NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley has said the Bells Line Expressway will never be built by any NSW government but said the Nationals kept stringing the public along.
“Neither side of politics is going to build the Bells Line Expressway. We’re honest about it. The Nationals try and pretend they will do it but they never do it,” Mr Foley said.
“The problem is the NSW and federal government had a joint study and the report came back and said it doesn’t stack up economically.
“What I’m focused on is how we improve both the Bells Line of Road and the Great Western Highway to ensure people travelling to and from Sydney, and crucially, freight and produce going to market can be transported more efficiently than it is at the moment.”
Mr Foley said the Great Western Highway was the more likely road to be upgraded ‘to ensure a better trip’ but conceded even that was unlikely to reach expressway standards.
“I have to be honest, I don’t think you will be able to have a 100-kilometre per hour road the whole way through the Blue Mountains, that’s unrealistic, but there are a lot of improvements that can be done to improve the status quo,” he said.
Mr Foley said with $4 billion available to the government after the sale of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the highway should be considered for some of that money.
Member for Blue Mountains Trish Doyle said the proposal for a grade-separated, dual carriage express way through the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park “has always been a pie-in-the-sky proposal”.
“The traffic volume and potential traffic volume simply doesn’t justify the extravagant expenditure and environmental vandalism an expressway would require,” she said.
“What the Nationals are proposing to do is smash through the pristine wilderness of the Blue Mountains National Park and create something like the M1 Pacific Motorway alongside the existing Bells Line of Road.
“What we should be doing instead is straightening up, making safe and improving the existing road to Lithgow. In my view, the best way to open up the Central West is by improving rail connections to Lithgow, Orange and Bathurst as well as improved freight rail connections from Port Kembla and Port Botany, Newcastle and the greater Sydney region to Lithgow and beyond.”
The Central NSW Councils (CENTROC), Western NSW Business Chamber and RDA Central West have joined forces to lobby the government to build an expressway or suitable alternative.
RDA Orana also called on the government to consider a tunnel through the Blue Mountains.
A working party involving CENTROC will determine options for an expressway.
