Appin Road in Macarthur will be upgraded after Lendlease’s five year battle at Figtree Hill site

Action will finally be taken on a developer’s offer to spend $170m upgrading a notorious stretch of road after a five year battle with bureaucracy.

An artist’s impression of how Figtree Hill, which is currently under construction will look. Picture: supplied

Action will finally be taken on a developer’s private $170 million offer to upgrade a treacherous stretch of road leading to thousands of new homes southwest of Sydney.

Transport NSW confirmed on Thursday it would press ahead with Lendlease’s proposal to widen Appin Road to four lanes between Rosemeadow and Gilead, more than five years after the developer first submitted the plans.

The Daily Telegraph first wrote in July last year how the developer’s offer had languished in the planning system for years, bogged down by repeated public consultations required over the environmental impact of the road upgrade.

Appin Rd needs to be upgraded to provide better safety for a local koala population before construction can start, but Transport for NSW had refused to say whether the upgrades can go ahead.

An illustration of how the new koala underpasses on Appin Road could look. Picture: supplied

In December, The Daily Telegraph revealed how bureaucratic red tape was still preventing Lendlease upgrading the 5km stretch of Appin Rd, which had thrown hundreds of landowners into limbo and held up the construction of 1700 new homes 10 minutes from the Campbelltown-Macarthur centre.

28 koalas were killed in the time it took to make a decision. Picture: Matt Loxton

The Figtree Hill development in Macarthur, near Appin. The sites are ready to be built on. Picture: Jonathan Ng

In the five years of limbo at least 28 koalas were killed by car strikes on the stretch of road, according to surveying done by Lendlease.

The approved 5.4km upgrade will include two box culvert koala underpasses and roadside fencing to protect the marsupials.

Figtree Hill's master planned community in Sydney's southwest: Artist impression

Appin Way housing development. Figtree Hill and Appin Road Intersection. Picture: Supplied

The works will also include an entrance to Lendlease’s Figtree Hill development, which will include 450-homes 10 minutes from Campbelltown.

The road is also key to Lendlease’s plans to build 3,300 new homes at their Gilead development in coming years.

“The community has been calling for koala underpasses and safety upgrades to Appin Road for years, and (this) announcement gives us the green light to finally deliver urgently needed road upgrades and infrastructure to improve safety for motorists and koalas,” Lendlease’s head of NSW communities Brendan O’Brien said.

About 12,000 motorists use Appin Road daily, with that figure expected to grow by 40 per cent in the next 30 years as the population in the area increases.

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