Stranded at Barangaroo

Wtih construction due to start soon on the first of 12 towers planned at Barangaroo, and the first commercial building scheduled to open just three years later, it seems strange that Sydney's planning authorities have still not worked out how people will get there. The first tower alone will house nearly 6000 workers. By the time Barangaroo is finished in 12 years, almost 60,000 workers, residents and visitors will throng there daily. Wynyard, the closest railway station, built in the 1920s and now at bursting point, will be unable to cope. As the NSW Auditor-General's report on Barangaroo's transport planning put it too kindly last week, unless something is done now, "Barangaroo's success could be limited".

Given Sydney's dismal record in transport planning, this inertia is perhaps not so strange. But Barangaroo is not just any development. Occupying a strategic site on the city's western edge, one of its planned functions is to be the headquarters for Sydney's ambitions as an Asia-Pacific financial hub. For most other global cities, modern transport links are integral to such plans. The Barangaroo Delivery Authority claims its plans are world's best practice for new urban precincts. Those plans envisage only 4 per cent of commuters arriving at Barangaroo by car (versus 18 per cent across the CBD now), and

63 per cent by train. But, as the Auditor-General notes, achieving world's best practice will only happen "if facilities at Wynyard are also world class". With Barangaroo's high demands, the prospects for that are dim.