D
Dave
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THE State Government has told long-suffering commuters in Sydney's northwest they will have to wait 14 years and re-elect Labor twice if they want to get a train line.
And a plan to deliver new express rail services to the Western Suburbs has no completion date at all.
On top of this comes a new car registration levy that will force motorists to pay up to $30 a year more to partly fund the new pie-in-the-sky plans.
The tax, to bring in $500 million over 10 years, will penalise those who do not own small cars with vehicles over 975kg costing between $5 and $30 a year more, depending on the car's weight, from July.
At the same time, the M4 East motorway and Epping to Parramatta rail link may never see the light of day, with no plans to build either in the next decade.
The latest transport blueprint is almost certain to be the final nail in the Government's coffin, with exclusive polling by The Daily Telegraph showing some three-quarters of voters ready to turn on Labor over its transport mismanagement.
No less than 73 per cent of the 2000 people who completed the Ultimate Transport Survey said the Government's handling of transport had been poor or very poor.
A total of 74 per cent said the Government's first two priorities should be extending the northwest and southwest lines (49 per cent), followed by Epping to Chatswood (25 per cent).
Yet despite first announcing the northwest line in 1998 in its "Action for Transport 2010" plan - and reannouncing it another six times since - the Government will only start work in 2017 and the line will not be finished until 2024.
By that time a resident of Castle Hill will have waited 26 years for a train to the city.
Even the start date for work is two elections away, despite widespread predictions the Government will not survive next year's poll.
The project, which runs from Epping to Rouse Hill, will now cost $6.7 billion. The 1998 estimate for the extension from Epping to Castle Hill was just $360 million.
The last time a government opened a train line in the Hills district was in August 1900. And in a cruel irony, the Carlingford line is now effectively a ghost track because of the abandonment of the Epping to Parramatta link.
The $4.5 billion Western Sydney express service will not begin construction until 2015. No one in the Government could say when it would be completed.
Even the Government's new blueprint website was out of order.
The $50 billion 10-year plan will also include a $500 million light rail extension to Circular Quay and Dulwich Hill and new rolling stock.
It will be in part funded by the scrapping of the $5.3 billion CBD metro. Even rail unions, who had called for an extension of the heavy rail network, said the Government's plan was too little too late and commuters would not believe them until work started.
Tourism and Transport Forum executive director Brett Gale said the Government had failed to guarantee the projects would even be delivered.
NSW Rego Rise...
I wont be voting labour in the next election.
Dave.
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