- Updated
- Politics
- NSW
- State Parliament
This was published 4 months ago
Rozelle Interchange 2.0: Former RTA boss warns more traffic chaos is coming
A Rozelle Interchange-type fiasco is looming on the Warringah Freeway, north of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a former NSW Roads and Traffic Authority chief executive has warned.
Former RTA boss Paul Forward told a parliamentary inquiry on Friday that the Western Harbour Tunnel — long touted as a solution for the Rozelle Interchange chaos — could shift the problem from the inner west to Sydney’s lower north shore.
He said the traffic delivered by the $5 billion tunnel project, combined with the two existing harbour crossings, was very concerning and could see a new traffic debacle when it opens in 2028.
“We’re also concerned about the actual design of the Western Harbour Tunnel. We now have three motorways ... all coming onto the Warringah Freeway in very similar locations,” he said.
“The question clearly for the [parliamentary] committee is, ‘is this another Rozelle Interchange about to happen?’ ”
Forward appeared at the inquiry examining the Rozelle Interchange on Friday, alongside former Transport for NSW boss Les Wielinga, and two other experts; the RTA’s former head of traffic and transport, Chris Ford, and Stuart McCreery, an engineer who was part of the original design of WestConnex.
The four men revealed that the traffic chaos which has engulfed it – and subsequently the Anzac Bridge as a result – since it opened last year was predicted a decade ago in traffic modelling commissioned during the original design of WestConnex.
“What is happening now was, in fact, predicted in the traffic modelling,” Forward said. “It should not have come as any surprise.”
During his testimony, Forward outlined how detailed traffic modelling undertaken during the original design of WestConnex in 2014 had foreseen that connecting the motorway with the Anzac Bridge would “overload” it.
However, the former executive and the other witnesses claimed those forecasts were ignored because the former Coalition government wanted to generate more revenue from the sale of WestConnex by increasing traffic on it.
Former RTA chief executive Paul Forward said the traffic chaos on the Rozelle Interchange and Anzac Bridge was predicted a decade ago.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
The original design, Forward said, “was very different to what has been built today”.
“There was no Rozelle interchange”, he said.
In around 2014, the former government conducted detailed design work on options for the new motorway, Forward said. They also showed that “connecting to the Anzac Bridge would, in fact, overload the Anzac Bridge” which was already “running at capacity”.
Construction work will allow the Warringah Freeway to be part of the interchange with the Western Harbour Tunnel.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Forward and McCreery were dropped from the WestConnex design team in 2015, and the two other witnesses, Wielinga and Ford, left the government at about the same time. However, they believe the impetus for the altered design was at least in part inspired by a financial incentive to have more people drive on the new motorway.
WestConnex had been designed to be sold off to the private sector as a toll road, and NSW Treasury was concerned with the cost of the project. Treasury wanted to “raise the most amount of money from that motorway”, Forward said.
“The models that we had looked at demonstrated that by pushing the traffic onto the Anzac Bridge, remember, you’ve got 14 lanes going into four on Anzac Bridge, actually generated more traffic on the motorway, which meant the motorway was more valuable as an asset to be sold,” he said.
Wielinga, who retired as the head of Transport for NSW in 2013 after 41 years in the public service, also warned of another “bloody disaster” when the tunnel link to the Warringah Freeway opened, if the existing traffic congestion problems around Rozelle remained.
Paul Forward, second from right, and the other witnesses at the parliamentary hearing on Friday. Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
“You think you’ve got problems now [at Rozelle]. You wait if you don’t change this bloody intersection [at Warringah],” he said.
The four men appeared at the inquiry on what was meant to be its final day. However, the committee chair, Greens MP Cate Faehrmann, said it would be extended due to the evidence given on Friday.
“These experts strongly advised against the Rozelle Interchange design long before it was built but were ignored,” she said.
“We need the Roads Minister to say more than ‘we’re reviewing the impact of metro west’. The public needs to know what the government will do differently to prevent Western Harbour Tunnel becoming Rozelle Interchange 2.0.”
Roads Minister John Graham played down their concerns about the Western Harbour Tunnel and the Warringah Freeway, saying: “I don’t expect it to be another Rozelle Interchange”.
Graham said he expected the impact of the Western Harbour Tunnel would be mitigated by the role of public transport in North Sydney, including the new Metro line. However, he also said he expected the transport department to “learn the lessons” of the Rozelle Interchange in dealing with future traffic issues north of the bridge.
“We are building the Western Harbour Tunnel at the moment [and] it is needed to have that additional crossing,” he said.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.