Why NSW does not need to spend billions of dollars on more motorways for Sydney

This Opinion piece was submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald back in early January...in the wake of information that suggests that $54 billion dollars is allocated to Sydney motorways in the NSW Governments latest transport plan, we thought that a little historical context would be useful....

By Tony Prescott
Planner and member of EcoTransit Sydney

At the beginning of a year in which no fewer than two grand plans for transport are due to be released, it is appropriate to consider the outcomes of previous plans. This is particularly important when at least one of these plans will involve $23 billion worth of new motorway developments in metropolitan Sydney alone. Thankfully, we can use recent history to judge whether motorways can deliver the benefits claimed by their proponents.

Exhibit A is Action for Transport 2010. This policy was released in 1998, and aimed at fulfilling the Carr Government's 1995 election promises of better air quality and public transport services. It recognised the need for public transport projects that had been neglected by previous governments, with commitments to eight rail projects and seven bus transitways as well as five major motorway projects (four being segments of the Sydney Orbital). In 2010, only three of the seven bus transitways and two of the eight rail projects have been completed. Of these five projects, only three were completed in full. Despite detailed policy and the commitments that this implied, only one fifth of the public transport projects was attempted or fully-completed. By contrast, all of the motorway projects included in Action for Transport 2010 have been completed. However, by failing to meet its targets for public transport, particularly heavy rail, the NSW Government has inadvertently conducted a transport experiment, and we are now in a position to judge whether motorways reduce congestion and travel times. The results speak for themselves.

Vehicle Kilometres Travelled (VKT) have been growing at twice the rate of population growth while average speeds have been decreasing, as Dr Michelle Zeibots of the Institute for Sustainable Futures noted recently in the Herald. When a road reaches capacity, its users gravitate back to public transport. This is demonstrated by the loss of 380,000 commuter journeys from the East Hills railway in the first year after the opening of the parallel M5 motorway. Rail patronage slowly recovered as the motorway became gridlocked during peak hour.

The political response to a motorway reaching peak-hour gridlock in NSW has been to widen the motorway, but the experts agree that the real answer is to increase the speed, availability and quality of the public transport network. Despite the talk of sustainability, governments are mired in a 1950's mindset that views public transport solely in terms of a cost to the budget and never as a genuine remedy to congestion and pollution costs.

Sydney should be following cities in Europe and the United States, which use orbital motorways to provide access to expanding public transport networks by using park-and-ride facilities that allow commuting from areas not currently served by public transport. The Sydney Orbital transects commuter rail lines at Artarmon, Epping, Quakers Hill, Rooty Hill, Liverpool, the East Hills line from Narwee to Bexley North and Arncliffe. However, for reasons that can only be imagined, there has been no attempt to interchange the road network with the public transport system at these points. Worse still, the proposal to widen the M2 will remove the bus link from the M2 to the Epping rail interchange and eliminate any potential for buses using the M2 to interchange with rail services.

With a NSW election looming in 2011, we are now in a position to say that Sydney does not need wider or more numerous motorways. The past 20 years of motorway development have shown that it achieves nothing in the long run, and effectively starves other transport options of funding. It is time that resources were poured into catching up on public transport networks that are, in some cases, as much as 60 years behind schedule.

Improving the speed and availability of the public transport network across the whole of Sydney is the most cost-effective and environmentally sustainable way to secure the future of a rapidly-growing city.