Steer Report FOI confirms M4 East and Marrickville Tunnel
The M4 East continues to pop up in inconvenient places, despite various claims by the Roads Minister, Eric Roozendaal, that they are just plans or that they are ideas that should not be seen as something worthy of the public's attention.
Although these motorways have been in the planning of the RTA for several years and two of them have been confirmed at various times as actual proposals "that will be built", by Eric Roozendaal and former Premier, Morris Iemma, we are no closer to a serious public discussion of these plans.
The most recent of these inconvenient appearances has been the Steer Report, parts of which became public through the FOI request of Sydney Morning Herald journalists. An article on a series of underground motorway tunnels assessed by Jim Steer, contained this graphic (see left), which shows the M4 East and the Marrickville Tunnel as well as another tunnel that we have seen referred to in RTA documents as the Inner West Motorway. (see Daily Telegraph story from March 2007)
The SMH graphic has been interpreted and refined by Marrickville Transport Action Group and EcoTransit Sydney. Using the article on the Steer Report and the graphic that accompanied it, as well as maps and information contained in two successful calls for papers(click here and here for these documents) Marrickville Transport Action Group and EcoTransit Sydney have painstakingly pieced together a conservative estimate of the alignments of these motorway tunnels.
On the basis of previous RTA tunnel projects, EcoTransit Sydney believe that tunnel placement would be partially determined by available open spaces along each tunnels route in which exhaust 'stacks' could be built, and the level of public resistance to the stacks. For instance, the single stack for the M5 East has been placed in the middle of a nature reserve on the top of a hill. The original plans had three stacks for ventilation, but public resistance to the stacks led the RTA to reduce the number of stacks as a means of keeping the project alive. The Eastern Distributor and Cross City Tunnels also have 1 unfiltered stack apiece, although they cover smaller distances than the M5 East. A more recent addition, The Lane Cove tunnel has 2 unfiltered stacks.
Marrickville Transport Action Group and EcoTransit have estimated that there are likely to be exhaust stacks at seven points in the inner west, if all of the tunnels are built. This is conservative because previous tunnels have been inadequately ventilated, and none have been filtered. The extraordinary length of at least one of these proposed tunnels make it more difficult to justify a single stack arrangement because it would have to be very large to do the work required.
A less conservative estimate could be based on the most recent of Brisbane's road tunnels, which had stack at 1 km intervals along its 5km length. With the Marrickville Tunnel being billed as the longest tunnel in the southern hemisphere (14kms)it is difficult to know how many would be built. Extra stacks and actual filtration (as opposed to ventilation) make these projects much more expensive, and much more difficult to build in areas that lack convenient open spaces in which stacks can be sited.
Marrickville Transport Action Group, Ecotransit Sydney and Action for Public Transport have been trying to get precise information from the Roads Minister for over 12 months now, but each time the answer has been that they are unwilling to discuss it before they have made a decision. Each of these groups believe that it is long past time that governments consulted with the public BEFORE they make a decision.
Let's hope that the 'new' leaders of the NSW State Government can do a better job with planning our way out of climate change and oil price problems than the last group! Let's insist that they make these plans available before they make their decisions.