The mysterious case of the disappearing Sydney Airport road

NSW Premier Kristina Keneally didn’t just kill the metro, but is a person of interest in the case of the disappearing road map for an M5 East duplication and extension that cuts right through Tempe in her electorate of Heffron.

That extension, which was to emerge from a second M5 East tunnel and then onto an elevated motorway with direct ramp access to the international and domestic sides of Sydney Airport, was about the only thing air travellers might have found interesting in the package of “I killed the metro” transport plans that the Premier announced on Sunday to mostly take effect two state elections from now.

It was shown on the M5 corridor development overview document (below) released by the state transport minister, David Campbell, in November 2009.

And now it has vanished. Instead the RTA is talking vaguely about all options for the airport end of the M5 East duplication being ‘open’.

Don’t they mean ‘closed’ when it comes to the Premier’s seat. (And given the polls, most likely one that will get booted to the opposition benches after the election next March.)

The Roads and Traffic Authority preceded Sunday’s expensive cancellation of two proposed metro lines, and the consignment to limbo of the completion of the Chatswood-Parramatta heavy rail underground with the advertisement of an extension for community consultation for M5 East corridor development proposals to March 12, with the ‘all options are open’ tag line, rather than the concise if not totally convincing plan to terminate a four lane elevated motorway into the narrow built-in confines of Campbell Street, which on its own stood a really good chance of bringing all traffic around the airport to a permanent standstill.

Sydney Airport suffers from inadequate surface access by all modes, as well as from the challenges of handling a forecast doubling of air travel demand by not later than 2030.

The road access is diabolical, and the rail link very costly and for many trips, inefficient.

What was once a set of reasonable bus routes to the airport were killed off no doubt to encourage people to use the costly rail link or astronomically expensive on-site car parks, with the train trip all but guaranteed to discourage repeat usage.

This is what transport minister David Campbell says at the start of the November 2009 document on the M5 East corridor.

And this is what he also said about the now axed metro projects in the same document.

There, with that sort of vision, courage and sense of urgency, what do Sydney Airport users have to worry about?