Planning North West Sydney's Future Public Transport Needs

The NSW Government has announced a public transport corridor into Marsden Park will be secured for future generations.

This follows a lengthy consultation process with the community this year.

The overwhelming response from the community was for the Marsden Park corridor.

This corridor has now been included in the NSW Government’s Long Term Transport Master Plan.

Transport for NSW will now move forward with securing the Marsden Park corridor and finalising the planning rules to protect this corridor.

The community will be kept fully informed of this process.

This decision gives certainty to families and businesses and ensures the growing North West continues to have access to quality public transport as the region grows over coming decades.

By planning ahead and securing a corridor, we can ensure the public transport system can be further extended into the North West Growth Centre when the time comes.

The North West Growth Centre is expected to be home to an extra 200,000 people over the next 25 to 30 years – that’s about 70,000 new homes.

Earlier this year, two options were identified to secure a public transport corridor from the end of the planned North West Rail Link at Cudgegong Road.

One route went toward Marsden Park, the other toward Riverstone.

Following community consultation, 115 community submissions were made as part of the North West Transport Options study. It found:

• More than two thirds of people – 68 per cent – supported the Marsden Park Option; and
• There was 4 per cent support for the Riverstone option.

The Marsden Park corridor will be protected under planning rules to ensure its future use for public transport.

Securing a corridor now will reduce the cost of providing transport infrastructure in the future.

The NSW Government will now progress further detailed studies into the Marsden Park corridor.

Existing planning polices and powers will be used to protect the corridor for future public transport use. This gives certainty to the region’s families and businesses.

The community, local businesses and affected land holders will be kept fully informed during this ongoing planning process.

This protection means any development within or near the corridor will need to consider potential impacts to the viability of the corridor’s future use for public transport.

However, development will still be able to take place in and around the corridor subject to appropriate planning approvals processes.

The Marsden Park public transport corridor is not part of the current North West Rail Link project.

However, the corridor will run from the end of the North West Rail Link at Cudgegong Road and will future-proof the region’s public transport needs.

The North West Rail Link is well underway – the first of the tunnel boring machines will be in the ground in 2014.

As Sydney’s population continues to grow and the greater Sydney region keeps expanding, the NSW Government is planning ahead by securing this public transport corridor.

This ensures an effective public transport system can be developed when the time comes.

It makes good transport and planning sense to identify and reserve transport corridors before they are needed.

Identifying the need and location for a transport corridor early allows for the orderly development of suburbsand regions, and paves the way for suitable development to occur around transport corridors.

This allows planners to ensure the location of community facilities including town centres, schools and hospitals that people will need have been carefully considered long before the first houses in new suburbs are built.

As part of the NSW Long Term Transport Master Plan, a further transport corridor has also been identified for investigation from Marsden Park – through to Mount Druitt, to the Western Sydney Employment Area and then to Fairfield and Leppington.