On behalf of the citizenry of NSW I am happy to present our entire double
deck fleet to Victoria to do with it as you wish. Just leave us the
interurbans. In return we'll take your new high capacity trains. Fair deal?
;)

You might recall Roderick that the Paris trains have three doors per side
per car. They struggle with that. Sydney has no chance with two doors. It's
very interesting to note that Melbourne's new high capacity trains will
have more capacity than Sydney's double deck sets, not to mention being
able to exchange passengers more quickly at stations. The double decker
enthusiasts love quoting the manufacturer's maximum capacity, but in
reality in daily service you can never fill the trains to that capacity
because you couldn't exchange passengers on a full train without massive
dwells at stops to enable people plugged up in the gondolas to get to the
doors through the blockage in the vestibule and then for more people to
board. The only time you see a full double decker is on a special event
service where they all board at one end of the line and all disembark at
once at the other (e.g. Olympic games). Otherwise they have no more
practical capacity than a single deck train, about 1,100 people. I lived
with it daily for 40 years.

Sydney is being planned away from a tidal flow city, with activity
(employment, education etc) centres dispersed across the Sydney basin.
Sydney always was more decentralised than Melbourne, now it is becoming
more so in a major way.

The planning for new train lines in both Perth and Sydney is based on modal
interchange, not on walk-up. Speed of operation is essential for that, as
well as for traversing the long distances of very spread-out cities
quickly.

Tony P