I had intended to write a postscript to my series on the ideas of the engineer John Bradfield and their impact on Sydney in commemoration of the recent 75th anniversary of his death on 23 September 1943, but the NSW Government has, in a sense, beaten me to it.
Recently the government announced plans to transform the abandoned tunnels and platforms at St James Station which Bradfield constructed into an entertainment and tourism precinct housing bars, restaurants, shops or galleries, all occupying 6,000 square metres of underground space. This announcement provides a coda to the last article in my series which touched on the abandoned tunnels in discussing Bradfield’s plans for what was effectively a “missing metro” through Sydney’s inner suburbs.
The tunnels formed a key component of Bradfield’s plans. In this light is the announcement by NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance the wise recycling of redundant assets to encourage tourism, or a short-sighted takeover of valuable public transport infrastructure? It’s worth taking a look at why the tunnels were built, what the government is proposing to do with them and the potential, if any, for their use as transport corridors.
What was Bradfield planning?
Mr Constance states that “the platforms and tunnels were intended to link the Eastern Suburbs with the Northern Beaches but the plans were never completed”. This is incorrect.
Bradfield may have changed his ideas a few times, but it was clearly the lines across the Harbour Bridge that were always intended to prove a northern beaches link – not the tunnels at St James. In fact, while he proposed an interchange, Bradfield never planned a direct connection between his eastern suburbs and northern beaches lines.
Instead, as I described in more detail in my last article, the St James tunnels were intended to provide an interchange between the City Circle and Bradfield’s planned line which would have run to both the eastern and the western suburbs. Unlike the extra platforms at Town Hall, the additional infrastructure would not only have allowed passengers to interchange, but also would have permitted trains to transfer from the eastern suburbs line to the City Circle, and vice versa. Continue reading