Transport Minister Berejiklian recently defended her decision to limit the North West Rail Link to single deck trains using small tunnels. She acknowledged that the decision to go with small tunnels might be unpopular. She said that would have been easier for her  (politically) to build a double deck system, but she said this would have been the wrong decision.

Cramming passengers quickly onto single deck trains is used in a number of world cities. Will it work in Australia where our culture is different and very diverse? Let’s hope so.

A reasonable compromise might have been to dig tunnels that can cater for double deck trains. Then if the experiment fails, at least there would be something useful to return to. There is no way once the system is operational could you back and make the tunnels bigger.