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The NSW authorities’s industrial dispute with rail unions over the brand new intercity trains is tipped so as to add a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to prices on Australia’s largest infrastructure venture that has already blown out by billions.
However even with out overruns pushing the price of the driverless-train venture to greater than A$55 billion, the economics of the “Sydney Metro” venture are questionable – particularly the choice to cannibalise components of the prevailing Sydney prepare community to create one of many 4 deliberate automated routes.
The brand new driverless trains – as utilized in megacities all through the world – have fewer seats, elevated standing room, and extra doorways than Sydney’s principal fleet of double-decker trains, making them higher suited to peak-time congestion.
The Metro venture guarantees to ship as much as 15 companies an hour (each 4 minutes) to deal with Sydney’s rising inhabitants.
A driverless prepare in Bangkok, Thailand.
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Driverless trains will ultimately function on three strains from the CBD (to the northwest, west and southwest) and one in far-western Sydney, connecting to the town’s second airport web site at Badgery’s Creek.
By far the largest price for the venture are new tunnels beneath the harbour and CBD. Our focus, nevertheless, is on the deserves of cannibalising current rail infrastructure – particularly the rail line to Bankstown, about 16km southwest of the Sydney CBD – for the southwest Metro line.
This a part of the venture entails changing 11 stations between Bankstown and the inner-eastern suburb of Sydenham. (A brand new tunnel has been constructed from Sydenham into the CBD, the place the road hyperlinks to the Northwest Metro line).
Sydney Railway System.
The authors, CC BY
Our evaluation exhibits the prices, disruptions and misplaced alternatives related to changing this line for the Metro community outweigh the advantages and potential financial savings, largely achieved from changing drivers.
Straightening the road
Automated trains are actually commonplace in cities all through Asia, Europe and the Center East. Their high-frequency companies and platform display screen doorways allow the transport of enormous numbers of commuters with minimal employees supervision. They’ve confirmed protected and efficient.
Learn extra:
5 improvements that would form the way forward for rail journey
The difficulty is whether or not they’re value cannibalising current companies for. There are two principal calculations to think about: the preliminary price; and the continuing prices.
By way of preliminary prices, the Bankstown line isn’t well-suited for automated trains. Computerized trains, which cease exactly at gateways on enclosed platforms, require straight platforms. The Bankstown line, and 5 of its station platforms, are sharply curved.
Straightening up: the curved platform of Campsie prepare station, on the Bankstown line in south-western Sydney, is being transformed for automated trains as half the NSW authorities’s Sydney Metro rail venture.
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Calculating the complete price of constructing these proper for driverless trains is sophisticated, as a result of upkeep and renovations to enhance accessibility and amenity would have occurred in any circumstance.
Based mostly on the NSW authorities’s public bulletins, we estimate changing the road and stations to driverless trains will price about A$1 billion. We conservatively estimate $500 million of that’s purely to fulfill the working necessities of driverless trains. This excludes the price of new prepare storage, management techniques and energy upgrades particularly incurred by the selection of automated trains.
Financial savings on drivers
On the opposite facet of the ledger are potential financial savings – notably on driver prices. We estimate working the Bankstown railway as an automatic metro will save about $15 million a 12 months on driver prices.
That is based mostly on the driving force price of offering prepare companies at the least each 10 minutes all week, and each 5 minutes throughout peak instances. The NSW authorities has indicated Metro companies will function as much as each 4 minutes, however the timetable for the Bankstown line metro isn’t but public.
We estimated driver prices based mostly on the Might 2022 timetable for the Bankstown line – about 1,500 companies every week (1,210 through the week, and 324 at weekends). To approximate matching the upper frequency promised by the Metro trains, we calculated driver prices for 1,900 companies every week.
This may require using about 100 drivers, permitting for regular working hours, holidays and different depart. Based mostly on the price of using a driver, together with administrative overheads, being about $150,000 a 12 months, the financial savings from changing drivers on this line is about $15 million a 12 months.
Assuming a 5% charge of return on the $500 million price to automate the road, this saving is offset by the $25 million a 12 months in alternative prices on the $500 million line conversion.
Time for a rethink
Augmenting established rail networks with new automated rail companies is one factor. Cannibalising current infrastructure to construct these new strains is sort of one other.
Luckily for taxpayers, the NSW authorities isn’t repeating this conversion strategy with the opposite Metro strains.
By our calculation, Sydney could be higher served by following the strategy adopted in Melbourne and Brisbane. Each cities are investing closely in new rail strains, however they’re buying new trains appropriate with their current railway techniques.
Learn extra:
NSW on a gradual observe to quick trains: promised regional rail upgrades are lengthy overdue
This may make way more sense for the Metro line but to be constructed between the CBD and the western-Sydney centre of Parramatta.
Better compatibility will allow companies to be readily prolonged onto current tracks west of Parramatta whereas avoiding the fee and complexities of the Bankstown line conversion.
Christopher Day receives funding from the Commonwealth Authorities by means of a PhD scholarship.
The authors acknowledge the numerous contribution to this analysis and article of Dick Day, common supervisor of timetabling and rail planning for Sydney Trains from 1990 to 2008.
Rico Merkert doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.