TWO councillors from The Hills the Mayor and Deputy Mayor figured prominently in the Local Government conference push to shame the Rees Government into dumping its $7.3billion metro in favour of railways to the north-west and south-west.

Mayor Peter Dimbrowsky and Cr Raymond Harty worked jointly to rally the 500 councillors who met in Tamworth to thrash out council matters.

Cr Harty rallied Labor councillors to boycott the vote and not speak against it. This enabled them to show their displeasure with the Rees Government without voting against their own tribe.

Cr Harty then brought on an urgency motion for the vote.

The conference endorsed the motion by Cr Dimbrowsky and Leichhardt Mayor Jamie Parker to oppose the hugely and costly city metro.

The Rees Government has now lost almost all its own party support for the CBD metro, even though Transport Minister David Campbell reportedly told local ALP members a few weeks ago to hold the line on the CBD Metro regardless.

But the Government is pushing blindly ahead with the tendering process, although the Opposition has warned repeatedly it will cancel any contracts if it gains government, a likely scenario given the extreme unpopularity of Rees' Labor.

Even former premier Bob Carr, whom many believe began Sydney's transport woes, expressed surprise that the North-West Rail Link had been derailed.

``When I left politics in 2005 the North-West Rail Link remained NSW Government policy,'' he told The Sydney Morning Herald after delivering the conference's keynote address.

``The current government needs to answer questions about why it elected not to pursue that policy in favour of other transport options.''

Cr Dimbrowsky said the conference believed the CBD metro was an inadequate response to the public transport needs of Sydney and that the $7.3billion CBD metro should be replaced by the following projects:

The North-West Railway $4billion;

The South-West Railway $1.2billion;

Complete the Parramatta-to-Chatswood Railway $2billion; and

The rest could be spent upgrading regional bus networks and further light-rail extensions in inner Sydney.