18 July

West Connex was promoted, as all new freeways are, as the answer to traffic congestion, in this case along Parramatta Road. It’s been fantastic for people like us, who rarely go to Sydney, a super easy (but bloody expensive) way to get straight to the Eastern suburbs. BUT. Has it taken traffic off Parramatta Road? No. Traffic volumes there are the same as before West Connex opened. Roads create traffic, they don’t reduce it. That’s the number one law of traffic engineering that no politician will listen to. Particularly politicians with chums in the construction sector, offering juicy kickbacks. The new tolls on the M4 and M5, introduced to sweeten the deal for the privatisation, have forced thousands of cars and trucks onto local residential roads, to try to avoid the tolls. Those tolls will be $65 billion, over the next 37 years. That’s 3 times what it cost to build. Cities overseas are replacing tolls with congestion pricing, targeting actual congestion. Rather than gouging taxpayers to pay construction companies. Meanwhile the skilled labour sucked into these vast white elephants starves housing and other industries of engineers and tradies. The massive white elephant gas and coal projects around the country are doing the same. In both cases all profits are going offshore. As they will for nuclear power too, if we build that colossal white elephant.