If you’ve travelled Sydney’s M4 in the past few weeks you’ll have noticed what a difference an extra lane can make; faster on and off ramps and a freer flow of traffic all equating to less time on the road and more time at work and home.
The official opening of the revamped M4 on the weekend attracted predictable opposition from naysayers, concerned at the return of tolling and expansion of the road network at the expense of public transport.
Almost in the same breath there is alarm at the disruption to business as usual caused by the works required to establish an expanded light rail network and the fast and frequent Sydney Metro.
All in all it’s a tough gig being a politician and near impossible to please all the people all of the time. Yet if you look beyond the surface and pause before complaining, there is a coherent plan emerging for Sydney which embraces the overlapping needs of road, rail, jobs and homes.
We’d all agree that it was pretty short-sighted to rip up Sydney’s tram lines in the post-war rush of love for the car (only to restore them 60 years later) and to create suburbs bereft of connections to public transport, schools and shops.
But you have to move on and gradually some of these wrongs are being righted with the benefit of lessons learned and a dose of reality. The fact is that eight out of 10 km travelled in Australia is by car and even the most efficient public transport system is not going to satisfy the need and desire to move from A to B in the most convenient way possible. And that means road for most people other than those able to pay the premium to live inner-city or close to rail and infrastructure.
The current (2015) cost of congestion, calculated by the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development is $16.5 billion rising to around $30 billion by 2030. In Sydney the cost is around $6 billion, doubling by 2030 and in Brisbane, $2.3 billion and hitting close to $6 billion over the same period.
That is an unsustainable price by any estimation which makes it all the more essential that we fix the roads upon which much of Western Sydney is currently dependent while also building the train and tram lines that will allow new residential development to occur in a more considered way.
Trams opened the inner-west for residential development early last century and heavy rail shaped the establishment of leafy suburbs on the north shore. The Metro is already having an impact on development as densities increase in the areas surrounding its route. And there lies a troubling manifestation of our times – the speculative purchase of amalgamated land for extraordinary prices. It’s evident in suburbs like Castle Hill and Macquarie Park and will undoubtedly be repeated along the route of the Metro South West line to Bankstown.
It’s impossible to begrudge anybody an opportunity to turn a profit on their property but the high prices being demanded for land in areas zoned for Mixed Use development close to public transport nodes guarantees that the only housing type on offer will be high-rise apartments, squeezing out those who aspire to a home and a patch of lawn to call their own.
Let’s just hope that as we see the transition of the Great Australian Dream from a house and yard to an apartment in proximity to a train or tram station, Governments and Councils preserve sufficient green space for us all to share.
