Make your submission of objection to the F6 Extension EIS

image of Make your submission of objection to the F6 Extension EIS

Sydney residents need more and better public transport before this city grinds to a halt in traffic congestion.The F6 Extension is an unsustainable plan from the 1950s. Many contemporary cities are pulling down their inner-city motorways replacing them with more effective active and public transport solutions. We call on the Department of Planning to reject the F6 EIS and pave the way to promote more efficient and sustainable public tranport options.

Sydney residents need more and better public transport before this city grinds to a halt in traffic congestion.The F6 Extension is an unsustainable plan from the 1950s. Many contemporary cities are pulling down their inner-city motorways replacing them with more effective active and public transport solutions. We call on the Department of Planning to reject the F6 EIS and pave the way to promote more efficient and sustainable public tranport options.

Make your submission objecting to the F6 Extension Stage 1 EIS

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Attn: Secretary, re: F6 Extension Stage 1 New M5 Arncliffe to President Avenue, Kogarah, project number SSI 17_8931

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I object to the 35-day time frame granted to communities to analyse the substantial EIS. If the Government is serious about community consultation this would have been extended to 90 days.
 
I object to 43 years of the tolls. This has been imposed on drivers as income for a private motorway owner, Transurban. The fact that the toll is based on distance traveled disadvantages people who live further south and west of the Sydney region.

The public are very aware that levels of in tunnel air pollution will reach very high concentrations; that background levels of air pollution would increase around the stacks and tunnel entry points (portals); and an increase in morbidity can be calculated. On this basis I strongly object to this failure in duty of care for public health, in favour of short-term cost cutting.

I object to the increase in emissions WestConnex, including the F6 extension, will cause, and the worsening of climate change that will result. I fundamentally reject the proponents’ allegation that F6 will improve air quality and reduce emissions. It beggars belief. Building and expanding motorways increases air pollution, as motorways induce traffic. No credible authority in the world today would suggest that building motorways is the solution to cutting national greenhouse emissions.

I object that both the RMS and the tunnel proponents continue to deny the potential in these tunnels to use progressive in-tunnel filtration to alleviate adverse conditions, choosing to misrepresent the costs and the potential benefits of such systems.

I object that unfiltered exhaust stacks and portals are located near children’s schools and sports fields. This is a failure of “duty of care”

I object to the WestConnex F6 Extension as it is instead of public transport improvements that Southern Sydney desperately needs. The F6 extension is purely to feed more toll-paying traffic onto Transurban’s WestConnex.

Public transport is rejected by the EIS, so the state government is forcing us to use cars more when most major cities in the world are trying to reduce the number of cars on the roads. We know this is to promote private road operators' profits. I object to putting so much public funding to the cause of private profit. I ask that this project be refused approval by the Secretary of Planning.

I object to the F6 extension. Building new roads is not the best way to deal with congestion in Australia’s biggest cities. The standard response to addressing urban mobility issues has been to increase road infrastructure. Unfortunately, this creates a vicious circle: more roads encourage urban sprawl, which increases the use of motorcars. Adding roads is not necessarily the solution for the urban mobility challenges of today.

Building motorways within cities is out of step and out of date with contemporary travel patterns which ignores Inter-generational changes in vehicle ownership, driver licensing and transport preferences.  The WestConnex and F6 is a concept from the 1950's, already outdated and represents a significant waste of public funds. I therefore object to the F6 extension.

Scientific consensus is that high-emissions fossil fuel dependence is not sustainable and will inevitably lead to serious social, environmental and economic problems. The Australian transport sector does not rank well on efficiency and this carries significant costs. In Australia, rail transport has an important role to play when travelling longer distances and for certain types of freight.

It is appalling that every homeowner across the WestConnex route is at the personal financial risk of having to repair their own properties.

Already there are families reporting damage caused by WestConnex construction. The RMS ‘mitigate’ by blaming “settlement” for the significant cracking now found in these homes and place the onus of proof back to the homeowner. Although this action is unconscionable, the RMS then conceal detailed documents as requested by homeowners independent engineers. The RMS have a track record for failing to “make good” the damage they have caused and the Department of Planning are powerless to enforce compliance. Given that the F6 EIS states some land subsidence from tunneling is expected causing tensile strain in the masonry on nearby homes, I must object to infrastructure projects that fail to protect homeowners from unconscionable behaviour of the proponent.

I object that the impact of up to 40% of the existing M5 traffic is predicted to rat-run due to toll avoidance has not been included in the traffic modelling of the F6.

The travel time “savings” of the F6 are underwhelming and short-lived. The social and environmental impacts described in the EIS are unacceptable and far outweigh any benefits of the project. Because of flaws in the modelling, the actual impacts are likely to be even greater than those forecast.

The project will reduce social and visual amenity due to the concrete pollution stacks will be visually obtrusive. The increased traffic volumes on surface roads will result in lower amenity with more noise pollution, more fear and intimidation, increased crash risk etc. The increase in exhaust emissions from tunnel portals, pollution stacks and surface roads will result in increased smog and reduced visibility and air quality.

Residents exposed to years of 24/7 high impact construction noise are denied, what had been previously committed in the EIS, in-house noise attenuation as such noise is deemed “temporary”. Four years of noisy construction cannot be regarded as “temporary”.

Whole communities are being disastrously impacted by this project. The social impact study should be rejected, as it ignores well established evidence of the significant negative impacts on people and the loss of community identity and social connections. It is good access to public transport that supports community health in two ways: by encouraging walking and by reducing dependence on driving.  Each hour spent driving can increase a person’s risk of obesity by around 6%. Cars are also a major source of urban air pollution and noise, which are harmful to mental and physical health.

Walkability is an important factor in livability because it promotes active forms of transport. Increasingly physically inactive and sedentary lifestyles are a global health problem, and contribute to around 3.2 million preventable deaths a year. In Australia, 60% of adults and 70% of children and adolescents do not get enough exercise.

Thrusting toll-roads with unfiltered exhaust stacks into suburban areas that induces more traffic is not a contemporary urban plan. On this basis I reject the F6 in favour of investment in public transport. 
	
We need more and better public transport to keep Sydney moving.

I ask the Secretary of Planning to refuse approval for this project.

Declaration: I HAVE NOT made any reportable political donations in the last 2 years.

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