Traffic congestion is slowly but surely choking our region.
Wherever you go, whether it’s from Campbelltown to Mt Annan or Camden, Glenfield to Glen Alpine or across the rail line from Raby to Ruse, you can’t help but notice that there are many more vehicles on the road than were 10 or 20 years ago.
But the truly scary sight is seeing heavy congestion on a road that has just been upgraded from one lane to two lanes each way.
And that’s what confronted me when I turned left into Camden Valley Way last Thursday heading to Catherine Field.
We all know about Narellan Road – it’s almost a joke everyone who lives in the south west knows about.
The joke is on us of course because we’re the ones stuck in a traffic jam in a road where the widenings and the upgrades seem to never end.
But this problem is getting worse everywhere you go.
It’s around the expanded Narellan Town Centre, it’s on Mt Annan Drive, and back in Campbelltown, in Queen Street and Pembroke Road, old Campbelltown Road, Raby Road – everywhere you drive.
One of the candidates for Saturday’s byelection reckons sometimes it takes him almost 40 minutes to get to the Campbelltown central business district during peak hour; a trip that used to take less than 10 minutes not that long ago.
One of the reason most of us live here is to escape the madness of the inner city and the non stop traffic congestion – and the noise and air pollution it produces.
But unless our councils act soon we will be in the same boat, if not worse, because our population is forecast to double in the next 20 years.
And we don’t just want an extra lane here or there, but road planning and construction for the next 50 or 100 years – something that should have occured in relation to Narellan Road.
Many of our councillors paid lip service to fixing this problem during the council election campaign last year.
But six months later and traffic congestion is off the political radar.
Maybe the fact the ones we elected just six months don’t have to face us for another three and a half years has something to do with it.
Is that too cynical or is it just fair to point out that some things never seem to change.
Campbelltown council
will keep building houses and won’t fix the roads
Same as liverpool all about the $$$$
Main roads not council responsibility
Can’t wait till the Moorebank Intermodal freight Terminal is built abd we have 10,000 more trucks per day on our roads
What crazy government thought this was a good idea
Raid Moorebank
Whenever they say an extra lane, it really needs at least two and then revisiting again in under 5 years.
People have to push for a doubling of the next stages of road widening.
it seems roads that developers houses are built on are constructed within months, but the roads that carry people to their jobs, schools or universities are not. Two lanes for Camden Valley, really, who ever thought that was going be enough.