New Expressway Threat To Southern Sydney
In a desperate bid to salvage its discredited plans for three giant expressways in southern Sydney the RTA is investigating a new route for the proposed M5 motorway extension.
The new route would put in place sections of both the F6 freeway and the Cook's river freeway, roads which the RTA has, until recently, denied any intentions of proceeding with it in the short term (see Expressways From Everywhere)
The new M5 route would see the proposed tollway extension double back on its basic north-east route and run south-east through Arncliffe, Kogarah Golf course and Barton Park to join General Holmes Drive at Kyeemagh.
The RTA has longstanding plans for both the Cooks river Valley freeway and the F6 but senior RTA planners now believe the authority will be forced to surrender the corridors reserved for the two roads if it does not make a start on them.
Rail Proposal
Over recent months the RTA's plans for the billion-dollar M5 extension have run into increasing problems from the competing Airport RailLine proposal.
This underground line proposal would link the East Hills line with the Illawarra line, the airport and the Central industrial Area before rejoining the main line at Redfern. The new line represents a chance to save all the region's remaining open space, to get thousands of cars off the roads and to kick-start urban renewal projects in run down industrial neighbourhoods.
To make matters worse for the RTA, a political question mark now hangs over the Fahey government's relationship with the InterLink tollway consortium - lessees of the already completed section of the M5 (see page 8 of the lease document.The RTA's new route for the M5 is political strategy rather than a traffic solution. Its aim is the survival of all the RTA's destructive road plans for Sydney's south.
The new strategy has been made necessary by increasing pressure on the roads authority from three directions.
In the first place the F6 freeway would swallow up virtually all the open space on the east side of Rockdale - a narrow chain of parks and ecologically important wetlands cherished by local residents. Community groups and some Rockdale council aldermen believe the F6 reservation should be handed back to the public as open space and are becoming increasingly
vocal about the F6 threat. Sutherland Shire residents' groups are also upset over the F6 proposal and
suggestions from some quarters in Sutherland Shire Council that sections of the F6 between Miranda and Taren Point should be built.
Deal With RTA
Pressure is also being brought to bear on the RTA from Canterbury Council. The majority faction on this council has long sought a deal with the RTA; they would support the routing of the M5 through the Wolli Valley open
space provided the RTA abandoned its plans for a freeway along the Cooks River Valley. The RTA has carefully and cynically exploited this situation for 15 years. RTA planners have repeatedly intimated to Canterbury Council that the authority might be prepared to give up the Cooks River freeway plan once it had the M5 in place.
Stake Claim
But the RTA planners have never had the slightest intention of giving up the Cooks River freeway route. They have now decided they had better stake their claim to it before political pressure to give up the proposal grows too powerful to resist.
The third assault on the roads authority comes from growing public perception that the RTA is pushing Sydney down a road nobody wants to travel. The RTA's expressway building drive is simply generating more
traffic and pushing Sydney into a Los Angeles future of gridlocked traffic, increasing smog and massive State debt.