Expressway rips through Blue Mountains
One by one, roadside vegetation, roadside communities, and villages through the Blue Mountains are capitulating to the New South Wales Government’s agency, the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA). One diesel-driven programme to convert a regional highway into a dangerously fast heavy trucking expressway.
The RTA is an ‘authority’ alright – a testament to when absolute authority is allowed to overrule local values at any cost.
Leura, Blue Mountains, Australia, 22nd Dec 2006)
(click photo to enlarge)
.
RTA rainfall retention gross failure, Leura 30th June 2005
(click photo to enlarge)
.
Trees hacked to make way for the RTA expressway, 4th February 2007
(click photo to enlarge)
.
RTA construction sediment down the drain and into Blue Mountains World Heritage creeks, 16th January 2006
(click photo to enlarge)
Tags: b-doubles, Great Western Highway development, Leura, Roads and Traffic Authority, RTA Blue Mountains, RTA road widening
I built for peaceful retirement some years ago, along the Blue Mountains Gt Western Highway, past Mt Victoria Inns, P.O.,traffic lights, on the left, ahead of Victoria Pass.
A few other retirees wanted to build quietly here on their lots but are victimised -and here I quote from your page heading -because: “Expressway rips through Blue Mountains” plus -“diesel-driven programme to convert a regional highway into a dangerously fast heavy trucking express way”.
“Diesel-driven” seems apt in that around 2003.
An artists impression frontispiece of the Blue Mt’s Gazette falsely depicted the then future Caltex Servo as a picturesque French-style cafe outdoor setting, with flowers and shrubs, dining tables shielded by colourful ‘continental’ umbrellas’ – no room for locals to draw petrol hardly, let alone “diesel-driven” invasion to our peaceful Village.
It wasn’t long before huge diesel tanks were gouged out and finally truckies stormed in. With only a relatively few Caltex parking spaces, they were bound -ever since, to park outside residences both sides of G.W H’way, 24/7, driving us sick to death, year in year out.
B.M.Gazette refers to “Blitzkrieg”,Unofficial Truck Parking”, “Sleeplessness”, “Pollution“, etc. What a con from bad Council Planning and as you say “Capitulating to the New South Wales Government Agency -the Road Traffic Authority (RTA) – allowed to overrule local values at any cost”.
PLEASE ADVOCATE FOR US.
Historic Mt Victoria, rises to over 1,100 metres ASL and is where Australia’s early explorers crossed The Great Dividing Range by foot and bullock cart. Much gory and ghostly struggle is written here, along and around the many pioneers paths. Early settlers would turn in their graves at thought of “diesel driven project/destructive diesel expressway” here, whereas present day communities along the highway see themselves as destroyed slowly.
The ‘Dangerous Expressway rips through Blue Mountains’ with its consequences for communities and wildlife. The worst blight for Mt Victoria is the Service Station attracting Parking Trucks pollution around the clock 24/7 and the diesel smear in our kitchens, in our bathrooms and in our lungs.
Henry Lawson, an old time Aussie Poet it’s said, used to live here -some say just up from the currently wickedly sited service station. One wonders what he might have written about the haste to destruction.