Another week, another #SardineSydney story in the mainstream media on how the city’s population is swelling way above the capacity of its infrastructure.
The latest example relates to Sydney’s long suffering trains, whereby skyrocketing passenger numbers are causing chronic crush-loading. From The Canberra Times:
Passenger demand for trains in Sydney has risen by almost 20 per cent on some lines in just a year, new figures show, underscoring the strain on the city’s rail network.
The number of trips taken on the T7 Olympic Park Line surged by 19.6 per cent to almost 180,000 in July, compared with the same month a year earlier, reflecting the pace of growth in residential development in and around the former Olympic precinct…
Across the rail network, trips increased by more than 11 per cent, or 3.1 million, to 30.7 million in July, compared with the prior period…
The surge in demand places greater urgency on plans for public transport such as a new metro line between Sydney’s CBD and Parramatta. Olympic Park and the Bays Precinct around Rozelle will be among up to 12 stations on the proposed line, which leaked government documents have estimated will cost up to $20 billion…
Geoffrey Clifton, a senior lecturer in transport management at Sydney University, said the figures showed that Sydney risked reaching a “gap in capacity” on its rail network sooner than forecast…
The state’s Auditor-General recently warned that Sydney’s trains will increasingly struggle to run on time unless “sustained and substantial investment” is made in the existing heavy rail network. Rail patronage growth has been outstripping both the government’s forecasts and the rail system’s capacity to cope.
It’s the same old story that we’ve read over and over again.
As shown in the next chart, Sydney’s population has increased by 774,000 over the past decade, or by 77,400 people a year or 1,500 people a week, which has already crush-loaded the city’s infrastructure (e.g. trains, roads, hospitals, schools, etc).
And the situation is set to deteriorate badly over the next two decades, with the State Government projecting that the city’s population will expand even more quickly – growing by 87,000 people a year (1,670 people a week) – with Sydney to add an addition 1.74 million people – equivalent to a Perth:
Clearly, the best way to alleviate Sydney’s infrastructure and housing woes is for the State Government to tap its federal counterpart on the shoulder and demand they slash Australia’s skilled migration program. Under current settings, incumbent residents of Sydney are facing big cuts to their living standards along with expensive infrastructure bills.
Of course, elites like Lucy and Malcolm Turnbull don’t care, because the bulk of the overcrowding is not projected to occur in wealthy locations like Woollahra, but in the city’s West – home to Sydney’s working class ‘riff raff’:
