While it only takes Alexander Saroussidis 20 minutes to get to uni this week, his commute could balloon out to more than 90 minutes come Monday, much to his frustration.
The 19-year-old is among the thousands of residents who will be affected by the closure of the T3 train line from Bankstown to Sydenham, and is not looking forward to depending on the replacement buses.
“Rather than a direct train to central, I will have to take two buses and a train, with significant wait times in between,” Saroussidis said. “The alternative would be to drive every day to and from university, which would cost me hundreds of dollars a year in parking fees and petrol.
“It’s extremely annoying and frustrating. It’s so tedious to hear how long my commute will be, and honestly demotivates me from my studies knowing how much added time I have to put in.”
The line is being closed to allow work to begin converting it to a metro line, which will eventually connect with the recently completed M1 line from Chatswood to Sydenham, which opened in August.
It is estimated the conversion will be completed in late 2025, however that date is only an estimate, with delays to such a complex project likely.
And while the NSW government has organised free travel on the replacement bus services, it has left many residents in south-west Sydney in a lurch, having to rethink their schedules, commutes and lives.
Saroussidis said he felt “let down” by the government, saying the changes had resulted in people’s lives being “displaced”.
“How can we trust the reliability of these replacement systems to ensure that we will be where we need to be on time? It’s an unfair change that they don’t seem to be making easy for us,” he said.
Residents wrote on a Facebook thread of the many different changes they would have to make due to the shutdown, with one resident saying instead of a walk to a train station to begin her commute, she would need to drive to her parent’s home and catch a bus instead.
“I’ll leave earlier too so instead of a 25 min one way commute it will now be over one hour. I know the end result will be great but getting to that point is going to be hard,” she said, asking to remain anonymous.
Others said they would change their jobs, park at different train stations or have to leave much earlier to accommodate traffic.
The Sydenham to Bankstown Alliance of community groups that have come together to advocate on the issue said in a statement that residents felt a sense of “betrayal” over the changes.
“The impacts of this conversion extend beyond individual commuters with the construction phase of the Metro Southwest project likely to disrupt daily life significantly, with construction vehicles and added road congestion exacerbating commuting challenges.
“Local businesses, too, are voicing their concerns about diminished foot traffic during construction, which could threaten their viability and impact the local economy.”
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Will Frances is a lecturer who has to commute from his home in Punchbowl to Kensington, a trip that often takes just over an hour. But he thinks it could blow out by an uncertain amount of time, throwing his life and his family’s schedule into chaos.
“Previously I could do the school drop-off and pickup, but I will have to change my working time and class schedules to accommodate the extra time I might need to get to work on time,” Frances said.
He has had students tell him they were considering wholesale changes to their lives, including delaying or dropping out of university, due to the changes.
He said the impacts on people’s lives “can’t be understated”.
“It just shows a contempt for the people here, a contempt for our time. How much does it mean to your life to lose five to 10 hours a week?
“Especially when your whole life has already been constricted by cost of living and everything else, where you feel like you’re kind of just holding it together, and now you have to wonder if you’ll ever be on time to work again.
“The disruption to your life that this represents can’t be understated.”
Once the conversion of the 130-year-old train line is complete, the government says passengers will have access to a “21st-century hi-tech metro line” that will run every four minutes during peak times. The stations on the Bankstown to Sydenham line now receive four trains an hour in the peak.
The NSW transport minister, Jo Haylen, said on Wednesday that it “will be a tough time” but it would be “worth the wait”.
“Make no mistake – this will be a tough time, and I want to thank the tens of thousands of impacted commuters in Canterbury-Bankstown and the inner west for their understanding.”
“It will be worth the wait, as the 6.3 million passengers who’ve used City Metro since it opened can attest.”