Back in 1988, my family was among the very first to move into the West Pennant Hills valley.
Houses gradually filled the nice new suburb, arranged into neat cul-de-sac streets. There were no shops and vague hopes somebody would put in a train line. But it never materialised.
Whenever I’d go out with friends or return home late from my city job as a waiter, I’d beg mum to pick me up from Beecroft station. But if she was already asleep, I’d walk an hour home in the dead of night.
Decades later, the Metro is creating new transport options for Sydney’s north west. However, my memories of growing up in a stranded suburb came back this week as Wentworth Point residents reacted angrily to the NSW Government’s likely cancellation of Parramatta Light Rail stage two.
The nine-kilometre route – announced by Premier Mike Baird in December 2015 – was meant to connect Parramatta with Olympic Park.
Since then, people have moved into this corridor on a promise of public transport.
Wentworth Point is crammed with apartments but there’s only one road in and out. Massive urban renewal is bringing 10,000 dwellings to Melrose Park. In Ermington, the old public housing units are gradually being replaced with duplexes.
No doubt the government has been chastened by its ordeal in the Sydney CBD. As Transport Minister Andrew Constance hinted, downgrading light rail to trackless trams or even just a bus would avoid digging up suburban streets.
Nevertheless, this looms as a major broken promise from the Liberals. Certainly, it is a world away from the original vision. The idea of an integrated light rail network centred on Parramatta first rose from the ashes of the Parramatta-Epping train link (finally abandoned by Barry O’Farrell in 2011 and for which state Labor is still trying to escape the electoral doghouse).
Four light rail routes were shortlisted in 2014. Many of us will recall being dazzled by animations on the TV news mapping potential branches from Parramatta to Castle Hill, Bankstown, Macquarie Park (via Carlingford) and Strathfield (via Olympic Park).
Today, project stage one has morphed into replacing the Carlingford heavy rail line with light rail along the same corridor – but swapping access to the city with Parramatta and Westmead. If all goes to plan, it will finish by 2023, 12 years after the government was first elected.
Costing about $2.4 billion, it ranks with the world’s most expensive light rail projects per kilometre. The jury’s still out on whether it will be embraced.
Yet at least the government promised stage one and received an election mandate. Local businesses and residents like me who live along the route just want works complete.
Stage two is a different story. It was always designed to be compatible with stage one – and to integrate with a future Metro West stop at Olympic Park. But now the Olympic Peninsula could go without fair dinkum transport until the end of the decade.
The government has backed development. It has sold people a liveability dream – but risks losing trust by failing to put in matching infrastructure.
Labor, too, needs to recapture credibility and ground. It has a golden opportunity to propose a transport solution ahead of the next election.
The challenge for both parties is convincing long-suffering residents in places like Wentworth Point they will actually deliver what they say.
Alan is a journalist and communications specialist. He writes a weekly column for Parra News.