The transport situation in Sydney would have been better if it were not for the inaction of governments going back over the last eighty years or more - not just the current government. Back around 1920 Dr Bradfield planned a comprehensive electric railway system, which covered just about all that there was then of Sydney, but only part of it got built. Governments of all political hues are responsible for the failure of this plan to come to fruition.

We had to wait until the 1970s for a truncated Eastern Suburbs line to be built and, of course, there is, more recently, the Airport Link line built in one of those Public/Private partnerships. The latter of these lines is so ridiculously expensive to travel on that the fares must surely be keeping people in their cars. I mean, I had to go from Central to Green Square a while ago and it cost me about as much as it would cost to go to Parramatta - and that's for a trip you could walk in just over an hour if you had the time...

Aside from what we have now, in Bradfield's plan there was to be a loop line from Central through the eastern suburbs to St James, taking in Waterloo, Rosebery, Coogee, Bondi Junction, Edgecliff, Paddington and Kings Cross, with branches to La Perouse and Watsons Bay, there were to be lines to Mosman and Athol Bay, to Narrabeen and to Pittwater, there was to be an inner west line from Wynyard, through Balmain, Rozelle, Leichhardt and Annandale, linking up to the main line at Petersham and the Balmain Leichhardt line was also to link to the northern line at Ryde, serving Drummoyne, Five Dock and Gladesville.

The University of Sydney's website has a map showing Bradfield's proposed railways (in 1924 Bradfield received the first Doctorate of Science in Engineering awarded by the University of Sydney). The map is too large to post an image of it in a forum, so here's a link instead: Bradfield's map