Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the planned multibillion-dollar Beaches Link tunnel under Middle Harbour was an outdated transport solution. The pandemic has amply shown that we can successfully and productively decentralise where we work, unclog the roads and revitalise local communities. So the notion of yet another massive toll road to help get us back into the daily grind of long distance commutes in private vehicles seems, frankly, myopic.
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the irony when this week’s online Transport for NSW information sessions proved exactly this point. There were no toll roads needed for the various talking heads to e-meet residents via “teams” from their own dispersed living rooms and offices (the corporate backdrops didn’t quite work). Both private and government employers have already indicated a willingness to consider hybrid work patterns post-COVID. I’ve been working happily for almost a year with people around Australia I have never met. Imagine what we could save if we paused to think, instead of rushing backwards towards more of the same?
An artist’s impression of the Beaches Link entry and exit points at Artarmon.
First, there’s at least $14 billion of taxpayer money. This will pay for a project that will be sold off to a private company that will reap the ongoing profits. Most of Sydney’s existing user-pay toll road network is owned by the giant toll road operator Transurban, which is also expected to snap up the remaining public share of the contentious WestConnex project.
Any future bidder’s appetite for acquiring Beaches Link will depend, of course, on ensuring lots of private cars and trucks are using it. And in the Seaforth/Balgowlah construction area, a surprise “new timetable” slashed bus services just before Christmas, despite COVID-safe, masked protests in the normally genteel Seaforth streets. This hit to public transport coincided with the release of the Beaches Link environmental impact statement. Bus reductions are already forcing those who need or choose to go into CBD offices back into their cars, presumably boosting the traffic modelling used to justify the Beaches Link.
