Johnston Street, Annandale Truck Route
Pyrmont Bridge/Parramatta Road Dive Site Annandale (formerly Camperdown)
Promoting Annandale on the Internet since 1998
Johnston Street, Annandale Truck Route
Pyrmont Bridge/Parramatta Road Dive Site Annandale (formerly Camperdown)
7-8.30pm Wednesday 30 May 2018
Annandale Community Centre
79 Johnston Street Annandale
This Petition brings to the attention of the Government of NSW the risk of proceeding with the $17 billion WestConnex toll road when the community consultation process has been inadequate; transport planners and financial analysts alike increasingly condemn the project as incapable of addressing Sydney's transport problems; and Australian and international research indicates WestConnex will fail to deliver the benefits or revenues promised.sign the petition
The construction of the 'dive' site at Camperdown will see the movement of over 110 heavy trucks EVERY day up Johnston Street Annandale.
These trucks will produce deadly amounts of diesel particulates polluting 3 schools, 2 pre-schools, 2 aged care homes + hundreds of small business & residents...sign the petition
27 April 2018: NSW Government Approves Westconnex Stage 3 - Trucks and Construction Site coming to Annandale: Double B Trucks heading for Annandale
There are dangerous toxic industrial by-products lying at the bottom of Sydney Harbour that could be disturbed if a plan to build another underwater tunnel is approved...more
The EIS, final project costings and various toll options are expected to be released for community consultation later this year.
Prepared for NSW Roads and Maritime Services, the document reveals a casting plant will be built on wharves at White Bay to fabricate the large concrete sections used in the undersea tunnels.
A noise-modelling map shows the suburbs of Balmain, Pyrmont and Rozelle face "noticeable" impact from the casting plant...more
White Bay in Sydney's inner west and parks on the north shore have been earmarked as potential construction sites for a $14 billion road tunnel project, which will require the disposal of more than 500,000 cubic metres of contaminated sediment...more
Inner West Council Meeting Agenda 14 March 2018:Glebe Island Multi-User Facility - Review of Environmental Factors, Council's submission to Port Authority of NSW Applicant's computer-generated images of proposal..more
Statement from artist Merrick Fry
Seven of these trucks an hour - Mon-Fri and Sat morning heading for the Crescent and Johnston Street
Resident Johnston Street Annandale.
22 February 2018
We’ve heard about tollway tunnelling under our houses – the acquisitions, vibrations, cracking. But residents, business owners and every friend of Annandale, needs to know this is just the beginning.
Have you heard about our state government’s new plans for Glebe Island, White Bay and James Craig Road?
To just remove the tunnel spoil from the dive site, 80 trucks on weekdays (fewer Saturday) will exit James Craig Road and lumber up Johnston Street to Parramatta Road, en route to the site in Camperdown. After loading they will drive west on Parramatta Road to destinations unknown, before returning empty to White Bay. More vehicle movements will supply workers, equipment and building materials to the dive site.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of all these individual projects, the price to be paid by communities from this tsunami of road, metro building and urban consolidation cannot be underestimated. All of us living and working in the Inner West have measured it in the levels of black soot and dust deposited on cars and window ledges in the last few years. The cumulative impacts from these four new projects will add significantly to this existing pollution burden in Pyrmont, Balmain, Rozelle, Annandale, Camperdown and Glebe - and not just for a period of temporary inconvenience but for years to come.
During the construction of the M4-M5 Link our suburbs can expect a major increase in dust, combustion emissions, noise, road congestion and safety issues from heavy vehicles ferrying equipment, personnel, building materials and spoil. But many experts say that when the new toll roads are operating, years from now, the trucks will simply be replaced by even more cars surfacing from tunnels to find their final destinations. In addition to the emissions from this new traffic on our streets we will receive tonnes of vehicle exhaust pollution collected in kilometres of underground tunnels and spewed from unfiltered chimney stacks in Rozelle.
Around Johnston Street Annandale, residents, business owners and patrons of cafes, shops, pubs, bus stops, schools, childcare centres, music venues, churches and nursing homes already find themselves besieged on land by cars and trucks and from the air by planes on landing approach. Now we must also accept the consequences of hundreds of additional daily truck movements at all hours, multiplying the negative effects on our health and amenity. If something doesn’t change, these impacts will become the new normal in our lifetimes.
WestConnex is, above all, about politics and money. Journalist Michael West observes that, while WestConnex is indeed an engineering feat of supreme ambition, the real ambition is to make lots of money and retain political office. The government is so desperate to clear the decks for the state election in March 2018 by selling off the entire project by July 2018, it is paying investment bank Goldman Sachs $16.5 million to tell it how to go about it.
But WestConnex is a minefield of financial, engineering and political contradictions.
The official cost has blown out from $10 billion in 2013 to $16.8 billion in 2016. Macquarie Bank reportedly estimates it is now $18 billion. The underground Rozelle interchange is so complicated and difficult to build that the government attracted just one tender response which was rejected as inadequate. Ultimately, a buyer consortium made up of companies like toll-road gorilla Transurban, backed by big superannuation funds from Australia and overseas, is going to inherit those financial, engineering and social dilemmas, along with some very thorny political problems. If the asset owners aren’t too bothered about alienating large sections of the Inner West by ruining their living conditions, they will be worried about pushback from their future customers - the commuters of western Sydney - who are highly unimpressed about what it will cost to use these privatised tollways.
Something has to give, but what is anyone’s guess. Will changes to current plans be better for the Inner West, or worse? The answer depends very much on whether affected communities have a seat at the table and whether their voice is clearly given and heard. But we can be sure about one thing: WestConnex is evolving - constantly.
This is the big question. There are so many areas that need to be improved: from fair compensation for resumption of property and damage caused by tunnelling, to ensuring that WestConnex contractors adhere to current Australian health and safety standards.
Early in February 2017 police swooped on a WestConnex trucking contractor allegedly owned by an associate of a motorcycle gang. Defects in the three trucks examined included bald tyres, faulty brakes and a ‘wound up’ speed limiter. Police said members of motorcycle gangs had been behind the wheels of a number of speeding WestConnex spoil trucks they had pulled over.
Later that month a WestConnex truck loaded with spoil crashed on the M7, trapping one person in a car and injuring four. This incident prompted police to conduct a major safety blitz on trucks sub-contracted to deliver spoil from WestConnex construction sites. Police said that in two days they found 33 truck and trailer defects and issued 22 infringements for faults including cracked couplings, bald tyres and dodgy brakes.
In December 2017 it was revealed NSW truck deaths increased by more than 86 per cent in 12 months, as police report increased heavy vehicle traffic connected to major construction projects.
NSW Police, NSW Roads and Maritime Services, the Australian Trucking Association and the Transport Workers Union have all expressed concern about truck safety in NSW and trucks working on WestConnex get a special mention.
Industry magazine, OwnerDriver, reports that Brett Patterson, statewide operations manager with NSW Roads and Maritime Services, told the trucking industry’s 2016 Technical and Maintenance Conference in Melbourne the Sydney construction boom has seen retired highway prime movers refitted as tip trucks with trailers: "... they have done a million miles-plus and then (the operators) put on a tipper body".
Over the course of 22 compliance operations run by RMS and Police, more than one third were found to have non-compliant speed limiters; 6 per cent received a mass breach; 4 per cent had a major defect; and one quarter were issued with some type of offence. Patterson concluded that "looking at the truck and [trailer] sector, there’s a high rate of non-compliance." If old clunkers with all kinds of defects are hauling spoil for WestConnex we can be quite sure they don’t comply with the latest emission standards either.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Moreland City Council has committed to have emissions free garbage trucks running on hydrogen by 2020. Any project, government or private, in a busy and crowded city on a main road close to schools, four childcare centres and a major hospital precinct, should at least meet the highest mandated Australian safety and pollution standards in 2018.
No single individual, street, village or campaigning group can unwind WestConnex or urban consolidation, but as a whole we can influence the way it proceeds and moderate its impacts on communities. Some believe it unlikely the M4-M5 Link will go ahead - for reasons of cost and complexity more than politics. But whether it does or doesn’t proceed, we will have to deal with the legacy of old plans and new and the possibility of consequences yet to be understood.
In the newly elected Inner West Council we are lucky to have a responsive body of councillors and council staff committed to representing the interests of residents across much of the affected area. Inner West Council has formed a WestConnex unit with four staff under the Group Manager of Strategic Planning and they represent us in the formal planning process by sharing information as it comes to hand and responding to development proposals on behalf of ratepayers. They are ideally placed to keep across what is going on, keep us informed, take note of our concerns and advocate in our common interest. And the City of Sydney Council is doing the same for neighbours in Glebe, Camperdown and Newtown.
But they can’t do their job unless, as residents, we do ours. We need to engage with Council, ask them to keep us up-to-date as events unfold and make sure they know our views. Together, those who know the Inner West best – residents and their elected representatives in Council - need to make it clear to the state government and toll road owners that we are going to have a say about the conditions we live under.
Contact Inner West Council Westconnex Unit staff and councillors with your concerns.
Annandale Community Centre
Wednesday 14 March 2018, 7pm
79 Johnston Street, Annandale
Hosted by Councillor Marghanita da Cruz
Notes:1.Use of Johnson Street and James Craig Road by construction vehicles was not proposed in the EIS.
2.Heavy vehicles / hour on Johnston Street are one-way, as trucks would travel in the southbound direction only.
"The White Bay civil site would be used 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, use of the site overnight by heavy vehicles would be limited. It is anticipated that the peak hours of operations for heavy vehicle movements would be at the commencement of the day and evening shifts during tunnelling excavation works (anticipated to be between 5.00 am to 9.00 am and 5.00 pm to 9.00 pm)." - p5 M4-M5 RtS_Part D Preferred Infrastructure Report, M4-M5 Link Submissions and preferred infrastructure report https://majorprojects.accelo.com/public/a0ecb444108248cca6aa537f66a72141/11.%20M4-M5%20RtS_Part%20D%20Preferred%20Infrastructure%20Report.pdf
Table D2-6 indicates that there will be:
"Pyrmont Bridge Road tunnel site (C9) Access from White Bay civil site to James Craig Road then The Crescent, Johnston Street and eastbound along Parramatta Road. Egress is via Pyrmont Bridge Road and Parramatta Road (westbound).The spoil haulage route as presented in the EIS for this site would be used." p20 M4-M5 RtS_Part D Preferred Infrastructure Report https://majorprojects.accelo.com/public/a0ecb444108248cca6aa537f66a72141/11.%20M4-M5%20RtS_Part%20D%20Preferred%20Infrastructure%20Report.pdf
Inner West Council will be responding to the response to Westconnex's 400 page response to council's 300 page submission to the M4-M5 EIS and the Preferred Infrastructure Report (PIR).
The response from Westconnex to all 13,000 submissions + the PIR is currently being assessed by the department of planning who wil make a recommendation to the minister.
Community Members can contact Inner West Council staff and councillors to make their views on the proposal clear and incorporated into the response to the Department of Planning. But we can also write to our MPs and Ministers.
The Project is currently being assessed by Department of Planning - see submissions, response to submissions including Preferred Infrastructure Report - this will then go to the minister for signoff. More at: http://majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au/index.pl?action=view_job&job_id=7485
Inner West Council's westconnex page includes how to contact the westconnex unit and about the WestConnex Community Liaison Forum (which people from Haberfield and St Peters are very active on) https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/.../hot-topics/westconnex
See indicative spoil route through Annandale Westconnex-M4-M5Link-proposed-truck-route-feb2018.jpg. Source: From Appendix A of Westconnex M4-M5 Link Proponent's response to Submissions and Preferred Infrastructure Report, viewed 19 Feb 2018 https://majorprojects.accelo.com/public/b48c92722adff9df41651b01a5184d3a/13.%20M4-M5%20RtS_AppA%20Traffic%20IA.pdfhttps://www.portauthoritynsw.com.au/projects-and-planning/projects/glebe-island-multi-user-facility/
http://www.altmedia.net.au/concrete-outcome-in-glebe/129702 http://www.handsoffglebe.org/2017/08/community-masterplan-for-the-market-district-of-the-bays-precinct/
Exec Summary: https://majorprojects.accelo.com/public/3fb905c2968162553e59882d1deefbb1/01.%20M4-M5%20RtS_I_Executive%20summary.pdf
Traffic Information: https://majorprojects.accelo.com/public/b48c92722adff9df41651b01a5184d3a/13.%20M4-M5%20RtS_AppA%20Traffic%20IA.pdf
The air quality in the the City and Inner West could be far worse than the data shows and could explain why the Rozelle Air Quality measuring station needs upgrading...eco-sydney/air-pollution.shtml">more
This page www.ramin.com.au/annandale/The-trucks-that-ate-Annandale.shtml © Ramin Communications 2018. Last update 14 May 2018