SUTHERLAND Shire Council will ask the state government to provide a direct bus link from the shire to Sydney Airport’s domestic and international terminals.
Councillor Kevin Schreiber made the call, which was supported by fellow councillors at a December council meeting.
Cr Schreiber said the government should consider the shire-airport bus link as a high priority so Sutherland Shire travellers and residents who work at the airport have better access.
Fairfax Media reported in November that young workers at Sydney Airport were cutting across dangerous roads to walk to the next suburb to avoid paying the high cost of an airport train ticket home.
The report said the fee levied by the private rail operator inflates a ticket to Central Station from $3.60 to $15.90 and is costing airport staff an extra $1000 a year to commute to work, a parliamentary inquiry has been told.
The rail operator, Airport Link, claims air travellers are wealthy and ''not price sensitive''. But 28,000 airport workers, who mostly live in the local area, cannot afford what is often a 400 per cent mark-up on train travel, Sydney Airport Corporation says.
The City of Sydney, the Sydney Business Chamber, Botany Bay council and the airport corporation are arguing that the station access fee should be dropped because it distorts transport choices and is impacting on Sydney's economy by driving tens of thousands of airport passengers and staff on to heavily congested roads each day.
Airport Link has projected that dropping the fee would increase passengers on the rail line by 1.28 million to 2.56 million a year and remove 1 million car journeys from surrounding roads.
But the catch for the NSW government is that it would forgo a half share of $65 million in annual revenue if the fee is dropped, or it would need to spend an estimated $276 million to buy out Airport Link.
Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian said: ''It is not current policy to remove the station access fee. Revenue from the station access fee is included in the budget forward estimates.''
The private rail was opened in 2000 for the Olympics and the company signed a contract with the Labor government that also prohibits more than one public bus route to the airport. The result is that only 17 per cent of airport passengers use public transport.
The Sydney Business Chamber's executive director, Patricia Forsythe, wants the train fee dropped but she said if the NSW government was unwilling to give up the revenue, then at least airport employees should be exempted.
DHL employs 210 staff at three sites around the airport, half aged under 25. The company is concerned about the impact on employee safety.
Many lower-paid data entry and warehouse staff do not have cars and are walking to Mascot station rather than using the airport station, which is two minutes away.
Female staff are refusing to accept evening or afternoon shifts because they are concerned about walking at night. DHL told the inquiry the prohibitive cost of public transport at Sydney Airport was a ''significant challenge'' to attracting and keeping staff.
The upper house inquiry will report in February.
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