ORBITAL POLITICS
There is no orbital road surrounding Sydney. There is a south, south western and western road - the ‘M7’ Motorway.
In the same region there is the Cumberland Highway, likewise Woodville Road and Silverwater Roads serving the same localities.
In the north, each of these roads lead to Pennant Hills Road. Daily it carries more and more trucks, B-Doubles and in the future even longer trucks.
Normal traffic from as far as Melbourne as well as southern and western Sydney, seeks to access the Central Coast, Newcastle and beyond.
This is the most over trafficked thoroughfare in Australia and it urgently needs to be addressed!
If it is not, then, Australia will suffer. There will be increased emissions, transport delays and gross productivity loss and inefficiency.
Any objective analysis in productivity terms would give a Northern Western Orbital Road, a Pennant Hills Road Tunnel or both – an urgent priority. Regrettably, such a decision will not occur!
It is clear that New South Wales State Labor will be submitting infrastructure development proposals only in Sydney’s south, such as the ‘M4 and M5’ submissions already widely publicised.
If the State Labor government does not give precedence to developing appropriate submissions, then consideration objectively of what proposals best service the national interest will not occur.
While Federal Labor argues it has depoliticised infrastructure spending decisions, regrettably State Labor control the gateway and thus it is unlikely Infrastructure Australia will have before it objective information to make the most appropriate decisions in the Nations best interest.
Northern district residents have already born the brunt of Labor’s prejudice. There is regional discrimination through tolls on roads from the north, when other regions are exempt. This imposes a grossly unfair penalty, simply by postcode and voting preference.
If Liberal Governments in office legislated so prejudicially, the Labor Party would “howl the house down”.
The situation is, however, worse because south western and western suburbs residents subject to tolls - receive refunds of tolls paid from the State Government.
Increasing tolls and imposing additional congestion impost levies on northern suburbs residents leave them few options but to pay! Public transport is not a realistic option - as it is already grossly overcrowded.
Given the highly discriminatory approach taken by Labor at State and Federal level to the North Western suburbs, residents should be mobilising now to bring about political change in electorates adjoining as they too have an interest in change.