1995: Sydney's Olympic Road (M4 East)

With the WestConnex now planning to snake its way under Sydney, lets look at one dead scheme that was proposed for the inner west from 1995 as a solution to the traffic gridlock on Parramatta Road.

However it was not going to be a motorway and the road would run above ground through a section of Concord and Five Dock before connecting with the City West Link at Wattle Street, Haberfield. A wise idea to not proceed with it because I think it wouldn't have had any major impact on traffic on Parramatta Road. The bottlenecks would have shifted east along the road into Haberfield and Ashfield. This appears that controlling traffic there would be so challenging as you'd not just manage traffic coming out of the new road but also the City-West Link, Parramatta Road and Frederick Street, Ashfield.

Two alternative routes were considered. One would have included a tunnel under Parramatta Road like the WestConnex Motorway but would have required closure of parts of Parramatta Road or the construction of a viaduct along Parramatta Road.

Source: Larkin, J. 1995. "RTA in push for Olympic road link," The Sunday Telegraph, August 20: 5.