Unanderra told to “bear with us” on station upgrade

Last month it appeared that Unanderra had missed out again, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian announcing that the state budget would include funds for accessibility upgrades at Beecroft, Como and Glenbrook stations.

This week Transport Minister Andrew Constance confirmed that Unanderra would have to wait and see what the next round of Transport Access Program (TAP) funding brings in 12 months’ time.

“Ultimately we have another round of TAP coming up in the next year or so and we will reassess Unanderra as part of that,” Mr Constance said.

“But again, when you’ve got major stations right across the network where there are literally tens of thousands of people going through these stations every day, you have to have a priority process around it.”

That priority process sees each station receiving a ranking based on a range of criteria, including the number of people who use it, the potential for population growth in the surrounding area and the distance to the nearest accessible station.

Under a recent Freedom of Information request, it was discovered that in October 2016 Unanderra was ranked in 11^th spot.

Earlier this year there was a controversy when Leura station was chosen for an upgrade, despite it being ranked three places behind Unanderra.

When asked why Leura was picked ahead of Unanderra Mr Constance said he “would have to go back and have a look at Leura in that regard” before being able to respond.

Those station rankings are kept secret by Transport for NSW but state members on both sides of parliament have suggested making those rankings public, but Mr Constance had no plans to do so.

“No, I think the process as it works, works fine,” Mr Constance said.

“We’re a government that has invested over a billion dollars into transport access, we’ve now done around 38 accessible programs in terms of lifts and we’ve got 450 programs under way as part of the overall program and we will continue the work.

“Unanderra in terms of the number of patrons compared to some of those other stations is different.

“Bear with us, there’s another round of funding.”