Roads Minister Duncan Gay got a grilling from Mountains residents during state cabinet’s visit to Springwood on Monday.
NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and his ministers toured the area before meeting with local residents and holding a community cabinet forum at the Springwood Sports Club on March 19.
Locals registered to have one-on-one meetings with ministers from 5pm before more than 250 people crammed the club’s conference room to ask questions of the cabinet.
Several Hawkesbury residents asked questions about flood mitigation and bridge closures, however the burning issue on the minds of local residents was the Great Western Highway and other traffic matters.
Blue Mountains Mayor Daniel Myles asked Mr Gay what the government could do about the size, speed and volume of trucks on the highway, how truck numbers could be reduced by boosting rail freight, and the issue of putting power poles underground.
Mr Gay said the Liberals made a commitment at the last election that “big B-doubles” would not be allowed on the Great Western Highway and the government did not intend to break the promise.
Resident Mike Sinnott asked Mr Gay about whether the government had committed itself to auditing the hard shoulders of roads across the state, and the audit’s timeline, in the light of the February 15 tragedy on the Hume Highway that killed both Mountains resident Sarah Frazer and tow truck driver Geoff Clark.
Mr Gay, who met privately with the Frazer family earlier that evening, said the government would “certainly” do the audit.
“The results of that audit we don’t know, and I cannot give you a timeline on how we will address it,” he told the meeting. “We will address it as soon as possible within reason.”
Mr Gay also committed to finding out “as a matter of urgency” why tow truck drivers including the NRMA were no longer allowed to place traffic cones on the road when they were at work.
Sarah’s father Peter Frazer said he showed Mr Gay some of the thousands of signatures collected on a petition by the Safer Australian Roads And Highways (SARAH) Group calling for the changes, and that the minister had been “very supportive”.
“The minister was very concerned about the fact that this tragedy should occur in an area that’s our major highway,” Mr Frazer told the Gazette. “He said that he’d look at safety audits . . . for the Hume Highway and for other roads.
“We’ve got about 5000 signatures for the petition, so we’re about halfway there and hope to have this presented to parliament by the local member . . . We’re expecting good support from the government on this.”
Earlier in the day Premier Barry O’Farrell also committed to meeting with the family and managed to spend a little time with them on the day.
“I am more than happy to meet with them and of course I’ve introduced a provision in the state’s parliament that says any petition with more than 10,000 [signatures] will come to the floor of the Legislative Assembly for debate, for discussion,” he told the Gazette.
“I’m happy to receive it and I’m happy to sit down with them, absolutely.
“But you know any loss of life on our roads is tragic and all that this terrible Blue Mountains story confirms is the task we have ahead of us as a new government trying to repair a particularly regrettably, in country areas, a lack of funding for roads over a decade.”
Back in the meeting Angela Lougheed of Hazelbrook asked when residents would “see some light at the end of the tunnel” over the road works in the village, with Mr Gay assuring locals he got “loud and clear” the message that “you are just about over” the Great Western Highway works.
