Rail: the best solution for  GWH Congestion

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Congestion is the issue. In this case on the Great Western Highway

Congestion is part of life these days (and has been for quite a while). It will always be with us and we have to learn best how to manage it.

Congestion slows traffic. It delays both people and freight between the Central West / Orana and the Sydney Basin (including both Newcastle and Woollongong).

Time is money especially for business.

Time is also valuable for leisure travellers.

You cannot build your way out of road congestion: you can only move it from one place to another, or worse still add to it.

Flashback to 1965 (Youtube): there was road congestion even then. It will always be with us unless we change our thinking

What is wrong with the idea of duplicating the highway?

1. Spending 4 or 5 or more possibly 10 billion dollars won't deliver a 100km/h road to Penrith - it is physically impossible! 

2. Why not? There is already congestion on the highway between Katoomba and Penrith, at key times of the day (and night)

• 23 traffic lights and more traffic lights planned for Peninsula Road, Valley Heights; Tablelands Road, Wentworth Falls as well as at Lithgow Hospital 

• a further 2 or 3  sets of traffic lights planned for Medlow Bath if the expansion goes ahead

• 6 school zones (40 kph for about 3 hours a day!)

• 16 different speed zones not including school zones

• hundreds of side streets and driveways along 50km of the GWH between Explorers Tree at Katoomba and the M4 near Lapstone.

• nowhere on that road is the speed limit higher than 80km/h

• there are already numerous traffic incidents on this road

3. The GWH between Katoomba and Penrith is essentially a local road it can never be more than that.

4. To spend anywhere between $5-10 billion to gain even 5 minutes of travel time saving is reckless and irresponsible (TfNSW estimates a saving of 10 minutes, but read on).

5. The people of Bathurst and Orange (or Lithgow or Dubbo or the Orana region for that matter) are not going to get any real benefit from it. Once they take in the cost of the project - which might be $5+ billion to save 5 minutes of travel time - they will realise that there are quite few roads out in the Central West which could benefit from even $5+ million spent on them.

We could build an underground dual road carriageway from Hartley to Lapstone. That would only cost somewhere between $40 and $50 billion! That is what we would call a boondoggle. But we are concerned about a road not the Sydney Opera House.

This site will look at how best to ease congestion, with a specific focus on the Lithgow to Katoomba corridor.

It boils down to this: if you have parallel road and rail corridors and want to reduce road congestion you invest in the rail line, not the road. 

Rail is the most cost effective and safest way of reducing congestion.

For the GWH, in the short term, putting trucks on trains is an incremental and affordable way of easing congestion on the GWH. It is usually called a "Rolling Highway" - for detail about this please navigate using the bars at the left (top left if on a phone or tablet) or go straight to the Rolling Highway page here.

It is a drive on and off system: There would be terminals near Lithgow (Marangaroo?) and St Marys / Rooty Hill. It would use the existing rail system and requires significantly less expenditure than a road solution.

Advantages

• Uses existing infrastructure 

• Terminals located next to major roads (GWH and M5/M7)

• Truck drivers get long rest breaks (they can even sleep if they want to)

• Travel time is reliable (no traffic jams over the mountains!)

• Much more cost effective

Issues to be addressed

• Trucks and / or containers would be limited to a height of 3.5m.

• rail line from Penrith to St Marys (7.5kms) may need to be doubled from 2 to 4 tracks (this is already on the TfNSW agenda with planning for the St Marys hub)

• electricity supply system between Penrith and Lithgow / Marangaroo may need to be upgraded

The video below shows the rolling highway over the Brenner Pass (between Austria and Italy). It is very similar to the line over the Blue Mountains (ie. has the same gradient).

For detailed information on the rolling highway go to this page (this site).

In the long term, investment in intermodal rail facilities and increasing the number of people who choose to use the train,  on all 3 routes between the Central West and the Sydney Basin, is the solution.