Sydney opened a brand-new $5.6 billion airport on Sunday. The governments that built it are still working on the part where you can get there.
I've flown into a lot of airports. This is the first one that's easier to reach from Auckland than from Sydney.
Here's what's real, per ABC News, the BBC, the Sydney Morning Herald and Transport for NSW. Western Sydney International Airport, decades in the making, took its first passenger flights on Oct. 25. It sits about 45 kilometres from Sydney's central business district. The metro line meant to connect it, jointly funded by the Australian and New South Wales governments, isn't finished. Officials say 2027. The Sydney Morning Herald says, after numerous delays, it "might even be 2028."
So the plan is this. Take a train to St Marys station. Catch a free shuttle bus that comes every 30 minutes and takes about half an hour. Then fly. From Central Station, ABC News found the quickest public transport trip is a train to Penrith and a bus from there: about 1 hour and 40 minutes, for $10.31. The flight to Melbourne is shorter than the ride to the gate.
There is a premium option. A private Super Shuttle runs from the Sydney CBD for $55, per the Herald. From the old Sydney Airport, it's $65. Australia built a second airport and the first thing it did was start charging people to get there from the first one.
The government's own brochure says the metro will one day get you from St Marys to the terminal "in around 15 minutes." That's a lovely promise. So was the airport.
On opening day, ABC News found travellers who didn't quite know which airport they'd landed at. A visitor from Sweden flew back from Melbourne, looked out the window and had no idea where she was. Her car was parked at the other airport. A man got off an Air New Zealand flight from Auckland and told the ABC he'd seen "Western Sydney" and thought it meant Western Australia. He was meant to be in Perth. He said he'd make the best of it. He's the only person in this story with a working plan.
To be fair, the toll-free M12 motorway is open and taxis wait outside the terminal, meter running. The airport is technically accessible to anyone who owns a car or a small business.
Picture a fictional Penrith dad named Gary. He's taking his family of four on their first overseas trip. He saved for the flights. He did not budget for the expedition to the flights. He stands at a bus stop with four passports, watching his plane take off from a runway he can see but can't reach.
On the sewer scale, this rates four rats out of five. One rat for the $5.6 billion, one for the year with no train, one for the man headed to Perth and one for the $65 bus between two airports owned by the same country. The fifth rat is still on the shuttle from St Marys.
Sydney built the gate to the world. They just forgot the gate to the gate.
And here's your bill: regular gas averaged $4.48 a gallon in the U.S. in September, up 28 cents from August, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Sydney's government says the train is coming next year. Your gas tank has heard that one before.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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