From 2019, the M5 will terminate at the interchange. The new M5 will have a carrying capacity of 150,000 vehicles per day, 50 per cent more than the existing M5. Potential traffic will be further increased by a similar amount, if two extra stages that are planned are ever built: the “Sydney Gateway”, which is intended to provide a tollway from the St Peters Interchange to the airport, and the M4-M5 link. Neither the M4-M5 tollway nor the Sydney Gateway are currently funded.
The WDA claims that the extra traffic from these tollways can be accommodated by widening Campbell Street to two lanes, widening Euston and Gardeners Road to three lanes, and by building two new bridges over the Alexandria Canal. The truth is that these roads are all already clogged. Adding extra lanes won’t help because the roads that these roads feed are also clogged.
The WDA has carried out traffic modelling and a business case, which it is refusing to release. Alexandria Residents Action Group, like many other community groups, believes this is because the modelling shows that WestConnex will make congestion worse, not better, and because the business case shows that WestConnex is not financially viable. We call on the WDA to release these documents. Without the full facts, there can be no genuine consultation on the merits of this project.
The interchange, which we are calling the “Crown of Thorns” because of its resemblance to the starfish, is planned to be some 30 metres high, approximately the height of an eight-storey building. It will have not one but two exhaust stacks within a few hundred meters of St Peters Public School, local homes, and Sydney Park.
We are shocked, but not surprised.
If this goes ahead, it will be a disaster for the inner city. But it will be almost as bad for Western Sydney commuters. They’ll be paying up to $26 a day for roads that might carry more traffic than the current M4 and M5, but at the same speed that they currently travel. Money spent on WestConnex is money that isn’t being spent on schools, hospitals, local roads, public transport and all the infrastructure necessary to create jobs in the West. What governments of both stripes ought to be doing is creating jobs where people live.
