The proposal of Infrastructure NSW to provide free train travel from midnight to 7 a.m. to ease overcrowding on peak-hour trains received support from the Sydney Business Chamber (SBC) on Tuesday.

"Business supports the move by Infrastructure NSW to incorporate a transport demand strategy into its 20 year infrastructure plan. That is a victory for common sense and transport planning," said Patricia Forsythe, executive director of SBC, in a statement posted on the SBC website.

Forsythe said using existing transport infrastructure "in a more intelligent and efficient way" is necessary because "the cost of increasing capacity on the road and rail network throughout Sydney is becoming so prohibitively expensive."

She said projects such as the North West Rail Link, M4 East extension, M5 East duplication, F3 to M2 link, and others could take decades to plan, fund and build.

In fact, the SBC and the NSW Business Chamber (NBC) proposed the implementation of a transport demand strategy to manage transport congestion as part of their pre-election "10 Big Ideas to Grow NSW" campaign.

Aside from peak, shoulder and off-peak pricing of public transport supported by an integrated ticketing system, SBC and NBC are also proposing the following measures to reduce transport congestion:

• Variable road tolling - implementation of peak, shoulder and off-peak pricing;
• Identifying opportunities within the public sector to create non-peak starting periods;
• Private sector incentives to shift hours away from traditional working hours;
• Trialling later start times for high school students
• Incentives to encourage carpooling and lifting vehicle occupancy rates;
• Encouragement of greater housing densities in areas closest to major employment centres.

NSW acting Premier, Andrew Stoner, also supports Infrastructure NSW CEO Paul Broad's proposal making attractive travel before the peak period.

"We're all interested in innovative ways to get cars off Sydney's main roads, to get more people on to public transport," Stoner said, according to Sydney Morning Herald.

Sydney commuters are receptive to the idea. A 2010 survey of train passengers showed that 15 per cent of peak-hour passengers would be willing to travel 30 minutes earlier if given a 30 percent fare discount.

The scheme was actually tested before. The result, however, was that commuters tended to take the last free train causing overcrowding.

A train of CityRail.