Ten thousand people will move into a mammoth new residential development stretching from Minmi to Edgeworth, and the state government and councils think the roads will cope with a bit of nip-and-tuck.
So the plan is for just a new set of traffic lights here, a roundabout there, and, on a couple of roads, a slap of paint for new lane markings. Heaven forbid that the authorities should actually construct new major roads for this surge in population and to prepare for more people later.
From Minmi to Fletcher, Maryland and Wallsend, people already complain about inadequate road access. We should be properly fixing their problems, preparing to meet demand from Winten Property Group's impending 3300-dwelling development, and future-proofing the network by providing for later urban expansion.
This should not be hard, because the opening of land around Minmi means that, for a lot of the necessary improvements, we'd be working on a blank canvas (though, it must be admitted, not a very flat one).
But, as things stand, the only good news is that Newcastle council wants to widen 750 metres of Minmi Road alongside Maryland. It can do that easily because decades ago, when Newcastle had serious road planning, officials kept the Minmi Road corridor wide enough for adding a second carriageway later.
Apart from that widening, the population expansion in the Minmi area will be met with just nips and tucks. The planning department this week blocked another 180-home development there, but that action will barely alleviate future demand for road travel.
So, what plan should the state and Newcastle and Lake Macquarie councils adopt and set in stone before the long-running Winten proposal is locked in?
Let's start at Minmi. Increased traffic from new subdivisions shouldn't be pouring through the middle of the old village along narrow Woodford Street, as proposed. Instead, the state should buy land from Winten to build a Minmi bypass, or at least to create a reservation for one.
Such a bypass will be even more necessary if more land is opened for housing north of Minmi, in Lenaghan and Black Hill. There's no plan for such development, but anyone can see that the pressure will be there. Future-proofing is itself enough reason for getting the roads around Minmi in good shape now.
Next, the western end of Minmi Road is far too bendy. It would be a most picturesque route in the mountains of Italy, but here we just need a good, fast urban connection. So it should be straightened. In places, that means running it through what are now nature reserves, which could be replaced by ripping up the old road and by buying more park land from Winten.
Another reason for realignment is that Newcastle council has stupidly allowed construction of houses that face Minmi Road at Fletcher, inhibiting its use as an arterial link.
Further east, Minmi Road's corridor is isolated from houses (another gift from the wise old planners) and has that generous width for further widening. Altogether, we can and should provide an isolated, 80kmh, dual-carriageway link between soon-to-be-booming Minmi and Wallsend.
That link would include Longworth Avenue, where the council thinks it is responding to demand by planning to paint four lanes on the current single carriageway without widening. That's a typical, cheap nip-and-tuck. Vehicles will run right alongside the footpaths, unpleasantly close to properties, and there'll be no turning lanes.
For goodness sake, do it properly: resume land on Longworth Avenue to create the dual-carriageway road that's obviously needed. If we can't afford to build it immediately, then at least put reservations on the properties.
Longworth Avenue feeds into Newcastle Road, which is already overburdened. It can be unburdened by building the Wallsend-Mayfield Arterial, the brilliant 7km route that would connect Newcastle Link Road with Industrial Drive at Mayfield West. As I've written before, its corridor is open and waiting to go, but the state and Newcastle council have no interest.
A lot of the traffic from the Winten development will go onto the link road, which is already full and due for upgrading. Transport for NSW has two choices. It can widen the road from four to six lanes, or it can keep only four lanes but greatly increase their capacity with a motorway upgrade.
Extra lanes would be cheaper than interchanges, but a motorway upgrade would also create better driving conditions. That's what we should get.
Then there's the other Minmi Road, the one at Edgeworth that will provide the main southern connection for the Winten development. It's just a standard-width street, with 20 metres between property lines. The plan is to give it the same, cheap treatment as Longworth Avenue. Instead, the state, or Lake Macquarie council with state funding, should do the job properly, resuming land to widen the road to dual carriageways.
Even if the Edgeworth nip-and tuck will do for now, it won't later. The population around the northern end of the lake and down its western side will only expand. As it does so, traffic between those places and the Minmi area will grow.
A final point is that one of our Minmi Roads needs to be renamed. People in the new residential area will use both and won't want to say, for example, "I'll go by the Fletcher-Maryland Minmi Road, not the Edgeworth Minmi Road."
Maybe we can turn this to advantage, to persuade Transport Minister Jo Haylen to pay for such works as the straightening of the bendy Minmi Road. We could promise to rename it "Haylen Boulevard" in her honour. Or maybe we could go the full North Korea and call it "The Boulevard of the Great and Glorious Transport Minister and Beloved Benefactor of Minmi Who Never Begrudged Newcastle a Cent Jo Haylen".
If, on the other hand, she won't stump up the money, we can rename it "Haylen Chicanes".
