No road to Utopia when feds, state dud Western Sydney

Make no mistake: as Sydney’s west continues to grow, congestion will only get worse unless infrastructure keeps up.

On the very same day the Albanese government announced it was scrapping federal funding for 17 road and rail projects across NSW, a report from a high-powered infrastructure panel was released declaring one of the projects in the firing line was a “priority” for the new Western Sydney Airport.

Yet, on November 16, Infrastructure Minister Catherine King announced that the Commonwealth was scrapping planning funding for the obtusely-named Western City Road Transport Network Development.

Seriously, screenwriters for the ABC’s Utopia could not make this stuff up. And yet, this is exactly what happened.

The Western Sydney Transport Infrastructure Panel had found that the seven roads contained within that project needed to be upgraded to facilitate massively increased freight movements to and from the new airport.

It warned that there were safety risks with the existing “peri urban” roads (which amount to nothing more than a single two-lane strip of asphalt with no gutters or lane markings).

The roads in question will become heavy freight routes in and around the new international airport: Eastern Ring Rd, Luddenham Rd, Fifteenth Ave (West), Devonshire Rd, Badgerys Creek Rd, Bradfield Metro Link Rd and Pitt St (West).

Traffic is heavy on Mamre Rd at Kemps Creek. Businesses are calling for the government to invest in upgrading roads and infrastructure in the area. Picture: Richard Dobson

Without upgrades, the Panel said, this road network “will increasingly become unfit for its new purpose and preclude efficient movement of passenger and freight transport and potentially cause significant road safety issues”.

We saw this first hand when we went to inspect these roads last Friday and witnessed a massive smash that saw at least one vehicle written off.

A render of Aerotropolis, in Bringelly in Sydney's southwest.

Yet, despite being identified as a “priority” by one arm of government, another arm had somehow found that upgrades to these roads did not “demonstrate merit”, lacked ‘“any national strategic rationale” or did not “meet the Australian government’s national investment priorities”.

King’s office even tried to suggest that the government had not cut funding for the roads, because the funding that had been allocated was only for “planning” the roads — not actually building them.

Then the Albanese government argued that some of the projects which were axed in King’s Infrastructure Review could not have been delivered within the funding which had already been set aside.

This is akin to a family who has gone away for the school holidays saying that they cannot afford to return to work because record fuel prices meant it would cost more than they expected to fill up the tank for the homebound journey.

Make no mistake: as Sydney’s west continues to grow, congestion will only get worse unless infrastructure keeps up.

Bural Dincel’s story is a case in point.

The entrepreneur bought up on Mamre Rd in 2017 to expand his manufacturing business, which makes innovative concrete walls which cut construction time in half and reduce costs by 30 per cent.

Dincel’s product is the exact kind of thing Sydney needs to solve the housing crisis, by allowing developers to build new properties more quickly and at less cost.

Burak Dincel at the Mamre Rd site where he is looking to build manufacturing warehouse. Picture: Richard Dobson

The only problem is that he cannot use the Mamre Rd property because it does not have the power, sewerage, water or communications networks he needs, Dincel told me.

“If the government wants jobs they need to make the facilities available,” he said.

Upgrades for Mamre Rd were also considered “urgent” by the Western Sydney Transport Infrastructure Panel in its April 2023 report.

Yet the precinct, like much of the nearby Aerotropolis, has been languishing; the infrastructure required to support business investment is yet to arrive.

NSW authorities also share blame.

How can governments (both federal and state) expect to create a hi-tech advanced manufacturing hub without properly servicing the land?

Western Parkland City Authority Chair Jennifer Westacott identified the Mamre Rd precinct as desperately needing infrastructure in an interview with me earlier this month.

Under fire over the WPCA’s role in the flagging Bradfield City Centre, Westacott said the authority had no jurisdiction over “co-ordinating infrastructure around Mamre Road”.

She also called for the feds to step up on infrastructure funding.

“The Commonwealth needs to get back in the game. It’s their airport and they’re spending a lot of money on it,” she said.

The state government put a proposal to its federal counterparts in February which would, if accepted, claw back some of the money cut out of projects around the airport.

King insists that she is working with NSW on “options” to support the region, including “working through the recommendations of the Western Sydney Transport Infrastructure panel”.

She should have followed those recommendations back when they were made — in April last year.