To lodge an objection to the WestConnex New M5 , please:
Or for other ways to object to the WestConnex M5 EIS, visit: http://m5eis.org/category/how-to-make-your-submission/
Submissions close at Midnight!
The New M5 EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) has been released. The impact on Alexandria will be devastating.
Alexandria Residents’ Action Group will be running a workshop on the EIS, at:
7pm on Wednesday 13 January
Alexandria Town Hall (73 Garden St).
Please come along and:
We only have until 29 January to submit objections.
The M5 East EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) has been released. Comments on the EIS are being accepted until 29 January.
The impact on Alexandria is every bit as bad as we had feared. If anything, it’s worse than expected.
From about 2019, the M5 will terminate at Sydney Park. When complete, it will dump over 100,000 cars into our suburbs, much of which will end up on local streets. This is not by accident – it is intentional.
60,000 vehicles are expected to use Euston Road. This is more traffic than uses Victoria Road. It is almost ten times the traffic that Euston Road currently handles.
An extra lane in each direction will be added to Euston Road. The north-bound lane will go as far as Maddox Street, where it becomes a new left-hand turn lane, channelling traffic off Euston Road and into Maddox Street. Continue reading
Ron Hoenig is holding a WestConnex EIS Action day on Saturday 12th, at Alexandria Town Hall, 73 Garden St, Alexandria.
Come along between 9:30 and 1:30 for some help in writing a submission, or visit:
and/or:
On the Agenda for tonight’s meeting we have:
Meeting starts 7pm, Alexandria Town Hall.
Followed by drinks, nibbles and chat.
We’ll be having Mirvac’s Ross Hornsey along to talk about plans for the ATP, and what it’s going to take to make it work.
We’re hoping Jenny Leong will be present for our update on what WestConnex means for Alexandria (short version: 60,000 cars on Euston Road – that’s more traffic than Victoria Road can carry).
And we’ll be getting an update on the Metro and why Alexandria should care, and a quick update on the sad fate of our beloved Alexandria Hotel.
Hope to see you there.
I’m not going to try to cover everything that was said at last week’s meeting at the Enmore Theatre. But there are a few points I do want to respond to.
It was said that “the percentage of trips taken by car will not change”. However, Bureau of Transport Statistics show that in the decade to 2012, the population grew by 12%, car driver trips grew only 6%, while trips by bus and train increased by 16% and 23% respectively.
It was said that if the M4-M5 Link is not built, the same amount of traffic “will still find a way through your area”. This flies in the face of research overseas and in Australia which consistently finds that adding extra roads encourages more traffic, while closing roads results in less traffic.
It was said that work will not begin until the Environmental Impact Statement (the EIS) is approved. However, it was also said that contracts for the work will be signed before the EIS is approved.
It was said that the exhaust stacks will be at the St Peters interchange, with all this implies for Sydney Park.
It was said that Stage 3 will include a link to the airport. Up until now, the link to the airport was something that might happen after Stage 3. Up until now, the forecast price tag was $15 Billion dollars. A new major extension has been added to the project, but the forecast price tag is still $15 Billion dollars. It doesn’t add up.
It was said that the cost to the public (you and me) will not be $15 Billion dollars because it will be paid for by tolls. The average toll is forecast to be $4.50. WestConnex is supposed to carry 300,000 vehicles per day. However, up to half of those vehicles will come off the M5,which means that they aren’t paying an extra $4.50, but only an extra dollar or two. The tolls collected won’t be more than $330 million a year. But the interest bill on $15 billion dollars will be more like $900 million a year. And that assumes that the traffic forecasts are accurate, something which has rarely been the case with Sydney tollways.
It was said that the business case does not need to be made public because it will be reviewed by Infrastructure Australia (IA). IA has reviewed a version of the business case. IA has complained that the version of the business case given to them is based on a 50/50 chance of the project coming in under budget – IA normally want 90% confidence of a project meeting its budget. IA has also complained that the traffic modelling assumes that the forecast reduction in travel time won’t encourage more cars onto the road. Ignoring these two limitations, IA has “a high degree of confidence” that benefits will outweigh costs. When these two limitations are considered, IA only has “a degree of confidence” that benefits will outweigh costs.
It was said that there are “no plans” to extend King Street Clearways. But there was no commitment not to develop such plans in the future.
It was said that WestConnex will not “rip up Sydney Park”, the argument being that the 12 meter strip that forms one edge of Sydney Park is owned by the RMS. Obviously, the RMS has the legal right to reclaim this land, but to claim that somehow, this land isn’t part of Sydney Park as it is today, is missing the point. Whoever owns it, turning it into road will reduce Sydney Park, not just by the amount of land removed, but by inflicting car fumes and noise on the whole of the park.
It was asked if adding extra lanes to Euston and Campbell Roads will make any difference, given that both roads will be back to one lane after a few hundred meters. The answer given was that detailed traffic studies are underway, and have been for 18 months. It was also said that such studies can take months or years, which raises the question of whether the modelling will be complete before the road opens.
It was asked if St Peters was chosen for the interchange because the RMS already had road reservations and land, or because studies fortuitously indicated that it was the best location for the interchange? The answer was that the studies fortuitously indicated that the site was the best location. The follow-up question was: if the studies are done, why are you still doing the studies? There was no answer.
The agenda for next week’s meeting is:
The meeting will be at the usual time and place of:
In 2012, WestConnex was to cost $10 billion dollars, and the estimated benefits were $12. By 2013, it was to cost $11.5 billion dollars. At the end of 2014, it is now forecast to cost $14.9 billion dollars, ($14,900,000,000). All this to move perhaps an extra 100,000 drivers per day.
Surely, for that much money there have to be better options. And there are. There are a number of things that could be done that would, collectively, do more to relieve congestion, for less money, and without the pollution and all the other downsides.
Roads are an inefficient means of moving people. Estimates vary, but during morning peak hour under Sydney conditions, a motorway lane is typically considered to move between 2,000 cars per hour – with 1.1 to 1.2 people per car, that’s somewhere between 2,200 and 2,400 people per hour. A single dedicated bus lane can move perhaps 3,500 people per hour. Depending on the configuration, a single light rail line can move around 10,000 people. Whereas a single line of heavy rail can move up to 20,000 people an hour, the approximate equivalent of 9 or 10 lanes of cars.
Ecotransit Sydney, a public transport advocacy group, has been investigating alternatives:
– For less than $2 billion the government could build a light rail loop that connects Balmain to Marrickville, thence Botany, continue to Randwick, enter the CBD, go back to Balmain via Victoria Road. As well, light rail could be built from Strathfield down Parramatta Road and into the CBD.
– Light rail to Parramatta and up Victoria Road might each cost another $1.5 billion. Either would move a good percentage of the capacity of the entire WestConnex project, and could be built for a fraction of the cost and time of WestConnext.
– A new train station could be added to the airport rail line at Doody St, midway between Mascot and Green Square, for perhaps $75 million.
– To take traffic off the M4, a Bus/train/park-and-ride interchange could provide an express service to the CBD from the former site of Pippita Station, on what was once the Abattoirs Branch line, now the Olympic Park line. A similar facility could be build at Kingsgrove, to do the same for the M5, and for less than $100 million each.
– Any number of existing roads in and out of the city could easily, quickly and cheaply have one lane converted to bus only or to T2/T3 lanes. Such measures will reduce the number of cars but increase the number of people carried.
– A more dramatic alternative would be to reclaim two lanes of Sydney Harbour Bridge for rail, as envisaged by the original design. The consequence would be 6000 fewer motorists per hour and up to 50,000 extra rail passengers – for a fraction of the cost and time that building WestConnex will take.
Public transport will not suit everyone. It doesn’t have to. Many commuters are flexible, they switch between public and private transport as circumstances change. For example, when the M5 Cashback was introduced, congestion on the M5 increased significantly. Conversely, taking even small volumes of traffic off the road means that the remaining traffic moves far more quickly. Consider school holidays: reduction in the volume of traffic is small, the increase in the speed of traffic is significant. A nearly full road still moves quite quickly. A completely full road does not.
And has the Government considered these alternatives? You guessed it, they haven’t. Or if they have, they haven’t released the result publicly.
It is resolved that Council:(A) note that, based on the inadequate information currently available about the proposed WestConnex project, the stated objectives of the project – additional freight capacity and urban renewal – will not be achieved;
(B) note that the project as currently configured and funded will have unacceptable impacts on the City of Sydney, including:(i) massively expanding private vehicle traffic flowing into already congested inner west streets; and
(ii) destroying sections of Sydney Park, an important and much loved regional park;(C) request that the Lord Mayor write to the Premier and the Minister for Roads informing them that, for the reasons outlined above, Council opposes the WestConnex project in its current form and requests them to:(i) revisit the configuration of the project in the context of its stated objectives;
(ii) defer any moves to finalise tenders or contracts for the project until standard planning and approvals processes are complete;
(iii) publicly release all relevant information associated with the project including the full business case, all traffic modelling and impact assessments, and the proposed locations of portals and ventilation stacks;
(iv) release information on any further potential road widening, clearways and changes to signalised intersections within the City of Sydney; and
(v) establish an ongoing working group consisting of the WestConnex Delivery Authority and the City of Sydney to share information, resolve identified problems and develop alternative solutions where necessary; and(D) request the Chief Executive Officer prepare an independent assessment of the impacts of the proposed WestConnex project on the City of Sydney, including traffic modelling and the feasibility of alternatives such as rail freight linking Port Botany and Sydney Airport to the western suburbs.
The State and Federal Governments are proposing spending $15 billion dollars (more than $3,000 for every man, woman and child in Sydney) extending the M4 and M5. They are doing this based on a business plan that contains no hard numbers on traffic volumes. Simply to pay the interest on that much money would require half a million vehicles a day to use the new tunnels – more than double the patronage of the current M4 and M5 combined.
From 2019 and 2023, at least, the M5 extension is to end at Sydney Park – as if the surrounding roads were not already at capacity. No modelling on the impact of the additional traffic has been released. There will be widening of the roads immediately next to the park, at the cost of up to 80 houses and a good chunk of Sydney Park, but not the roads they feed.
The government appears to have dismissed public transport out of hand, even though kilometres driven per person are falling, while usage of public transport, cycling and walking are all increasing.
There is no information about where the exhaust stacks will be, or whether they will be filtered.
We encourage you to write to your local MPs, and to one or all of the State Upper House crossbench MPs who hold the balance of power [Click here for contact details].
We don’t want to encourage form letters. Any letter is better than no letter, but a short letter saying what your personal concerns are is is worth more than a long form letter.
To help inspire you in writing your own letter, here are some letters that people have been sending:
WestConnex Development Authority have upcoming information sessions at:
There are a number of rallies planned. This is not an exhaustive list:
Alexandria Residents' Action Group 