Western Sydney Airport (WSI) Discussion

[moa999]

WSI Metro further delayed. 2028 opening now looking likely.

Warnings that metro rail line to Sydney’s new airport is set to be delayed again

Confidential documents reveal the project is running late on a vast range of work, from switching on power at stations to receiving new European-built trains.

www.smh.com.au

 

[SeatBackForward]

WSI Metro further delayed. 2028 opening now looking likely.

Warnings that metro rail line to Sydney’s new airport is set to be delayed again

Confidential documents reveal the project is running late on a vast range of work, from switching on power at stations to receiving new European-built trains.

www.smh.com.au

The high price of lowest bidders hey.

 

[Saab34]

You always need to add 2-3 years into any project, we never get anything here done on time or on budget. It’s great for suppliers and those who won the contract.

 

[SeatBackForward]

You always need to add 2-3 years into any project, we never get anything here done on time or on budget

I'm close to the industry, so other than being careful what I say...it's rarely the people involved in delivering the project that cause these problems. Politicians are always in a rush - there's two significant points that they're interested in:

1. Announcing the project, ideally a ceremonial sod turning involving an oversized shovel, but oversized cheques or signing of a contract will suffice
2. Completion usually a ribbon cutting or the "look how normal I am using this piece of infrastructure" surrounded by camera crews..

The rush for the above mean that the actual scope of a project is never really finalised and defined, which means the cost to deliver it and the time take never settle ie. a moving target, so unsurprisingly everything only ever takes longer and costs more. It's not uncommon to start building it before the design is actually accepted.

There is a remedy, unfortunately it means slowing down. - taking the time to better define and better design these projects. In the *good old days* the design or such projects was a completely different project of its own, but these days the Build, own, operate & transfer model encourages the overlapping of much more of those elements than would have been done in decades past.

I'm a bit of a fan of historic engineering projects, and I often think the way things were done 200yrs ago, at the height of colonial engineering was truly a golden age, where every cent wasn't squeezed out and the intent was to build things that actually served their purpose. And they achieved it in an era without modern technology, communication etc. often designing , manufacturing and the building things continents apart.

 

[Aeryn]

Listening to spotify over the weekend, every second advert was a warning about airport noise for new flight paths (i.e late night/ early am departures/arrivals) from WSI starting to operate.

 

[RooFlyer]

Listening to spotify over the weekend, every second advert was a warning about airport noise for new flight paths (i.e late night/ early am departures/arrivals) from WSI starting to operate.

Shouldn’t be a problem as everyone reckons it’s going to be a failure . Regarding those flightpaths and noise, do you apply the same logic as you apply to the flight paths and noise out of Sydney Airport?

I went through Sydney International this morning and I had forgotten what a nightmare the whole place is..

From the queue of traffic just to drive up to departures and I see they have to now divert half the traffic to the lower level now in the morning. Even so we were about 10 minutes on the ramp.

The check-in area absolutely jammed from one end to the other.

But that was nothing compared to the terminal concourse. Connecting mazes of little nooks and crannies all stuffed with people shoulder to shoulder. (except in the high end brand name shops of course). The maintenance cost must be astronomical. All the differing roof profiles, fans ducts, air-conditioning, the maze of floors to be cleaned.

Even even the Qantas first lounge was absolutely jampacked. People forced to have breakfast in the lounge chairs right to either end of the space.

We boarded at a bus gate. Even that was a cough show. They don’t let you down to the lower level. They hold everyone in a pen at the top absolutely crammed, blocking the corridors to the other gates and then they let you down the escalator to the boarding gates and onto a bus. It looked like there were about six planes being boarded by buses - we passed them on the way to the very far end next to the new Link Road.

Sydney needs WSI. Sydney International Airport has become a cough airport. It’s too crowded. The layout after multiple additions is a nightmare. It will stay like that forever unless someone gets the bulldozers out and build a new terminal somewhere. But even that won’t fix the capacity issue.

Thank goodness someone had the foresight to do WSI. Without it what do you think Sydney airport would look like in 20 years?

 

[Chatswood]

You always need to add 2-3 years into any project, we never get anything here done on time or on budget. It’s great for suppliers and those who won the contract.

Metro Northwest was $900m under budget and opened on time, one of the rare exceptions to infrastructure in NSW.

WSI Metro’s progress was not helped by the Metro review which the new government commissioned when they came to power which effectively put a go-slow on existing projects, or Webuild’s financial troubles. It should be noted that the Review did praise the Sydney Metro Board’s capability, only for it to be dissolved a year later.