Just three days before submissions to the M9 or Outer Sydney Orbital – OSO – corridor close there is a real sense of gloom and doom for those affected.
And there’s no argument that whoever came up with the location of this corridor had no idea of the impact it would have on communities along the way, from Cobbitty to Menangle.
One of the properties that would be seriously affected if the freight line and the M9 were built in 20 or 30 years from now contains a heritage listed homestead owned by local McDonald’s tsar Peter Meadows.
I hear that the family have spent a lot of money just going through various heritage hoops, but this proposal has a huge highway running right through it.
There are people who have bought vacant land to build their dream homes, some planning for their very last home in retirement, but instead now have a letter from the state government telling them of forced acquisitions.
One such land owner told me that in a meeting with transport bureaucrats he was shocked to find out the route of the proposed corridor was worked out by simply looking at Google maps.
Whichever way you look at it, this is a disaster at several levels, but hopefully the government will take the submissions seriously and make the appropriate changes.
Very few people oppose the idea of creating a motorway and freight rail line corridor as part of long term planning in our region.
I particularly like that they are also looking at eventually connecting the M9 to the Illawarra in the south and the Central Coast to the north.
That bit is good, but it’s also as far as it goes.
It beggars belief that bureaucrats keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
In 1996 they drew a straight line from Sydney Airport to Holsworthy and decided that would be the perfect location of Sydney’s second international airport.
Had it gone ahead shoppers in Campbelltown’s CBD would have been deafened by low flying aircraft coming in to land at Holsworthy.
A massive community outcry put that stupid idea to bed quick smart, and it is to be hoped the fear and loathing over the Outer Sydney Orbital will do exactly the same in 2018.
This time the community does not want to kill it – this time we want it to be where it does the least possible damage to people’s lives.
It is also reasonable the community expects all landowners, rich or poor, will be treated with fairness in deciding the route of the corridor.
