The recent plans for Greater Sydney and the more detailed District Plans by the Greater Sydney Commission seem to have moved away from the urban renewal of Parramatta Road as part of the WestConnex infrastructure project and now question the very role of WestConnex, says the Urban Taskforce.
“The signals coming from the Greater Sydney Commission’s recent plans seem to lessen the importance of the WestConnex project,” says Urban Taskforce CEO, Chris Johnson. “The Urban Taskforce has supported an integrated urban renewal project along Parramatta Road facilitated by a new motorway bypass but the latest Draft District Plans seem to have reduced the importance of development in this corridor. This is in contrast to the release only a year ago of the Parramatta Road Corridor Urban Transformation Strategy which identified urban renewal opportunities along the whole corridor. The previous 2014 Plan for Growing Sydney had this project as an Urban Renewal Corridor, but in the latest plans it seems to have almost disappeared.”
“Many Urban Taskforce members followed the enthusiasm that Infrastructure NSW and UrbanGrowth NSW had with the urban renewal of the Parramatta Road corridor but the project seems to have become lost in departmental restructuring. Our members bought land to help realise the NSW Government’s vision but the project has been watered down as it moves through different government agencies.”
“The original logic for WestConnex was to get people from Western Sydney to the jobs rich Eastern City. The new Greater Sydney Commission Plans however have developed three jobs rich cities across Sydney so that people travel less distance to jobs. Essentially their approach is to minimise commuters needing to travel to the Eastern City. The Greater Sydney Commission wants jobs around the Western Parklands City and the Central River City as well as the East Harbour City so that commuters only travel 30 minutes to work. Cleary this questions the need to get all workers to travel from the west to the east as the name WestConnex implies is the need.”
“Another significant shift in the latest plans is to keep industrial uses close to the sea port. The previous WestConnex approach was to connect the industrial sites of Western Sydney to the Sydney airport and the container port in Botany Bay. But the Greater Sydney Commission’s plans now protect all industrial land around the port to stop any renewal to mixed uses. So the logic of connecting container traffic through WestConnex to the new industrial sites around the M7 is less obvious.”
“Clearly much of WestConnex is already committed but the recent plans by the Greater Sydney Commission now question the original logic behind the funding decisions of the project. We now have three city centres not one, we are protecting inner city industrial uses so questioning the connections to the west, and the urban renewal potential along the degraded Parramatta Road corridor championed by UrbanGrowth NSW seems to be on the back burner.”
“WestConnex is a big picture project that completes a missing part of Sydney’s motorway network but many of the original reasons behind its business case seem to have changed. A review is needed in the light of the latest plans by the Greater Sydney Commission about the final form of WestConnex and more clarity is needed on how the urban renewal along Parramatta Road will be implemented”
“Urban Taskforce members have been involved in many discussions over many years on the Parramatta Road urban renewal corridor and we are keen to work with the Greater Sydney Commission to ensure that urban renewal eventuates along with the improved motorway.”
