Warrawee Substation - Review of Environmental Factors

Preliminaries1. Preliminaries1.1 IntroductionThe Rail Corporation of New South Wales (RailCorp) commissioned GHD toundertake engineering and environmental investigations for the Traction SupplyUpgrade (TSU) program. The TSU Program evolved in response to predictedincreases in demands placed on the existing railway electrical network due to factorssuch as changes in train timetables, the addition of new rolling stock, and conversionof the existing fleet of rolling stock to a fully air conditioned fleet.The Warrawee substation project will form part of the TSU program, which isdelivering the upgrades to the RailCorp traction power supply system to enable thedeployment of the Waratah fleet and the concurrent transition to a 100% airconditioned fleet. The Warrawee substation project is expected to be completed by2014.1.2 LocationThe site is located on the North Shore Line, approximately 450 metres south ofWarrawee Railway Station and approximately 660 metres to the north of TurramurraStation. The site is located within the eastern side of the corridor and can be accessedvia two gates on Brentwood Avenue in the south or via a gate at Hastings Road. Thesite would be primarily accessed via the gates on Brentwood Avenue, however thegate on Hastings Road would be used during construction.The works would be contained wholly within the existing rail corridor. Road restorationworks would be undertaken outside the rail corridor.Figure 1.1 shows the location of the site in relation to Warrawee and Turramurrastations.1.3 Existing environmentThe site forms part of the operational rail corridor between Warrawee and Turramurrastations. It is adjacent to a residential area which consists of low density detacheddwellings. Knox Grammar School is also located near the site on the western side ofthe rail corridor at Warrawee Station. Further details of surrounding land uses areprovided in Section 3.10.1.The site is accessed via two existing gates located off Brentwood Avenue (furtherdetails of the surrounding road network are located in Section 3.12.1). A third gatealso has access to the site; this gate is located at Hastings Road to at the northernend of the construction compound.The site contains vegetation that generally consists of weeds or introduced species(further details of flora and fauna are located in Section 3.2.2). To the north of thesubstation site, the corridor is predominately cleared and consists of a mixture ofgrassed and gravel surfaces which provide access along the corridor north towardsWarrawee Substation Project/Review of Environmental FactorsPage 1 of 64