“I think the plans are quite detailed which is great to see,” says Geoffrey Clifton, senior lecturer in transport and logistics management at the University of Sydney. Clifton is nodding to the fact that the plans do not shy away from naming geographic locations, and how those locations should be connected through decent mass transit. “It’s not a crayon exercise. They’ve got detail behind them,” he says. For instance, the plans indicate there should be some form of mass transit system to the Sutherland Shire, duplicating the existing T4 Illawarra line between Kogarah and Miranda. There should be a cross-regional route between Kogarah and Parramatta, averting to the need to be able to get to and from Parramatta without entering Sydney’s CBD. And there are also quite detailed proposals about the road and public transport corridors needed to complement the scale of development planned for west of Liverpool and Blacktown. These include a rail line linking Campbelltown, the new airport at Badgerys Creek, St Marys, and eventually Rouse Hill, as well as connections to Liverpool and Parramatta. The government this week started the process of alerting hundreds of property owners that their homes may lay within the identified routes. Premier Gladys Berejiklian's priorities have shifted according to the latest bundle of plans released this month. Credit:Cole Bennetts “It’s good to see we are getting these longer-term plans in place,” Clifton says. “I haven’t really seen that since Action for Transport – unfortunately that was never fully implemented.” The reference to "Action for Transport", the then Labor government’s 1998 transport policy, touches on the main reason governments might be averse to making such expansive commitments. Of the five future rail lines promised in 1998 - lines to Bondi Beach; between Parramatta and Chatswood via Epping; Epping and Castle Hill; Hurstville and Strathfield, with a connection between Liverpool and Holsworthy – only half of one (Chatswood to Epping) was delivered, while a cynicism about the capacity of government to improve the city became baked into Sydney’s culture.

Loading "I abhor thought bubbles,” was how the former premier Barry O’Farrell explained his approach to infrastructure planning in a 2012 interview. “Whether from public servants, whether from agencies, whether from ministers … Don't announce a good idea. Don't announce what might happen one day or what might be considered … get on and do it.” To be sure, there has been plenty of getting on and doing. Of the projects canvassed in the 2012 Long Term Transport Master Plan, the big ones – WestConnex, the rail line to Sydney’s north-west, and the light rail down George Street – are edging closer to completion. But priorities have shifted. WestConnex, for instance, has expanded from filling the one “missing” motorway link to prompting another harbour tunnel, and a motorway to the northern beaches. Agencies now promote the so-called Sydney Metro West line between Parramatta and central Sydney as the city’s most urgent project, when it was entirely absent from the planning books five years ago. Meanwhile, a key feature of the original plan for the new metro line under Sydney Harbour and through the city, was to link it to Hurstville to take pressure off the existing T4 Illawarra line. That idea has quietly been dropped, presumably for the reason rail experts said it would not work in the first place: it ignored the use of the T4 line by freight trains. WestConnex has expanded from filling the one “missing” motorway link to prompting another harbour tunnel, and a motorway to the northern beaches. Credit:AAP