Northbound, my route cuts Sydney suburbs for comfort (8)
I believe the answer is:
sympathy
'comfort' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'northbound my route cuts sydney suburbs' is the wordplay.
'northbound' says the letters should be written backwards.
'route' becomes 'path' ('path' can be a synonym of 'route'**).
'cuts' means one lot of letters goes inside another (some letters cut their way into other letters).
'suburbs' means to remove the middle letters (I've seen 'suburbs of' mean this (suburbs are the edges of a city)).
'sydney' with its middle taken out is 'sy'.
'my' backwards is 'ym'.
'ym'+'path'='ympath'
'ympath' inserted within 'sy' is 'SYMPATHY'.
'for' is the link.
(Other definitions for sympathy that I've seen before include "An understanding of another's sadness" , "Feeling of pity and understanding towards another's difficulty" , "Fellow-feeling for someone else's misfortune" , "often offered with tea" , "Accord" .)