The State of Sydney's Roads

I hate Sydney's roads. They suck. Los Angeles is even better despite its notorious traffic jams. Even London has better roads. Smeg!! Also Sydney's missing half its freeways. So we have missing links where drivers are forced on to main roads where the speed limit is 60 km/h (37 mi/hr) and there are traffic lights every bloody 500 metres.

Australia's widest freeway is the one in Brisbane only 8 lanes wide. The M25 which circumnavigates London is up to 14 lanes wide in parts!! In Sydney we have few 8 lane freeways unless you count the Sydney Harbour Bridge (which is only 800m long) and a stretch of the M4 from Church St, Parramatta to about Cumberland Highway. Much of Sydney's Metropolitan Road Network is made up of 4 or 6 lane roads anyway and not freeways. The smegging Hume Highway in Ashfield is only 2 lanes wide!

The motorways (that's what we call 'em now) however, may also be underutilized. We have tolls! A whole smegging bunch of 'em on every motorway. And if you're stingy like me you'd rather no pay for the tolls and prefer to drive on a congested road. I mean, would I rather spend $3 on the toll or two cans of Coke? Well duh, Coke rules! I used to think tolls were bad and just a way for private companies & governments to rip off the customers/drivers/taxpayers. There is a reason why they're good. They keep drivers of the motorways. In LA, where the freeways are free, too many people use them making them chock-a-block. But in Sydney, Melbourne Brisbane, where there are tolls, the motorways are pretty much free flowing allowing those who want to get to their destination quickly to pay a higher price. [Now if the tolls were only 50¢ or something we'd save money on petrol driving on the motorway eh? But then again the motorway will have too many people wanting to use it.] So I still hate tolls but they are nonetheless better for the city overall.

Now to talk about how bad our motorway system is.

The M4 is probably the busiest in Sydney running between Sydney CBD and Western Sydney, before travelling onward through the Blue Mountains to the towns out west (where it s is not known as the M4). The route is 70% motorway, making it one of the best in Sydney (much of which was built in the 70's & 80's). It runs from Glenbrook in the lower slopes of the Blue Mountains and ends at Strathfield abut 11 km away from the CBD. From here they travel on a 4-lane stretch of Parramatta Rd. This is ridiculous because the population of Western Sydney is over 1.6 million. Imagine fitting 1.6 million people onto a 6-lane freeway let alone a 4 lane road. The motorway, with its 6 to 8 lanes and 90 km/h speed limits charge you about $2 only to get you to the city 10 or so minutes earlier than those dodging the tolls on 60 km/h roads, which is ridiculous already. Just recently people have been proposing a tunnel to run from Strathfield to Haberfield to move traffic onto the City-West Link. Unfortunately the RTA's focus is on the M5 East, E-tolls, and the Western Sydney Orbital.

The M2, the main route between Sydney and Windsor is also suffering from congestion. The motorway sections are fine, both charging tolls. Between North Ryde & Gore Hill however, traffic spills onto 6 lane Epping Rd where traffic crawls until it reaches a top speed of about 50 km/h on the Gore Hill Freeway and onward over the Harbour Bridge. A tunnel under Epping Rd is being planned to provide these two stretches of freeway with its missing link. Windsor Rd takes over where the M2 Motorway left off in Seven Hills. It travels through the Rouse Hill Housing Development, which is projected to have a population of about 1 million in 20 years time. Yet there is nothing more than a 2 lane road connecting it and Windsor & Richmond with the M2 and Parramatta. It used to take 40 minutes to drive from Windsor to Parramatta in the 80's. Now it is common to take 40 minutes to drive 10 km along the 30 km stretch of road. In 1990-something, the state government announced it would take 10 years to be fully widened but by the time the proposed 4 lane road is completed it won't be able to cope with the growth. The state government has recently promised to speed it up to 5 years but so far little action has been taken.

The Western Sydney Orbital will be a completely new 4 lane motorway connecting the M2 with the M5 via the M4 near Wallgrove Rd. I don't know the details but it supposed to follow the Philip Parkway and Castlereagh Freeway Reservations and then travel parallel to Wallgrove Rd before running past Hoxton Park Aerodrome before joining the M5 at Prestons. It is said to replace some of the traffic on the Cumberland Highway (M7) and to promote growth in the western suburbs of Sydney, especially around Blacktown and Hoxton Park. But at $5 a trip it may not be worth it. Also there are rumours that the Prospect Highway, a sad one at that just 2 km long, will be extended following a path parallel to the planned Orbital from the M4 down to Wetherill Park. This may put a dent in the number of drivers willing to use the motorway, or may be a pothole. The Federal and State Governments better sort this out before the Western Sydney Orbital Consortium becomes a big flop like the Airport Rail Link. Yep you heard right were getting federal funding! With a expected budget of $1 billion you'd think they'd lend us a hand.

The M1, most would think is perfect. what with the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, Eastern Distributor, Warringah-Gore Hill Freeways, Southern Cross Drive making it a pretty snazzy motorway. Of course there's the tolls on the tunnel & bridge and in the Eastern Distributor. But few are aware on these roads there are missing links. There is no motorway link between the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway (F3) and the M1/M2. There was supposed to be one that cut across Lane Cove National park and onto the current M2 but there are certain people who don't appreciate a good road. So people have to drive along heavily congested Pacific Highway. There is also no link between the M1 at Sydney Airport and the Southern freeway out past Heathcote. This forces people to drive on the Princes Highway. There are land reservations for a motorway near San Souci but it has to travel through built up areas in Miranda and Sutherland and would have to cut through the Royal National Park at Heathcote & Engadine to get to the Southern Freeway. The Captain Cook Bridge at Taren Point was built to carry a freeway. Right now it carries daggy old Taren Point Rd.

The M3 I realise is not a motorway. Well it should be one. Not a six lane road with more traffic lights than the whole island of Manhattan. It is a ring road which circumnavigates Sydney via the Inner West. It too plays an important role in today's world as a short cut to avoid tolls and the M1 if one is travelling from Wollongong to Newcastle non-stop. I use it to drive to the airport cause there is no bloody direct route from my house to the airport. Olympic officials used it as the main route between Sydney Airport and Olympic Park during the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. What an embarrassment. Thank got they didn't use the M4 as the route between the city & Olympic park.

The Cumberland Highway, is a joke of a highway. Much of it is only 4 lanes wide yet it is one of the busiest roads in all of Sydney. At least the M3 has 6 lanes much of the time. The southern half was "constructed" to reduce congestion on Woodville Rd. It wasn't really a highway in the beginning, it was just a bunch of secondary roads & suburban streets the RTA stringed together to form a road travelling from the north to south. Federal funding is being put in to widen the sections in the Fairfield & Holroyd LGAs to 6 lanes. But it should get a bit better when the Western Sydney Orbital is done.

So Sydney's Main Roads System is a joke. but we have one achievement.. eventually. Once the M5 East is done, The Campbelltown and Liverpool people will be the only ones to have a motorway all the way to the city. We really need an overhaul on the Sydney road system & more funding. Or we could just siphon more money on to promoting public transport & building train lines. I suppose our freeway system is more adequate (or inadequate depending on the way you see it) when compared to say Adelaide's or Canberra's. Although I'm just criticising here, I'd really like to make a difference and start planning for Sydney's future transport needs. But in the meantime, no matter how hard we try, only time will tell whether we have succeeded, or failed.

Click here to see diagrams of Sydney's planned Freeway/Motorway system: in the 1970s and in the year 2000. Or click here also for some related links.