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- 28 October 2004
M4 East Expansion
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Page: 12231
Ms SYLVIA HALE [5.36 p.m.]: There is no better illustration of the failure of urban planning in this city than the latest motorway proposal from the Roads and Traffic Authority [RTA]: the M4 East. This proposal involves widening the M4 at Homebush Bay Drive and building a six-lane tunnel under Strathfield to Haberfield, connecting to Dobroyd Parade and to Parramatta Road at Ashfield. Despite the current development of the metropolitan strategy and growing alarm at Sydney's reliance on motor transport, the RTA is forging ahead.
This motorway will destroy homes and businesses, exacerbate pollution, worsen traffic congestion and require construction of at least two 60-metre exhaust stacks. Understandably, it has met with widespread community outrage and staunch opposition from Leichhardt and Ashfield councils. Of most concern to the Greens is the fact that this project will intensify, rather than relieve, traffic congestion on the City West Link and Parramatta Road. While the Minister for Roads promises rejuvenation of Parramatta Road, some modelling by the RTA shows that the motorway will increase peak-hour traffic on the City West Link and Parramatta Road by at least 20 per cent.
Recent planning department assessments are even worse. They show the M4 East will increase vehicle trips on Parramatta Road, Ashfield, from 65,000 to between 80,000 and 100,000 per day, rendering this section of Parramatta Road even more hostile to businesses and residents. Increased traffic on Parramatta Road would then pave the way for the next stage of the motorway, already planned from Parramatta Road to Mascot. The RTA will no doubt once again portray and justify this as the "missing link" needed to alleviate further congestion. Put simply, this is an urban planning debacle in the making. More freeways ultimately lead to more cars in a vicious never-ending cycle. Why is the RTA committed to this disaster? Does it not see that more cars and more motorways undermine public transport, destroy local communities, and in a never-ending long-term downward spiral simply increase traffic congestion and air pollution?
The RTA justifies the M4 East expansion, in part, because Port Botany and the airport are expanding. But this puts the cart before the horse. Motorways fuel traffic growth. The M4 will encourage expansion of Sydney airport and Port Botany, resulting in worse aircraft noise, more road congestion into and out of the airport and more truck movements around Botany Bay. And the RTA's solution to these problems? A truck tunnel under Marrickville linking the M4 to the port, and an 11-storey car park at Sydney airport, all projected to result in an additional 5,500 movements per hour at peak times. Where does the madness end?
These proposals highlight the key flaws in our planning system. Decisions are being made in artificial isolation with little or no responsibility taken for how one piece of the jigsaw impacts on the rest. The RTA's only solution to congestion and air pollution is to build another freeway. The RTA has been allowed to shirk its responsibility to reduce road congestion, and it has been given a free rein to skew the border transport agenda in favour of more motorways. In the name of good transport management, it is time to make the RTA accountable for reducing vehicle kilometres travelled, that is, to make the RTA responsible for getting people out of cars and into alternative forms of transport. It is time to stop transport and urban planning being hijacked by road building.
It is time to return to sound planning principles, principles that consider the needs of Sydney in an integrated and holistic manner. The RTA must not be permitted to build yet another disjointed motorway project without considering the long-term liveability of Sydney for current and future generations. With the metropolitan strategy, Sydney is currently undertaking one of the most far-reaching planning reviews in decades. Until this review is complete, and a comprehensive review of Sydney's freight strategies and transport needs undertaken, new motorway projects such as the M4 East must be put on hold. To do anything less is to ignore the lessons learnt in so many cities around the world. Put simply, motorways do not solve traffic congestion, nor do they produce a more liveable city.
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