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
The Alexandria Residents’ Action Group (ARAG) and residents of Alexandria are saddened by the news of the unexpected passing of Robyn Kemmis, Deputy Lord Mayor and a great friend of ARAG.
ARAG is a relatively new residents’ group and in our short time since formation Robyn has offered quiet counsel and unqualified support for us and the issues that affect Alexandria. Robyn always was accessible, knowledgeable and professional in her interactions with ARAG.
We always have been impressed by Robyn’s performance on Council – her calm and considered presentation of issues and representation of constituents’ concerns. Continue reading
The City of Sydney has called for submissions on heritage listing the Alexandria Hotel. Submissions are open until 27 January.
In the meantime, the interim heritage order has been extended until 27 July.
There is still an appeal against the interim heritage order in progress, which is listed for hearing on 1 and 2 March. There is also an appeal against the deemed refusal of the Development Application, listed for 10 March.
If the appeal against the interim heritage order fails, as seems likely, the appeal against the DA will not go ahead, and a permanent heritage listing will, most probably, be in place well before the end of July.
Submissions on the heritage listing should quote reference: “X001925 – Planning proposal submission – Alexandria Hotel listing – 35 Henderson Road, Eveleigh” and can be either emailed to
cloffi@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au or posted to:
Chief Executive Officer Attention: Claudine Loffi, Senior Specialist Planner (Heritage) City of Sydney, GPO Box 1591, Sydney NSW 2001
The Alexandria Hotel closes its doors today, but the fight to save it goes on. A lot of local residents will be gathering, and we hope to see you there.
The building itself may yet be saved; 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.
http://www.arag.org.au info@arag.org.au
Media Release – 01 Deceember 2015
WestCONnex M5 Interchange is a Crown of Thorns
Residents in Alexandria were horrified to see the plans for the M5 and the St Peters Interchange with its ‘Crown of Thorns’ concrete freeway arching over a ‘brand new park’ which given its close proximity to an unfiltered, filthy exhaust stack, doesn’t make it somewhere anyone will want to be.
Ben Aveling, Co-Convenor of the Alexandria Residents Action Group is dismayed at the spin and misinformation contained in the latest information release.
He said “it just beggars belief that anyone thinks that this is a good result for the people using the M5, let alone the people at the end of the road who will be left to deal with the massive increase in traffic.
There is no mention of the $26 daily tolls that people will have to pay, and no mention of reduced travel times over the whole journey. It’s just smoke stacks and mirrors.”
A closer inspection of the map reveals some other failings of the proposal:
• All traffic that needs to go into the city will need to find its way through McEvoy Streets, Mitchell Road and King Street, and this situation won’t improve if the M5 to M4 tunnel (which is unfunded) ever gets built. The only way into the city is via those three streets.
• 100,000 more cars a day are supposed to be using the M5 extension. This isn’t enough to make the toll road pay, but where are all the cars going to go? Anyone who has driven down those already crowded roads knows more traffic means slower travel times and more congestion.
• One of the off-ramps joins Gardeners Road which is already at capacity. Given that Gardeners Road goes from three lanes down to one after Botany Road, we are now stack filling an existing car park.
Even more laughable are the claims made in the four page brochure on the ‘New M5 – St Peters interchange’:
• ‘Returning local streets to local residents by removing through traffic and fixing local bottlenecks’. Unless WestCONnex has found a way to make 100,000+ cars a day evaporate, there is no evidence that WestCONnex has removed traffic – rather it has massively increased it, and created nightmare bottlenecks
• ‘Up to 49% reduction in travel time’ but if you read the small print, this only applies up to the King Georges Road interchange, so bad luck if you are using WestCONnex to get into the city!
“WestCONnex is a bad idea for Sydney. It puts roads ahead of public transport.
It comes at the cost of spending on schools, hospitals and other infrastructure and it creates more problems than it solves.” Ben Aveling said.
“We know it’s not a good deal. The Auditor General’s review of the Business Case back in December 2014 was damning. The Government won’t release the Business Case and that speaks volumes.”
We call on the government to halt all work on the M4 and M5, stop letting tenders and acquiring homes and businesses and release the business case.
Nothing less is satisfactory.”
For more information contact: Ben Aveling, Alexandria Residents Action Group 0407 228 240
The “Crown of Thorns” Interchange, just south of Sydney Park
The EIS for the M5 East, thousands of pages of spin, numbers, graphs and diagrams, much of which has no basis in fact, now has been released – just in time for Christmas – with limited time for the public to read, assess, analyse and submit their comments to the government.
It is very cynical of the government to release such important documents over the Christmas holiday period.
Residents can get more information by visiting m5eis.org where community members from across Sydney will be posting their analyses and draft submissions for you to assess in submitting your objections to this wasteful road project. Visit the site regularly, as information will be upgraded regularly.
The next ARAG meeting will a be forum on Transport and Traffic.
This will be an opportunity to hear from, and ask questions of representatives from:
The forum will be at:
7pm, Wednesday 14th October
Alexandria Town Hall, Garden St
Hope to see you there
We are still waiting to hear this formally confirmed, but we have been told that the developer will withdraw their current application to demolish the Alexandria Hotel.
They had been hoping to prevent the building receiving a heritage listing. It appears they have finally recognised that the merits of the case for heritage are too strong to be ignored, and that the physical building is now safe from the threat of demolition.
This does not mean that the hotel is safe. While the developers may abandon their attempts to redevelop the site, they may also come back with a new proposal that seeks to ‘adapt’ the existing building, possibly by keeping the front of the hotel while building on part or all of the current beer garden, and possibly even building ‘into’ the upper level of the hotel.
This is a win for the community. But until we know what happens next, it isn’t over yet.
Alexandria Residents' Action Group 