The impacted roads are Euston Road, McEvoy Street, Lachlan Street and Dacey Avenue. RMS has told Alexandria Residents Action Group that it is not trying to improve north-south traffic. The aim is to improve east-west traffic. There will be road widenings, intersection upgrades, and the dogleg at Bourke Street will be straightened. Most of the intersection upgrades create extra turning lanes. This will not help north- and south-bound vehicles, because north-south streets will still be clogged. But it might keep waiting vehicles from blocking vehicles travelling east-west.
The intersection with Anzac Parade will become a mega-interchange. The technical term is “continuous flow interchange”. As well as the traffic lights where Anzac Parade meets Dacey Avenue and Alison Road, there will be lights on Alison Road to the east and on Anzac Parade to the north. The effect will be a bit like having two intersections next to each other, one for traffic going straight, and one for traffic turning right. If the engineers are right, traffic will stop at more traffic lights, but not for as long. If the engineers are wrong, then we will have a larger road, holding more vehicles, but those vehicles won’t move any faster than they do now.
Public transport advocates argue that extra roads only encourage people to drive more than they already do. This is also the conclusion drawn by many years of academic research into the topic. RMS disagrees. It believes demand for travel is fixed, so extra roads mean faster travel, not more cars.
Even if RMS is right, all A2MP does is to buy a bit of time. RMS has told residents that it expects population growth to use up the extra capacity within 10 years. The City of Sydney has estimated that A2MP will cost around a billion dollars, and any further expansion would be even more expensive. At some point, the NSW government will have to look at other options, such as light rail and congestion based tolling. For the sake of local residents, it would make a lot more sense to be looking at those options now.
