Sydney City network that never was: The Bradfield Scheme

Such a shame this was never done. Imagine how much better it would be in Sydney with this plan in place? And being able to get to Manly and the lower north shore by rail would have been fantastic.

What a visionary plan! It would have mitigated the hellacious traffic going over the Harbour Bridge. Some of this plan could be revisited and integrated into future expansion of the network. I’ve liked and subscribed.

It would interesting to overlay the Bradfield plan with a map of Sydney’s tram network. I imagine there’s a lot of overlap given there were 230km of tramways.

Great plans and video. Only problem is the city has changed so much in the intervening years. No one was thinking of an International Airport in 1912, nor running a line up to the holiday resort areas of Sydney upper Northern Beaches. Population densities around Sydney have changed so much we are now playing catch-up with all transport systems. My Aunt worked with Mr Bradfields family from around 1925 and through all the Bridge building time. He was a true visionary and a great planner, but he didn't seem to take anyone on his journey. What's done is done we just have to live with what we have got and put more effort into getting the transit systems going properly.

Thanks fo shining a light on Bradfield’s plans. I have a couple of comments and corrections. 1. The platforms at Wynyard, the eastern tracks in the Harbour Bridge and the stub tunnels at North Sydney were all part of Bradfield’s Mosman and northern beaches railway plan. Bradfield made provision in his plans for long term expansion, and when the bridge was about to open it was decided that these tracks would be used by trams as an interim measure. 2. In his later plans Bradfield changed the route for his proposed inner west line. It would have run into Town Hall then formed a second CBD loop via a couple of stations near Hunter St to link into the St James station centre platforms from the north, with the eastern suburbs line running south from here, the only remnant of this that was built was the additional platforms at Town Hall which were bused for years until they became part of the ESR. 3. Returning to the northern beaches railway, from Wynyard this would have run south through the centre of the CBD, interchanging with second CBD loop at Hunter St before running to a station west of Central, more or less where the ESR platforms are today. It would then have rejoined the tracks to Central.

A line to Manly and the rest of the Eastern Suburbs would have been amazing. Those two areas are completely not serviced at all now. Although I've seen multiple sources about a new Metro line coming off from Waterloo into the Eastern Suburbs and down to at least Pagewood. That could be 50 years away still though.

That's the first time I've ever seen the entire Bradfield plan laid out, thank you! Even now as the costs of new Metro lines go through the roof and there is already talk of saving cost overruns by not converting an already functional train line from Sydenham to Bankstown to a metro, there are proposals for future extensions or metro lines - often to sparsely populated outlying areas with the assumption that the rail service will cultivate new communities. I'm sure Bradfield had that in mind for many of his plans and I suspect many of today's proposals will meet the same fate as his Northern Beaches proposal.

Great video! Though 00:45 Wynyard has never been pronounced “Win yard”, but contracted, like how we say “Melbn”, it’s “Wynyd” and 1:30 Rozelle is pronounced, “ROSE el” and 2:43 Coogee is pronounced “COULD-jee (Not like how they pronounce it in Western Australia)

That plan was never going to get up and it’s foolish and representative of a young inexperienced generation that think it was. Few governments would plan so many lines in the 20th century and actually follow through to funding all of them. There’s not enough money and they don’t remain in power long enough. You’re lucky if they pick one or two prestige projects and run with them at best. The Eastern suburbs line a case in point. All that effort and money and all we got was what, 4-5 stations (and one not even completed) with a relatively short line that ends far short of where it should be going and absolutely no plans or desire since to extend it further. Planning these days is often not ‘what we need and what actually will be useful’ but more along the lines ‘what will get us elected/keep us in power’ Great video by the way.

It’s interesting to imagine the Sydney rail network connecting all those places, but draw a service diagram and consider all those flat junctions and branches, you’d be lucky to get two trains an hour. Not to mention how ambiguous some of those elevation changes were, you’d need a lot of tunnelling and bridges. This network would have made the Sydney rail network like Melbourne is today, with a congested city centre and infrequent suburban services, Sydney would have likely become even more sprawling and car dependent. If we did build this network we’d probably be struggling to build mega projects in the CBD to untangle all these lines, like the Melbourne Metro tunnel. Now I want to draw a network diagram and figure out how these branches might have been separated into metro lines…

Could you imagine a parallel universe where all of Bradfield's plans were enacted and built for these railways? It would have been great to get to Manly and the Northern Beaches by rail.

Nice history background video about Sydney's Bradfield plan which had quite the vision back then, although the end of the video felt pretty sudden. When I discuss about Sydney transit, will definitely give you a recommendation.

Thanks for the excellent overview of Bradfield's plans. When you look at it you sort of wonder why modern day planners seem to have largely ignored it? The stations sites under Balmain, Drummoyne, Five Dock, Rozelle made perfect sense then and even more sense now.If I had been designing the current Metro that exactly where i would have put them!

lovely video. i am apart of the first 10 club which will surely grow with this much effort put in. props for giving me new information.

Bradfield was a visionary… train line through lower north shore to northern beaches… branch lines… Oh well

Great video, thanks. Also thanks for the sources.

Honestly though, the design with its junctions and branch lines would have compounded the problems with Sydney’s network, which is having certain sections (like the main suburban line) pushed to capacity, while struggling to maintain adequate frequency at the extremities. The eastern suburbs line continuing to the Illawarra line and remaining seperate was a far better design. The fact that it stops at Bondi junction is another issue entirely as it would be far easier to extend and provide great service as it is, than what Bradfield suggested. Likewise, the new metro lines and light rail lines working independently of the main network is great for fault isolation and reliability. It’s easy to get caught up with starry eyed projections about what this network would be like, but you have a better network today than you would have had otherwise.

The best part of the Sydney rail network: it was designed to have zero level crossings.

Re the western suburbs connection @4:25. The final plan was to have this line branch off from Town Hall, not Wynyard. Town Hall lower level platforms 4 & 5 were in fact built for this purpose and sat unused until the current eastern suburbs line connected to the stub tunnels and station in the late '70s. There were at least two royal commissions into the route before Bradfield could build anything, reason being that CBD landowners wanted to avoid resumption. These landowners had money and political influence. Thus, the tunnels and stations built are mostly under road or public land. St James was designed for an eastern subs to western subs interchange - east via Oxford St, west via a tight loop through Bridge, O'Connell, Pitt Streets to Town Hall and viaduct bridge across Cockle Bay. The Northern Beaches connection to Wynyard platforms 1-2 was to continue south to a "Great Southern Railway" towards Mascot. Bradfield planned an east-west connection via St James/Town Hall and a north-south connection via North Syd/Wynyard.

I have no connection to Sydney, but I can understand the tragedy of understanding what could have been had things been better. Australia is such a prime candidate for HSR and of course all cities are prime candidates for proper, grade separated, mass transit. Thanks for sharing!