COMPULSORY ACQUISITIONS - UNFAIR TO START WITH AND ' A SUCK EGGS' COMPENSATION A KICK IN THE GUTS
Residents affected by compulsory acquisitions are being offered below-market prices for their homes and businesses, which has caused additional and completely unnecessary distress and trauma for the owners. I find it disturbing that the NSW Government was warned three years ago that the compulsory acquisition process was unfair to those whose properties were being forcibly taken, yet has both failed to make the changes recommended and actively suppressed the report that handed down these findings.
Just another reason to object to the westconnex

ENVIRONMENTAL VANDALISM
Residents in south west Sydney will suffer a huge loss of amenity as a result of the existing M5 being stripped of its green space and vegetation, particularly when residents fought so hard to get these green spaces established and thriving. I also strongly object to their concrete noise walls being replaced with transparent barriers. These will be right next to hundreds of homes, who will now be forced to look at (as well as listen to and breathe the fumes of) lanes of motorway traffic just over their fences. It is utterly unacceptable to prioritise the views of passing motorists over the privacy and amenity of people who live in an area.
Just another reason to object to the westconnex

I object to Westconnex on the grounds that there is no government objective to promote and encourage alternate forms of transport other than the private motor car - whether that be public transport or cycling.

This is a yawning omission from policies about meeting Sydney's growth challenges.

Sydney's future transport needs - particularly in densely population inner city areas - should not be met with roads.

How many light rails routes could be built with the cost of the M5 east?

The proposed M5 is not a good solution to Sydney transport as it will devastate the local environment and community while creating a massive scar in the heart of vibrant suburbs. Cars create so much pollution and use fossil fuels so everything should be planned towards reducing our dependency on them. Sydney Park provides a precious green space for many Sydney-siders; it is an oasis of trees, fresh air and water which would be severely degraded by the project.The suburban roads around the St Peters Interchange and beyond will become congested and the amenity for residents, schools, businesses and visitors will be severely reduced.
Public transport is always a better option than private cars as a large population needs a clean and efficient system which massive road systems do not provide. The huge expense of WestConnex cannot be justified and this money would be better spent on public transport which is a much more efficient option for everyone: workers, students, the elderly, and the disabled.
The whole Westconnex project is a very poorly argued development proposal with each section overly dependent on another. The current proposal is grandiose and unviable; not only will it not provide a suitable traffic solution but will ruin the quality of life and health of so many residents of Sydney. It will create an unjustifiable impact on air quality for a large area of Sydney. This is not a smart or safe strategy of transport for the community when the negative impacts will far outweigh any benefits. I strongly object to the unacceptable impact the project's construction will have on local residents, businesses and schools.

To the Director, Major Planning Assessments, Department of Planning

I write to express my strong objection to the WestConnex New M5 motorway proposal.

Global experience of major toll road construction has demonstrated conclusively that these projects are enormously expensive and counter-productive. WestConnex will increase air pollution and encourage more car use, quickly filling the increased road capacity. It is not a long-term solution to Sydney's congestion problem.

The fact that the State Government has already signed multi-billion dollar contracts for WestConnex before this EIS was even placed on public exhibition undermines community confidence that this is a genuine consultation process.

This EIS considers benefits for all stages of the project but doesn't address the negative impacts along the whole route.

I object to this proposal because:
1) The New M5 will have devastating impacts on the inner west local communities and local amenities.
2) The New M5 will be a massive contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, while destroying important habitat and greenspace.
3) WestConnex and the New M5 is a financial black hole that won't solve Sydney's traffic congestion.
4) The WestConnex project including the New M5 lacks transparency and accountability.
5) The WestConnex project comes with no real evaluation of alternative options such as world class public transport.

INCORRECT THINKING
Traffic on the existing M5 East exceeded capacity "within months" of opening (New M5 Project Overview, November 2015), including recent road widening. This lack of capacity is, in part, the rationale for the construction of the New M5. Managing demand on the M5 East and providing high quality public transport alternatives for those who can change mode would be a more effective long term solution that simply a `predict and provide' approach, yet this alternative - along with many others - has not been assessed.
ANother reason to object to the westconnex

WESTCONNEX MAKES NO SENSE
WestConnex is presented as a `transformational' infrastructure project, however, the EIS is not clear on what transformation it will achieve. There is no demonstration that WestConnex delivers transformation in terms of social or economic improvement, or better land use outcomes. To the contrary, WestConnex will deliver a piece of infrastructure that increases traffic on local roads, does not enable value capture or urban renewal, and is not consistent with the government's land use priorities or the proposal in the 2012 State Infrastructure Strategy.
Just many more reasons to object to the westconnex

The EIS for Stage 2 (New M5) of the Westconnex makes a completely inadequate account of the environmental impacts of this most ill-considered proposal.

The stated purpose for Westconnex is to provide a solution to improve access to Sydney Airport and the Botany Bay port. The EIS should compare the environmental impact of Westconnex compared to alternative solutions to solve these pressing needs, and to improving traffic flows on the M5 and M4 which seem to have taken over as the publicly stated objectives for the Westconnex.

That would require comparing the Westconnex to a combination of heavy and light rail as a solution. Not only would these provide a much cheaper solution, they would also have much less detrimental impact on the environment compared to ramping up car use by building a mega freeway through Sydney's inner suburbs. No other modern city in the world would contemplate doing this project in this day and age, for the reasons I outline below.

The EIS makes a completely inadequate account of the green house gas impact of the new freeway. Increasing green house gasses by 27% is complete madness. Australia should be doing everything possible to reduce emissions, including by opting for transport solutions which have low emissions compared to roadways. The modeling of the green house gas emissions for the Westconnex also ignores induced travel, which goes against the established economic modelling for similar roadways in modern first world cities around the world. Simple supply and demand will ensure that the meager time savings promised by Westconnex will be offset by people opting to take advantage of those savings by increasing their car use, until such time as the present levels of congestion are reached.

The Westconnex will also significantly increase congestion, noise and air polution along the entire route of the roadways and particularly in my local area. Local roads are already very congested at peak times. These include King Street, the Princes Highway, Mitchell Road, Burke Street, O'Riorden Street and many others. Pumping an additional 70,000 cars into these areas at a time when the local communities are also growing due to large scale new new apartment developments will choke these neighborhoods with traffic, noise and air pollution. The negative health impacts, particularly for children, of living near major freeways is well established. My local area is full of families with young children. If the Westconnex is built these families will have to decide whether to subject their kids to a decade of construction noise, dust and air-pollution and then live in a neighborhood dominated by vehicle traffic and the particulate and carcinogen exposure that the car exhaust will bring.

The impact on Sydney Park is completely dismaying. My wife and I take our very young kids to Sydney Park most weekends as it is the only large nature-space in our area. I had previously looked forward to my kids being able to free-play in the forested areas of the park and the new wetlands, much as I had done growing up near the now largely disappeared patches of urban bush in suburban Sydney in the 70's and 80s. This is a type of play that a whole generation of kids has missed out on. Councils like Sydney Council now recognise that all people and especially kids need access to nature. To take a chunk out of the only nature-space the thousands of kids in our area have and build an LA style spaghetti freeway junction where trees and ponds used to be, next to where kids play and families go to reconnect with nature and friends, is simply disgusting and betrays the disdain (and in some cases, hatred) that the proponents of the Westconnex seem to have for inner city families. Should the Westconnex be built I would no more encourage or even permit my children to go on their own to Sydney Park to play than I would take to play next to the M5 or M4. I feel the same way about the patches of bush in inner southern Sydney that will be destroyed by the M5 expansion.

The EIS pays scant attention to these issues. It reads as one would expect a report to read if were prepared by a company with significant clients in the fossil fuel and roadways industries and who earns significant local revenues from State Government contracts. A project costing $17 billion and much more should the inner west tunnel be built, and which is intended to solve Sydney's (real) congestion problems, deserved an EIS prepared by completely independent experts. It deserved a proper business case. Both should have weighed up alternatives such as heavy and light rail. Both should have been based on best practice solutions for building sustainable modern, high tech cities.

Instead, the EIS, like the broader proposal, represents the pinnacle of everything that has been wrong with governance in NSW for the last 30 years.

Drop this mad proposal. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something intelligent, effective and way less expensive and polluting. Sydney deserves it and my community will not stand for anything less.

EIS - LACKS RIGOUR
The EIS lacks rigour and sound analysis, despite the huge volume of documentation. This lack of rigour and analysis is consistent across all chapters and appendices. The project objectives are biased towards a motorway solution, so that any proposed alternative falls short of the proposed solution. Similarly, the work undertaken in the EIS is highly compliance driven, and fails to take into account opportunities or strategic impacts, and the assessment of cumulative impacts is almost negligent.
Just many more reasons to object to the westconnex (no integrity)

MONEY BETTER SPENT
WestConnex comes at not only a huge cost that is blowing out at the rate of over $2 billion a year. It also comes with a massive opportunity cost. The $16.8 billion and rising that would be spent on WestConnex is money that would be taken away from hospitals, schools, regional roads, and the public transport improvements that are urgently needed - not just in western Sydney, but many parts of regional NSW. If this $16.8 billion was spent on public transport and effective road management, a project like WestConnex would not be necessary.
Just many more reasons to object to the westconnex