When the privatisation plan was dramatically scaled back under pressure from the union movement, the Metro proposal was reduced to a nine-kilometre shuttle between the CBD and the inner-western suburb of Rozelle, raising questions about the project's value for money.

[6] The cycle of announcement, re-announcement and cancellation of rail projects was a familiar pattern under the Labor government that ruled New South Wales between 1995 and 2011.

[8] At the time, a number of cities were planning or building modern, standalone metros, including Toronto (opened 1954), Lisbon (1959), Montreal (1966), São Paulo (1974), Seoul (1974), Santiago (1975), Washington DC, (1976) and Hong Kong (1979).

SROP's solution was a rapid transit system that would have augmented the city's most crowded rail line, the Main West, with a fast, single-deck operation between the CBD and Parramatta.

[10][11] The inner city lines will all be saturated within the next ten years or so, and there will be a need for a new, alternative route through the CBD.Ironically, it was Carr himself who would have to deal with the consequences of his metropolitan plan, when he was elected Premier of New South Wales in 1995.

Carr and his transport minister, Carl Scully, built on the idea by extending the corridor westward, via the underused Carlingford branch line, to Western Sydney’s chief employment centre, Parramatta.

The need for this western extension was questionable: indeed, Carr and Scully’s successor, Michael Costa, were to remove it from the plan five years later, citing low expected patronage.

This represented the beginnings of a major strategic shift, with future rapid transit proposals to incorporate private-sector operation as a core element.

[13][14] Yet the rail czar's warnings could not be ignored: the inner city lines will all be saturated within the next ten years or so, and there will be a need for a new, alternative route through the CBD, from Eveleigh to St Leonards, in the medium term, most likely by between 2011 and 2015 ...

[13]Christie's report also flagged the potential for a future rapid transit ("metro") network, marking the mode's re-emergence in official thinking after a long absence.

His replacement, Health Minister Morris Iemma, confirmed the Government would retain its commitment to MREP, including it in the State Plan and Urban Transport Statement the following year.

"[6]From the beginning of his turbulent three-year stint as premier, Iemma recognised that the cautious, managerialist character of the Carr government was not sustainable – in policy or political terms.

First, the existing rail system was expensive to run, not least because the operator, RailCorp, remained tied to old-style industrial practices and excessively high engineering standards.

Second, even if costs could be brought under control, the sheer scale of investment required to extend an all-purpose heavy rail system was beyond the state's means.

Third, while the need for additional extensions into the new bus and car-dependent suburbs of the north-west and south-west was clear – and would be aided by the partial preservation of corridors in the past – congestion at the existing Town Hall and Wynyard stations meant that to work, any new rail project had to increase capacity in the CBD.

The unit's solution – supported by Iemma and Costa – was to sidestep the high costs and industrial risks of the existing RailCorp network and instead begin building a new rapid transit rail system in parallel.

)[22] The Sydney Morning Herald, which had championed Christie's ideas in the past, welcomed the discussion but noted acidly, "Sound or not, with this Government there is no reason to be confident that anything at all will come of either plan.

But the long lead times for required for planning, approvals and construction of a new railway meant that even a full four-year term would not be enough to make visible progress.

Along with his plan to sell the government's electricity generation and retailing companies, Iemma announced a massive infrastructure scheme called "Sydney Link".

But its centerpiece was "Metro Link", a future rapid transit system of underground, privately operated, single-deck, automated trains.

There were to be stations at:[25] While Rudd made statements in support of the privatisation plan, he was lukewarm about North West Metro as a way to spend the proceeds.

[28] The party secretary, Karl Bitar, and his deputy, Luke Foley, were less ideologically committed on the issue, but their polling showed that the public was against a sale and – more importantly – tiring of Iemma and his team.

[34] Although limited in scale, the project was positioned as enabling urban densification, particularly at the Barangaroo and Pyrmont precincts, and forming the "spine" of a wider network in future.

As part of the proposal, a train stabling and maintenance facility for the future network would be built on the disused Rozelle railway yards.

At ground level, the buildings above, including the existing Woolworths outlet, would be demolished to make way for a new pedestrian plaza to be built by the City of Sydney.

(A parallel private-sector proposal supported by the federal Labor Government, Dutch bank ABN AMRO and Australian construction company Leighton Holdings called Western FastRail was ruled out at the same time.

The dumped, alternative proposal for a second heavy rail harbour crossing running between Redfern and Chatswood would have incurred a similar cost but was projected to carry 16,000 passengers per hour, more than four times the CBD metro.

Keneally announced a $50 billion transport plan to replace the metro project, including a new heavy rail line under the CBD.

[46] Keneally's plan abandoned the rapid transit concept altogether in favour of extensions to the existing heavy rail network, starting with a so-called CBD Relief Line to reduce congestion at city-centre stations.

Yet Iemma had failed to bring his party with him: as late as 2015, Labor was still fighting against power privatisation, while its parliamentarians warned that driverless metro trains might be unsafe.