Of all of the railway stations in Sydney's vast rail network, there is one in particular which is especially perplexing to me. That station is Norwest on the North West Metro line.
I have no real idea what the alignment of the North West Metro runs the way that it does through that part of the world because I have been unable to find any of the discussion papers which went into the policy making process.
The North West Metro which was discussed in the run up to the 2011 NSW Election actually came with the promise by the then Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell that it any work was undertaken by the then Kenneally Labor Government, that his government would fill in all of the holes.
When the project was finally greenlit by the O'Farrell Liberal Government, the line mysteriously stopped 2222m short of connecting with the Richmond Line at an interchange at Schofields. The other end of the line just happened to be at Chatswood which just happens to be in the electorate of Willoughby and the then Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian (I wonder what ever happened to her?)
I didn't really have that much of a problem when the then Macquarie Line connected Chatswood to Epping via Macquarie University and the Macquarie Centre. That was a sensible connection because both ends were connected to the existing network. My problem with the North West Metro terminating at Tallawong is that it could have gone the extra 2222m and connected at Schofields but someone took the deliberate decision for that not to happen. Remember, politics is the art of the enactment of policy and policy means that someone has made choices.
Norwest Railway Station which is on the North West Metro, does this almost unique trick of not actually being useful to the majority of the residents which live within the boundaries of the suburb which bears its name.
There are two enclaves of houses within Norwest and the one in the northwest of the suburb is almost borderline too far away to make the railway station useful. The enclave to the south side of the suburb, has as far as I can tell, absolutely no direct route by car to get to the station and the set of houses have a single sad footpath that doesn't open up into a place where the railway station is easily accessible.
The suburb of Norwest as being a distinctly new thing was demarcated as a business park and so I would expect that the railway station is supposed to serve them in the same way Macquarie Park or Wynyard serves the business community immediately around those places. Again, Norwest Railway Station is far away from practically every business in the suburb.
The question then is, who is this for? Apart from the Norwest Markettown shopping centre on the other side of the street which has adequate parking (because you'd expect people who are grocery shopping to take a car), the only entity that I can see which properly benefits from the existence of Norwest Railway Station is Hillsong.
Norwest Railway Station is unique on the North West Metro in that it is the only station which doesn't have free commuter car parking. There are roughly 4000 parking spots up and down the line; with the very big carparks at Tallawong which has 1000 spots and 1360 at Kellyville.
The carpark which is on Solent Circuit is owned and operated privately by Hillsong and charges roughly $200 pet month, though church-goers, staff members and students of Hillsong Campuses are exempt from paying the cost.
Norwest Station is labelled as a 'destination station' in the North West Metro official documentation in the same way that Wynyard or Museum Stations are. This means that Transport For NSW expected in principle that it mostly wouldn't be used by locals and residents to commute outwards from. As a destination, they expect people to arrive there. This is curious because of the businesses that are in the area, most of them are outside of sensible walking distance from the station; with only a few along Norwest Boulevard which might make use of the facilities. If you are coming in from the west and west, then the station is virtually useless to you as there is no western end rail connection with anything; so you may as well drive. If you are coming from the south, then you are more likely to take a bus if you intend to take public transport, and if you are coming from the east, the first connection point with the rest of the rail network is Epping.
If Norwest Railway Station doesn't really serve the businesses there, and it doesn't really serve the shopping centre there, and it's practically useless to the commuters who are actually in the suburb, then the only reason why I can imagine that it was placed where it is, is the Hillsong Head Campus complex on the opposite diagonal corner of the intersection.
Given that Peter Costello, Alexander Downer, Helen Coonan, Kevin Andrews, Alex Hawke, and Scott Morrison have all spoken at Hillsong Conferences in the past, it doesn't take that much of a leap of faith to work out why Norwest Railway Station just happens to be placed on the other side of the street from Hillsong. The thing about railway trains is that they are impartial but once you lay down the lines, that's where they run.
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