Talk:County of Cumberland planning scheme

Merge candidate

The following text was removed from WestConnex. It is probably a candidate for merging into this article. Regards, Ben Aveling 03:34, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The original structure of suburban Sydney resembled a starfish, with residential development restricted to the relatively narrow corridors around railway and tram lines. Employment was highly centralised, with factories and warehouses located in inner-city suburbs such as Marrickville and Pyrmont, close to the convergence of the state's long-distance railway lines, as well as the docks of Sydney Harbour.

By the end of World War II however, it had become clear that motor vehicles would play an increasingly significant role in the city's development. The road-building plan that emerged as part of the 1948 Cumberland County Plan effectively replicated the railways' and tramways' focus on moving travellers from the outer suburbs to and from the central business district (CBD). The Cumberland Plan's radial motorway network was never realised in full, but by identifying the corridors for the new roads in advance, the planners successfully reduced future construction costs, at least outside of the high-density urban core.

Construction proceeded slowly, with Sydney's first controlled-access highway, the Cahill Expressway, opening 10 years later. The pace had accelerated by the late 1960s, with isolated sections of the proposed Warringah, Newcastle, North Western, Western and Southern freeways open to traffic by 1971.

The M4 Western Motorway outside of Parramatta. This section of the road will be widened as part of the WestConnex scheme.

Soon after, the relevance of the (by now defunct) County Council's plan came under sustained pressure from major social and economic shifts. An increasing number of commuters were now travelling from dwellings in one suburb to workplaces in another, avoiding the CBD altogether, as manufacturers moved to less constrained greenfield sites in the suburbs. At the same time, large-scale suburban malls drew shoppers away from the CBD and local corner shops; knowledge industries took root in spacious suburban campus-style developments; and Sydney Harbour and Central Station progressively lost freight and passengers to Port Botany and Sydney Airport.

Motorways themselves also came under attack, with the Green Bans movement and others campaigning against completion of the North Western, Warringah and Eastern freeways. After narrowly winning the 1976 election and facing a deteriorating budget situation, the Australian Labor Party under Neville Wran capitalised on this antipathy by withdrawing funding from a range of contentious transport infrastructure projects. Work was allowed to continue outside the inner city, however, with the Newcastle, Southern and Western freeways continuing to grow through the Wran years.

Responding to the city's evolution, the then Department of Main Roads revised its thinking about the motorway network, with the Government releasing the landmark Roads 2000 report in 1987. The centrepiece of the plan was an 'orbital' motorway to improve cross-suburban journey, while completing the missing east-west links north and south of the harbour. The orbital took 20 years to complete.

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