I helped a mate recently, riding shotgun in his light truck on a mid-morning run down the M1 to Sydney. His truck has seen better days. It was fully loaded. But the sun was shining, the traffic seemed light, we pressed ahead, what could go wrong?
The answer came at Ourimbah with our first climb. Trucks only in left lanes say the road signs, as if our chugger was capable of overtaking anything when confronted with an incline. Rather, our vehicle shifted rapidly down its gears - I didn't know trucks came in automatics - and we joined a slow procession of heavy vehicles up the hill.
Thereby, I learned how congested the M1 becomes for trucks in particular places, Ourimbah to Somersby, Mooney Mooney, Hawkesbury to Kuring-Gai. There isn't a lot of space to share as B-doubles, bulk carriers, semi-trailers and tankers haul their loads upwards. Driver skill is astonishing, all that tonnage to be kept moving, a vehicle ahead coming closer, vehicles alongside and behind shuffling for positions. My mate's knuckles were white, my silent curiosity no help whatsoever.
Freight and roads are inseparable and will remain bedfellows into the future. We pack freight onto our roads, while the promise of a rail alternative is unfulfilled. The freight task in NSW is scary. Figures from Infrastructure Australia say freight levels on NSW roads have grown by 87 per cent since 2001. Growth comes mainly from interstate freight truck movements, between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, not from metropolitan or intra-state movements.
Interstate trucking impacts heavily on the M1 between Newcastle and Sydney, obviously, and the volume of these movements will grow and grow.
A problem for the M1, however, is that lane space on the M1 between Newcastle and Sydney is increasingly contested by local users. Infrastructure Australia's Urban Transport Crowding and Congestion Report (2019, its latest) says the M1 corridor between the Central Coast and Sydney is predicted by 2031 to be Sydney's most congested road, southbound in the morning peak, and northbound in the evening peak. This isn't good news for Hunter residents.
Compounding the problem is the role of the M1 as a regional arterial road for the Central Coast and the Lower Hunter. The NSW government predicts these regions will add 228,000 people in the next 20 years. This converts, at current car ownership rates, to an extra 175,000 cars; which converts, at current usage rates, to an extra 500,000 car journeys a day. The M1 is increasingly a daily service road for these vehicles.
This is a consequence of urban sprawl. New suburbs and motorways are besties. The Hunter Expressway pushes the housing frontier west. The M1 extension from Hexham to Raymond Terrace will push the housing frontier north. Motorways open areas for housing, the population grows, and then there is more traffic.
I noticed from my shotgun perch, how much of the mid-morning truck traffic on the M1 is constructed related: trucks with sand and gravel, pre-fab housing frames, ready-mix concrete and so on. At dawn, tradies rush to building sites up and down the M1. Later they return, joining the queues off the motorways that build with school pick-ups.
What's next? Long-term thinking by Transport NSW conjures an 'Outer Sydney Orbital' linking Wollongong to the Central Coast via Western Sydney Airport and a second Hawkesbury crossing. Route investigations are underway for Stages 1 and 2, linking northwest Sydney to Wollongong. Investigations for stage 3, the piece connecting to the Central Coast, are early days, says Transport NSW.
Staring at a map to plot a motorway route from the Central Coast to the Richmond-Windsor area will send you batty. The barriers - topography, Indigenous cultural sites, native forests, national parks, flooding constraints - look insurmountable. Which leaves the Lower Hunter driving towards growing congestion.
Roads have become our lives. We live with the consequences.
