Beoz

Manly works if you work near Circular Quay but anywhere else is a bit of a nightmare. There is also the fast ferry that most commuters get. Not heard of any over crowding on it but I do hear it has a bar

quoll

The concept of "nice commuter town" bears little resemblance to the same question asked of London for example. Sydney is basically one enormous urban sprawl with questionable transport provision throughout. If I had to pick a suburb I rather fancy Mosman but my bank balance wouldn't go close to sniffing at a bed sit there. Everyone has their preferred suburban area which depends as much on bank balance and ethnicity as anything else. Draw a circle around your workplace with average commuting time and drop a pin within it.

BadgeIsBack

Exactly what I was going to say: it's suburban sprawl with some outlying destinations which are probably too far, really, unless you really want to live in the Blue Mountains.

The edge of the London sprawl is far closer than equivalent in Sydney, that said you could argue that locations outside M25 are still sort of London sprawl. Semantics. UK has lots of nice villages and towns in the shires the same time to Central London with longish commutes equivalent in time to some of the Sydney commutes from the sprawl.

One equivalent really is perhaps the Central Coast of NSW, but like a UK town you'd only do it by train.

Beoz

I think this was the messaging from earlier in the thread. Areas outside the sprawl, which have that out of town feel need decent transport.

BadgeIsBack

Yup, the point quoll made and I agree is that there isn't really any commuter towns at all in the sense there are in the UK, from outside the sprawl coming in, even putting transport aside.

Beoz

People do commute from the B. Mountains, Wollongong and the Central Coast. It could be a much better commute and there could me more commuter towns in other locations. Perhaps its time to start a BE petition to give to Mr Baird.

commonwealth

Unless the govt could find a private HS rail builder and operator that can offer reasonable fares, I extremely doubt the govt will ever be able to build one.

Beoz

They don't need to be full High Speed. They just need to be able to travel up to 150km/h.