That status quo represents an over-reliance on bus transport through crowded city streets. The construction of the light rail in the CBD will not be without some pain. Credit:n/a The streets are so crowded that the buses are unreliable. They consistently fall behind timetable well before they have left the city and entered the suburbs. And this unreliability reduces confidence in public transport during a period when Sydney desperately needs more people to use the system, in part so that those who need to drive have more space on the road. The Herald does not support any one mode of transport over another. In a metropolis like Sydney, trains, buses, the private car, light rail, cycling and walking all obviously have their role to play.

But the government should invest money in the mode of transport that fits the particular need of a particular space and of a particular travelling public. And in central Sydney, the use of a growing number of buses to get people to and from work is no longer fit for purpose. Without major changes to the city – without replacing some of those buses by new rail links – it will be impossible to increase the frequency of bus services to those areas not served by rail. This argument represents much of the benefits inherent in the CBD light rail project down George Street, as well as the North West Rail Link and its eventual connection to the inner city. And the argument is not new.

It was most powerfully presented in the City Centre Access Strategy, a compelling piece of work developed under former transport minister Gladys Berejiklian in 2013. But two recent political developments threaten confidence in that access strategy. Ms Berejiklian has moved to the Treasury portfolio, swapping jobs with Andrew Constance. And in Mr Constance’s first months in the job, he has seemed a reluctant advocate for the light rail line, perhaps in lamentation that he will be stuck with the difficulties of a project he never believed was necessary. But sulking is not an answer, and Mr Constance should choose the alternative.

He should choose to become the champion of the project, riding his bureaucrats so they make as few mistakes as possible, and advocating its benefits to the public. The second development is the Labor Party’s recent discovery that it does not support the line down George Street. From a party with such a shoddy transport record as Labor’s, this about-face demonstrates considerable hypocrisy. For a start, Labor leader Luke Foley’s criticisms would have more currency if he had offered them three months ago, when he stood for premier. But Mr Foley said he supported the project then. It is only recently, therefore, that the Labor Party has realised it believes construction of the line down George Street will be more disruptive than it is worth. Mr Foley also now says that even when the line is built and operating it will worsen traffic through the city. Labor’s alternative is a bus tunnel under the city. But Mr Foley might not have realised, in his post-election rush to think up some policies, that digging a bus tunnel under the city would also be disruptive. In fact doing anything in the city is going to be disruptive – as it was when the Harbour Bridge was built, when the City Circle was dug up, when whole blocks of prime commercial land around Wynyard and Martin Place were construction zones.

But recent Labor administrations have been able to avoid these painful side-effects of public transport construction, precisely because they delivered so little new public transport infrastructure. In this sense, Mr Foley’s opportunism merely reminds us of Labor’s record in the area, in which the party, never confident enough in what it believed, continually shifted its transport priorities and therefore continually failed to deliver on them. The light rail line will not be a panacea for congestion in inner Sydney. And there is a good chance Mr Constance and his bureaucrats will bungle major aspects of the project – the government’s failure to yet publicise alternative bus routes is particularly troubling here. But light rail from the eastern suburbs to Circular Quay represents an effort in the right direction. The Herald urges its speedy and successful delivery, and its eventual extension on numerous lines throughout Sydney, a policy one of Mr Foley’s predecessors as Labor leader, Bob Carr, promised almost 20 years ago, and then did nothing about.