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Metro may not be on the scrap heap after all - article

Started by somebody, September 21, 2010, 11:07:29 AM

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somebody

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/metro-may-not-be-on-scrap-heap-after-all-20100912-156zg.html

QuoteThe Keneally government insists it is just a little tunnel that will take pedestrians from Wynyard station to the planned business and recreational precinct of Barangaroo on the western side of the CBD.

But an official document from the NSW Department of Planning, posted quietly on the department's website, has revived fears that the controversial CBD Metro is not dead, merely dormant.

On 5 August, a senior official of the department, Daniel Keary, signed off a ''Modification of Minister's Approval'' of the metro - the $5.3 billion, seven-kilometre underground line between Rozelle and Central. It refers to modifications ''to allow the staged construction and operation of the project, including the Barangaroo pedestrian link''.

In an email to the Herald last night, a spokesman for the Minister for Planning, Tony Kelly, said: ''This modification doesn't mean the CBD Metro project has been resuscitated.''

In February, when the Premier, Kristina Keneally, unveiled a 44-page transport pamphlet, she said the government had made the ''tough'' decision to abandon the metro and it was not included in the plans to 2036. But she also said a metro system remained a long-term public transport option and the government would reserve the corridors for a metro.

Mr Kelly's spokesman insists the metro is dead. ''The NSW government made the tough but right decision to stop work on the metro so funds could be redistributed to other transport projects,'' he wrote.

''After the NSW government announced work on the CBD Metro would be stopped, the government decided to pursue the option of a pedestrian link between the Barangaroo development site and Wynyard station.''

But the 5 August document, along with a document dated July 1 and a letter on May 31 from the acting chief executive of the Sydney Metro Authority, Rodd Staples - all dated after the Premier's public abandonment of the metro - suggest elements within the transport bureaucracy have not given up on the plan.

Anti-metro campaigners fear the project will proceed if the government is re-elected. David Hunt, the president of Save Rozelle's Heritage group, which campaigned against the metro, said he had received an expert opinion that suggested the government had left open the possibility of a metro.

''While it seems the intention is to construct the Barangaroo pedestrian link, it leaves the rest of the project approved and able to be built in stages,'' he told the Herald in an email.

''The government has not taken the opportunity to revoke the approval for the balance of the metro.''

He said the government had withdrawn an application for the proposed West Metro, between Central and Westmead. ''It is unfortunate the opportunity was not taken to make the abandonment of the CBD Metro clear in this way,'' Mr Hunt added.

''Further, the references [in the documents] to 'any future metro' and 'prior to any construction ... of the CBD Metro' are alarming and perhaps revealing. I suggest the government be challenged to revoke the approval of the CBD Metro proper.''

The government has also refused Herald requests to release the advice it has received on the use of a corridor under Sussex Street for a new ''relief line'' for CityRail. The alternative route for the relief line, under Pitt Street, has been claimed for a future metro line.

Golliwog

So the anti-metro people are trying to tell the government that it shouldn't plan for any possible outcome? Although from their arguments they don't seem to care about the benefits of a metro, only that change is bad. I see this as a good thing as it means that if way down the track they do decide to do the metro, they aren't going to have to knock down and rebuild this pedestrian link.
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