We're not stupid: the 'final' bypass stage isn't final
by Bradley Perrett · Newcastle HeraldLet's get this straight from the start: the NSW government is not completing the inner city bypass. When the stage under construction between Jesmond and New Lambton Heights is finished this year, there still will be one stage to go.
That's because we'll still have 1.7 kilometres of ordinary arterial road and traffic lights between the stretches of motorway north to Sandgate and south to Bennetts Green.
This old section - Lookout Road and part of Charlestown Road - should be upgraded to motorway standard. Thanks to planning from 81 years ago, it can be. What's needed is state government interest in paying for the work. Much history is associated with this stretch of road, reflecting changing attitudes to urban planning. That history should be brought to a close by finally completing the bypass.
This column has often referred to the great road plan from the middle of the 20th century that gave Newcastle much of its present network. Prepared by a far-sighted Labor government, the plan has never been fully executed but has left us with remarkable opportunities for finishing parts of it - where its land reservations haven't been thoughtlessly sold.
The old Department of Main Roads announced the plan in 1945 only days after the end of World War II. The Herald reported it then as a "long-range" roads plan, and indeed it looked 50 years ahead. It included what we now call the Newcastle Inner City Bypass. At first called State Highway 23, this was to carry the state's main north-south traffic through Newcastle.
By the 1960s, the DMR had got down to detailed planning, including the part from New Lambton Heights to Kotara through difficult terrain. This was near the end of the era when road authorities worldwide planned simply to meet traffic demand. They'd widen almost any road or build a big new one, ploughing through whatever was in the way. By the 1970s everyone was waking up to the need for moderation, though the pendulum has now swung too far to the other side in Newcastle.
Anyway, the DMR's plan for the section from New Lambton Heights to Kotara was a shocker: it wanted to build the road through Blackbutt, on a viaduct that would have leapt over the three gullies of the nature reserve.
Well, a great hullabaloo in Newcastle in the early 1970s put a stop to this, and eventually a good decision was made to shift the whole north-south trunk route to the west of Lake Macquarie. That's the M1.
But State Highway 23 would still be needed as an internal Newcastle route, and something still needed to be done about what was then a narrow road from New Lambton Heights to Kotara. So Lookout Road and part of Charlestown Road were upgraded to the present four-lane arterial standard in a project completed in 1983. That section has served well enough for 43 years, but all the rest of the bypass will soon be motorway, and the time has come to finish the job.
The way to do it is to apply motorway standards in an upgrade of the 1.7 kilometres of arterial road. The alignment is in fact the one intended in 1945.
The upgrade should be possible without touching Blackbutt. Where extra width is needed, maybe for easing bends and for local access, land belonging to adjoining houses can be used. The houses would have to be bought, anyway. Access to some streets, notably Grandview Road, would become less convenient, because right turns into them from the trunk route would no longer be available.
Some readers will immediately see a bigger problem: if Lookout Road becomes a motorway, how can we get across from Carnley Avenue to the road to Cardiff? That's presently done, inconveniently, with a right turn, a left turn and two sets of traffic lights.
Again, we just have to go back to 1945 for the answer.
The long-range roads plan invented Carnley Avenue and intended that it go under the highway to connect directly with Main Road, Cardiff. The land reserved for that purpose, above Wimbledon Grove, is still there. There's enough space for an interchange, too. Construction wouldn't be cheap, however. The terrain is steep.
The next objection would be that if the connection between Carnley Avenue and Main Road becomes so convenient, too much traffic will go through Cardiff shops. But, again, former planning has this covered, by providing for the east-west route to be extended along Reservoir Road.
We actually have a nice wide corridor for a four-lane route almost all the way from Bridges Road, New Lambton, to Lake Road, Glendale. Only a few houses at the western end need to be acquired, though earthworks would be needed, too.
This route, not the one through Cardiff shops, would in fact be the shortest between Crossroads and inner Newcastle. It's well planned to minimise traffic nuisance, too, because a lot of it runs along only the edges of residential areas.
I wish we had more respect for the work of people who, long before most of us were born, thought carefully about what we would need.
And that brings us to the infuriating subject of the Wallsend-Mayfield arterial road, another cleverly designed route from the middle of the 20th century that we'd love to have.
The subject is infuriating because the government wants to sell part of the precious corridor, at Warabrook, probably for a pittance. This is a route that would connect Lake Road and Newcastle Link Road with Industrial Drive, Maitland Road and the route to Port Stephens. Newcastle council has urged the state to stop the thoughtless madness of the sale.
But the state is persisting. Transport for NSW tells me that preparation for sale is progressing. The agency adds, "It is proposed to offer the property for sale on the open market in FY27" - that is, this financial year.
If that makes you angry, you're not alone.