Sydney is hurtling towards an unsolvable transport crisis if job growth in western Sydney continues at the same rate as it has for the past decade, a new report says.
There will be a jobs deficit of more than 300,000 and nearly half a million people – mostly professionals travelling long distances – will be forced to leave western Sydney each day to get to work by 2036 if things continue the way they are.
This is the grim projection made in the Western Sydney University report, which says Sydney will be "strangled" by congestion on roads, trains and buses, a loss of productivity and rising costs if nothing much changes.
"Global Sydney will suffocate," the report's author Professor Phillip O'Neill, director of the Centre for Western Sydney, said.
"If jobs growth in western Sydney continues at the pace of the last 10 years – and I use the word "pace" sarcastically – if we stay at the current pace then the distances needing to be travelled to get to work will strangle Sydney by crushing the capacity of its roads and its public transport."
The Addressing Western Sydney's Jobs Slide report says western Sydney's shape and structure will be locked in by 2040 and "we will have failed our next generations miserably" if workers do not have reasonable job choices within manageable distances available to them.
The manufacturing sector, which has been the main employer in western Sydney since World War II, has undergone dramatic job losses but there has been a lack of growth in the service sectors to offset this decline or match the increase of workers.
Government polices to build large concentrations of jobs in western Sydney, the report says, "have not been pursued with the required aggression".
"Unfortunately, the rhetoric isn't accompanied by the required commitment. Saying jobs are the number one priority is easy to say because it is a vague thing to say," Professor O'Neill said.
The report also takes aim at state government employment projections for western Sydney, saying they are unrealistic, unable to be justified beyond their desirability and show a "startling difference" to the historic growth rate.
Transport for NSW's Bureau Statistics and Analytics job forecasts produces an annual job growth rate in western Sydney that is 137 per cent higher than that of the past 10 years, the report says, leading to a more manageable deficit of 82,000 jobs and just over 300,000 workers leaving the region each day by 2036.
The figures in the report result from a different population forecast than what the bureau uses, but a Transport for NSW spokeswoman said the body was investigating long-term transport corridors to support future population growth and was continuing to analyse where additional capacity was most needed for western Sydney.
Opposition Leader Luke Foley said growing jobs in western Sydney had to be "absolutely top priority" for policymakers.
"This report confirms that a major shift in direction is needed or congestion will kill this city," Mr Foley said.
While taxpayers pay about $5 billion annually to run the Sydney public transport system, the report found that western Sydney workers benefit from far it less it than those who live closer to the CBD.
In fact, the western Sydney workforce also spends about $5 billion – or about $10,000 for a typical worker – getting to and from work in their cars each year, according to the report.
NSW Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian said one in every three jobs created in the past year in NSW has been in western Sydney, and in the year to February more than 47,000 jobs had been created in the region.
"The government has and will continue to invest in western Sydney and this investment will create even more jobs," the Treasurer said.
"For example, Rebuilding NSW will invest more than $10 billion in Western Sydney for major infrastructure that will support population growth and help create jobs, such as roads, public transport, hospitals and schools."
The government is hoping the proposed Badgerys Creek airport will boost jobs growth in the region, and has announced the establishment of a Western Sydney Priority Growth Area surrounding the site.
