Passenger Rail, Safety, Standards & Regulation

Residents to SWRL extension: ‘Tell ‘em they’re dreaming!”

SWRL extension. Graphic: Transport for NSW

“A man’s home is his castle” is a favourite piece of vernacular for many Australians. But for some of Sydney’s south west residents this past week, the phrase has hit closer to home.

Several hundred home and land owners could reportedly be turfed out to make way for an extension to the South West Rail Link extension, south to Narellan, Harrington Park and Oran Park, with a proposed corridor specified by the state government last week.

They would be offered compensation for their properties, of course, but that is understandably not enough to keep them all happy, according to a report by the ABC.

Harrington Park landowner ‘Danny’ said the specific alignment was a surprise to locals, and left his development in a questionable state.

“We’re sitting here, ready to build a house, and we don’t know what to do,” Danny told ABC’s 702 Mornings program.

He said an entire allotment of 99 recently-sold blocks, “will be gone” due to the newly-outlined alignment.

“It said in our contract that there would be a railway line running along The Northern Road, a couple of kilometres away,” he said.

But the plan outlined last week sees a rail line running through Oran Park, with the corridor including Danny’s property and many around it.

“Even [local member] Chris Patterson didn’t know about this,” Danny continued.

“We bought these blocks a year ago and, with the boom that’s going on, all the other land releases have sold out.”

Another local resident, Dennis McLear of Harrington Park, told 702 that a neighbour had moved in just weeks before the letter arrived detailing the new rail proposal.

Another resident, McLear said, “moved in four weeks ago, he paid $800,000 for it and now he’ll have a [railway line] on his back fence”.

State transport minister Andrew Constance said the route for the southern extension to SWRL was still negotiable.

“We’re going to talk to everybody about it,” he reportedly told the ABC, adding that if the NSW government did not protect the proposed route, it would be criticised for not taking a responsible decision in terms of identifying appropriate public transport corridors for future growth and development in the city’s south west.

1 Comment

  1. Surely it would make more sense for the State government to offer a substitute house and land rather than offering financial compensation. These people don’t want money – they want a home equivalent to what they have to give up. Having it close to a railway station would improve its land value and provide some added compensation for the inconvenience.