Like an early Christmas present, Chris Minns has ripped the wrapping off his government’s major transport and housing package - the long-awaited reset of the Metro West mega-project.
Truth be told, some of the gifts were opened early when the Department of Planning accidentally published maps and details online. Kids can never wait ’til Christmas Day.
NSW Premier Chris Minns announces the plan to transform Rosehill racecourse into a “mini city” of 25,000 new homes.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Luckily for Santa, this didn’t include the big, shiny new toy; the conversion of Rosehill racecourse into a “mini city” of some 25,000 homes, replete with an additional Metro station.
As a centrepiece, it’s pretty good. Rosehill had almost become more of a conference centre than a racecourse, and will have a Metro line running underneath it: currently a seven-kilometre stretch between Olympic Park and Parramatta with no stations.
That was always an error, arising from the obsession of former minister Andrew Constance and many in Transport with minimising travel times between Parramatta and the Sydney CBD.
Credit to the former Coalition government for commissioning and building this massive Metro infrastructure. But they botched the housing component (on Metro North West too). As Minns remarked on Thursday, there was a decade of housing with no infrastructure, and major new infrastructure with little new housing.
The new map of Metro West - estimated completion date 2032 - with additional station in Rosehill.
If you were drawing Metro West from scratch today, you might do it very differently, with more stations and greater housing uplift along the route. Minns has gone for the cost-effective tweak, where adding a single new station on the current alignment can yield a huge housing bang.
But this is no immediate fix to Sydney’s housing crisis, which Minns described as “unparalleled”. Metro West won’t open before 2032. Indeed, all the reforms the government announced this week to “marry” transport and housing are long-term, city-shaping policies that will bear fruit down the track.
We’re getting the biggest housing bang for our buck - but it’s no quick fix to an unparalleled crisis
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07.12.2023
Like an early Christmas present, Chris Minns has ripped the wrapping off his government’s major transport and housing package - the long-awaited reset of the Metro West mega-project.
Truth be told, some of the gifts were opened early when the Department of Planning accidentally published maps and details online. Kids can never wait ’til Christmas Day.
NSW Premier Chris Minns announces the plan to transform Rosehill racecourse into a “mini city” of 25,000 new homes.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Luckily for Santa, this........
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