AB Triples -- coming soon to an already pressured Great Western Highway

It’s hard to believe in this day and age that Orange and the rich Central West region is still being shoved on the back burner when it comes to a fast, adequate east-west road and rail link with metropolitan Sydney.

Billions of state and federal dollars have been poured into fast-track transport access to the coastal centres of Sydney’s north — likewise the southern development corridor to the south and Canberra.

But the Central West has been relatively neglected, despite the fact that this region is an abundant food bowl, a vibrant, growing regional community and contributes great value to the NSW and national economies.

Neglected, you might ask? Don’t we have the expensively upgraded multi-lane Great Western Highway expressway carved through the mountains via Katoomba to service this region?

Well, as most people this side of the mountains know, the GWH has become saturated with heavy traffic – almost a bottleneck in some places — before it’s even been completely finished.

Ask anyone who’s taken up to six hours to drive to Sydney on this “expressway,” when you can usually do it in three-and-a-half hours on the only other major road link with the coast, the narrow winding Bells Line of Road through the mountains via Lithgow, Kurrajong and Richmond-Windsor.

BELLS LINE PROJECT “FINAL STUDY”

Present Bells Line Road -- winding, blind corners, dangerous

Naturally, the Bells Line road has been viewed as the route of an alternative express highway which would relieve the congestion on the GWH and vastly improve our region’s access to the metropolitan area.

In fact, it’s been considered as the Central West’s new prime east-west transport access for something like 20 years, with feasibility study after study being made at considerable expense to taxpayers, and the project is still bogged down in state and federal government bureaucracy and lack of construction funds despite a rising tide of appeals that it go ahead.

Hopes were raised in 2007 when the Howard government allocated $20million for what was then called the “final study” of the Bells Line Expressway route.

According to the Bells Line Expressway Group chairperson, Ian Armstrong, $5 million of that money has been released to pay for two consultant studies, and we’ve all been waiting nearly two and a half years for a result.

Another  RTA study is due to be finalised in June, and it shows that not much has moved forward since the federal grant in 2007. In bureaucratic terms, the RTA is determining the identification of a suitable Bells Line route which may then be the subject of preservation. It’s actually termed “preserving a route.”

Of course, everyone knows what the route must be – the existing, tortuous Bells Line Road itself. And apart from its vital role as a new transport corridor, it’s also regarded as the most dangerous stretch of road per vehicle per kilometre in NSW, with twists and turns and blind corners that require extreme caution by drivers. So it has to be upgraded and made safer anyway.

CENTROC COUNCILS DON’T ACCEPT PLANNING MINDSET

View Larger Map Above: Google map of existing Bells Line Road route.

Ian Armstrong and BLEG have been fighting alongside the Centroc group of regional councils to get the governments to commit entirely to the Bells Line project and get it under way as soon as possible.

The Centroc Board, consistently pushing for an “expressway standard connection between Sydney and the west,” has raised concern at the overall mindset of the expert studies that have been conducted so far.

“[These] studies do not recognise the growth that would happen as a result of the Bells Line Expressway,” it says. “The studies instead make decisions based on the constrained transport options currently available.”

Centroc says the federal government has committed another $3.5 million for transport studies generally in the Central West “and it is anticipated that some of these monies will go to the next stages of strategic work to deliver the road.” In other words, more studies.

Ian Armstrong is naturally more than a little jaundiced by the creeping pace of what should be regarded as a vital and urgent transportation infrastructure project.

“I sometimes personally think we should forget about an expressway and simply drive a tunnel – Europe-style – right through the mountains underneath the Bells Line Road,” he says. But imagine the shock that a project of that cost would be to a state government that’s already cutting back on rail services and other important community services in Sydney and a federal government that’s in a tight political strait-jacket.

Meantime, the need for a new expressway is steadily becoming more dire.

GREAT WESTERN HIGHWAY WON’T COPE WITH FUTURE GROWTH

Ian Armstrong points to the growing volume of Central West produce that’s being trucked to Sydney each week – 8,000 tonnes of meat and up to 10,000 tonnes of other food products.

He says the Great Western Highway expressway over the mountains simply won’t be able to cope with it all in the future. “There are still going to be traffic flow difficulties when it’s completed,” he says, “because it runs through or past towns along the way, passes schools which mean slowdowns, and the area is bushfire prone in summer.”

On top of that, the volume and size of heavy trucks is about to rise dramatically, putting more pressure on the GWH as the sole east-west road transport link.

As Orange News Now reported in our news feature on moves to revive rail haulage to Sydney (“BACK TO RAIL FREIGHT TRANSPORT – CAN IT POSSIBLY BE TRUE?” – November 21, 2011), it’s estimated that “the number of giant freight trucks on our roads will increase three times over the next 10 to 15 years.”

Not only that, but “we’ve already got B double tractor trucks moving freight over the Blue Mountains. We’ll be seeing triples on the mountain roads soon.”

Again, the Bells Line Expressway will be vital to not just taking congestion away from the GWH but also to helping reduce an anticipated rise in horrific truck and traffic pile-ups.

The spectre of increased road deaths has been raised by two Orange business and community leaders interviewed in an ONN Video program on the Bells Line Road issue – Paul Cox, who heads the NSW Business Chamber and city councillor Gavin Priestley who chairs the council’s two economic development committees.

As you’ll see in this video viewpoint, Paul Cox raises the dreadful possibility that it will take a major  tragedy  on the present Bells Line Road to boot the state and federal governments into action to upgrade it.

 ”RAMPING UP” THE PRESSURE ON RTA, GOVERNMENTS

Paul Cox will be raising the Bells Line Road problem – “ramping it up,” as he says – at a special forum hosted by the Orange Business Chamber  next Tuesday (February 7) aimed at putting key issues of the region before local businesspeople.

Chamber president Tony Healey says it will allow the business community to discuss the present state of play on the project and the possibility of “bringing in the officials” to determine how and why it’s dragging heavily along like a steel ball on a chain.

“There’s too much talking. We have to start seeing some real action,” Tony Healey says.

Meanwhile, we have the extensive research of BLEG’s Ian Armstrong to remind us that not only is the Bells Line Expressway project economically feasible, but there’s apparently plenty of opportunity for the money to get it done.

As Paul Cox commented on in his interview, Armstrong says two of Australia’s major road construction companies have costed the 94-kilometre upgrade at under $2.2 billion, and that the Western research Institute at Charles Sturt University has calculated the expressway would pay for itself within 10 years of completion.

“Funding will preferably come from governments,” he says, “but private enterprise has indicated that many bankers and financiers are interested in funding the expressway with government guarantees.”

As for government funds, he points to $1 trillion sitting in Australian superannuation funds and another $100 billion or more in Federal Futures Funds.

“These funds are looking for investment opportunities, but we need to question why this pool of money is being used to finance highways in Poland, for example, when we have an urgent need in NSW to construct this critical piece of roads infrastructure.”

Why indeed? In summation: the critical need is there for a Bells Line Expressway, the will is there, the funding is certainly not impossible to obtain. So why can’t our politicians and bureaucrats step back from their podiums and spreadsheets and get it done?

PS: On its website, the RTA lists the Bells Line Road project as a “Long Term Strategic Plan.”