Date: June 21 2004
Sydney is leading the urban road tunnel boom. When the NSW Roads Minister, Carl Scully, is finished our sandstone foundations will resemble a piece of swiss cheese. Sydney has three major motorway tunnels operating, is building two more and finalising plans for its sixth and seventh. They will make for 26 kilometres of subterranean motoring pleasure, if the roads authority's preferred option for the city's inner west is adopted, as part of a 220-kilometre network of urban motorways once the M7 is complete. The M4 extension through the inner west to the city is the latest to invoke wrath. Some want the long tunnel, some want it short, some do not want it at all.
Among those who do not want it at all is one of the city's new sustainability commissioners, Peter Newman. He questions whether Mr Scully's latest project should go ahead. After intervention by Craig Knowles, the Infrastructure and Planning Minister, Professor Newman has stepped back and has called for the motorway's inclusion in an integrated transport plan for the inner west corridor.
The retreat matters less than the lessons. A motorway-only vision for Sydney will not fly. Mr Knowles, who holds consent authority, is now locked into an integrated plan for the corridor. The results will be in the first draft of the new metropolitan strategy and, critically, will include using the motorway as the trigger for urban renewal along Parramatta Road. What matters, too, is we should have only one minister for infrastructure and planning. Mr Scully's call for Professor Newman to be disciplined was a throwback to the era (up until last year) when separate agencies planned their separate destinies for Sydney.
In theory, critics of the motorway score several points. It will not just cater for car growth; motorways promote it. It will not make it easier to get to work; motorways accelerate the jobs and housing sprawls which feed more car use. It will not cut petrol use; motorways increase car commuting. It will not reduce congestion; motorways just move it, in this case to a major Anzac Bridge bottleneck.
In reality, however, it will be harder to reject if the full corridor plan is embraced. Economically, it is as important to link the city and Parramatta by high quality road as it is by rail. It is a one-off opportunity to renew our most decayed artery, Parramatta Road. This scheme will involve cutting that road's capacity. This is vital for inner belt renewal and for offsetting the negative effects of the new tunnel capacity on demand generation. It must have light rail to anchor a detailed land use plan.
Sydney has been spared the worst economic and social effects of freeway building, compared with other cities. Our motorways are modest and relatively late in arriving and have not shattered regional land use patterns. But motorways are only part of the urban transport portfolio. It is a portfolio that remains seriously unbalanced and one which this Government so far has shown no stomach for fixing.