparent.
The UI still has some bugs. For instance, on some lifts (Martin Place) it is bizarre. I expect for flow control they want you entering one side and exiting the other, but there are buttons on both sides in the lifts, and it is not immediately apparent that one side works for going down, and the other for going up, and if you press the wrong one, nothing happens.
The Ugly
The tunnels are a bit early 1970s sci-fi on a budget for my taste. Not that there are great tunnels generally, and these could be worse (see below), but one feels they also could have been better. Martin Place is especially dim and I expect in the future it will be dank as well. All the budget was spent on art projects at the entrance, for the Eloi, and not enough for the Morlocks.
The use of beige and Sandstone (and sandstone coloration) is excellent at Central, but at Gadigal, and especially at the new part of the enormous Martin Place it’s a miss. Sandstone is beautiful in natural light, not as much underground. This may be solvable with different artificial lighting.
It is nevertheless, better than this newly discovered or reopened passageway at Central Station
Map
I am placing the map under “The Ugly”. This is fixable, but the Center City is too crowded. A quick Internet search will turn up many amateur maps that beat this.
FYI: This is the previous map, which shows Metro under construction, and has as of this writing not been updated online to show Metro open. [When you read this, you can check for yourself to see if it is updated]
The figure below is from the brochures being handed out by staff at Redfern station to get everyone up-to-date.6 Obviously they don’t include the T3 closure or conversion, or the resulting T6 from the rump T3, which will occur soon, but not today.
Things to note. The T3 is about to shut from Sydenham to Bankstown for a conversion from Sydney Trains to Sydney Metro. I rode it last week, and some conversion has already been done, but significant work remains, especially at Bankstown
Why the Sydney Metro West misses Sydney University after this line misses Sydney Uni.
Earlier projects, but undoubtedly the same applies
8-car Waratah trains can carry 23780 passengers per hour at 75% seated and 20 trains/hour; 6-car Metro trains can carry 17010 passengers per hour at CRUSH loads at 15 trains/hour. [Or twice that at 30 trains per hour, but those trains don’t actually exist, or more at 8-car trains, which also don’t exist]. Rather more importantly is what trains are actually carrying. By TfNSW's current stats for 2024, North Shore trains are carrying 156,900 on an average weekday excluding school holidays. NSW Metro is carrying 85,100. Presumably some of the North Shore passengers are transfers from the previously existing Metro and will now stay on board. Some additional trips might be immediately induced in the northwest due to the faster service and one less transfer, and more over time.
Media use words like “rocketing” and “whisk” which really grates. Rockets are actually a bit faster, (up to 58,000 km/h), though whisks are apparently only 37km/h, converting rpms to km/h. (Thanks ChatGPT).
Which doesn’t say much for the independence of local media.
The brochure also says (p.2) “By 2032, Sydney will have a network of four [emphasis added] metro lines, 46 stations, and 113 km of new metro rail.” So this, the Western Sydney Airport, and the West, and what? Their website only lists the first three. What am I missing? Am I just sensing a quality control problem here?
North West, City & South West, West and Western Sydney Airport. That is 4 Metro lines according to the quoted link in (6)