Gladys Berejiklian sets 18-month deadline to fix congestion woes
PREMIER Gladys Berejiklian wants Sydneysiders to give her 18 months to fix the city’s congestion woes, declaring her “game-shifter” solutions are just around the corner. The Premier assured voters that better days were ahead.
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PREMIER Gladys Berejiklian wants Sydneysiders to give her 18 months to fix the city’s congestion woes, declaring her “game-shifter” solutions are just around the corner.
Ms Berejiklian has declared the city is on the cusp of major change as up to four landmark road and rail projects will come online and shift hundreds of thousands of commuters off chronically clogged routes.
“There will be a tipping point in a positive way in the next 18 months — all these projects will start to come online and that’s a game-shifter,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “I’m absolutely confident that the next 18 months are going to completely change people’s perspective. The infrastructure we are delivering will change people’s lives forever in a positive way with less travel time and more convenience.”
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Congestion and the headaches associated with development could be a problem for the Liberal government at the state election next March, with increasing agitation among voters over the nightmare it has become navigating the city.
Labor is targeting the issue, and a damning report out yesterday found Sydneysiders were wasting almost twice as much time commuting as their counterparts in big cities in Western Europe.
The Premier yesterday thanked voters for their patience and assured them better days were ahead when the massive transport and infrastructure projects being built are completed. Ms Berejiklian pointed to the Northwest Metro, which is due to open in the first quarter of next year, as a key project that would change lives.
It is Australia’s first metro system and the futuristic underground driverless trains will be able to move an astounding 46,000 people an hour. The current rail system moves around 24,000 people an hour. It will help free up the M7 and the M2, and ease pressure on the rail network.
“All those people paying all those tolls will be on a train coming to the CBD,” Ms Berejiklian said.
And then there is the NorthConnex, a 9km twin tunnel that will link the M1 Pacific Motorway at Wahroonga to the Hills M2 Motorway at West Pennant Hills. It is scheduled to open midway through next year.
Ms Berejiklian also flagged the next stage of WestConnex — tunnels between Homebush and Haberfield — which will free up Parramatta Rd and the City West Link, due to open early next year.
She said there had been a “massive improvement” in the city’s transport network over the past five years and backed her record as Transport Minister.
“Imagine going back to the days when you bought your ticket at the booth on a Monday morning and had to wait half an hour,” she said. “That’s one example.
“But we’ve put on tens of thousands of extra services since we’ve been in government. People forget when we came to government the Southwest rail line didn’t exist — we built that. The Inner West rail line didn’t exist — we built that.”
Asked about the heavily delayed light rail project that has limped along under Spanish contractors Acciona, Ms Berejiklian said there had been challenges but it was “no different to what we face on every single other project”.
“It’s just that this one is visual and is right under our noses,” she said.
And she said things would be much worse in Sydney if the government had done nothing. “Now we’re going to have these mass transit options,” she said.
But asked to rate Sydney’s transport network in its current state today, she declined.
“I’ll let other people mark me,” she said. “But as a regular transport user I feel things have improved massively. In a relatively short amount of time we’ve turned a backlog around.”
Ms Berejiklian also wants voters to remember Sydney’s ambitious infrastructure building project has driven private investment and jobs growth in NSW. “A lot of people have jobs and a lot of people are doing well because of the government’s spending on infrastructure.”