Enclosure

Charlestown Expressway Bypass three and a half times more destructive than necessary.

A Six kilometre slash through urban bushland has just been bull dozed for a bypass around Charlestown in the Newcastle Lake Macquarie area.

The cleared area is three and a half times as wide as required for a normal highway.

The expressway bypass has easements ranging from 100 metres to 200 metres wide for 4 traffic lanes. A generous divided highway could have been accommodated within a thirty metre wide easement and have the 4 traffic lanes as well as 2 parking lanes and 2 footpaths.

If this expressway is extended to the north it will destroy Newcastle's Blackbutt Reserve and Jesmond bushlands and if it is extended to the south it will cut through Jewel's and the Belmont wetlands.

Wide expressway easements need to be removed from the revised Local Environmental Plans before further destruction is allowed to occur.

Doug Lithgow
President Parks and Playgrounds Movement


2 June, 1999

Charlestown Expressway Bypass -Threat to Blackbutt, Glenrock & Jewells Wetlands and the Coastal Zone

Expressway or Highway ? 

A 6km expressway bypass is currently being constructed by the RTA on the western side of Charlestown in the Lake Macquarie Local Government area. Its two years behind schedule and is estimated to cost $75 million dollars when complete in 2001.

Should an expressway have been constructed along this route or should a normal divided highway with less social, environmental and financial cost have been built?

Most people would have thought that question was debated and resolved in favour of the normal highway in those decades following the Blackbutt Expressway debacle which started in August 1966 when the Department of Main Roads at a meeting of the Newcastle Council promoted the concept of a Motorway providing untrammelled conditions linking Bennetts Green with Sandgate.

It was to slice through Blackbutt Reserve and this alerted the community and caused turmoil in the region for more than a decade until the expressway was ultimately rejected in favour of an expressway/ National Highway being constructed on the western side of Lake Macquarie skirting the coastal and urban area.

The F3 National Freeway has now been built to the west of the Lake and connects with the Pacific Highway and the New England Highway north of Newcastle.

However it would appear that the expressway proposals for the coastal side of Lake Macquarie are still Roads & Traffic Authority policy. The 1966 expressway barrier across Newcastle and up the coast is being quietly put in place without serious thought being given to a overview?

Is it a good idea to attract more F3 National highway traffic to the eastern side of the Lake Macquarie through the coastal urban zone?

Will another grab at Blackbutt Reserve, the Jesmond bushlands Jewells Wetlands, Glenrock State Recreation Area and the Belmont coastal wetlands be made in the not too distant future?

Parks and Playgrounds Movement believes that the Charlstown expressway bypass will cause more inconvenience to local motorists and residents and more damage to the environment than would have occurred if a normal divided carriageway road had been built. Furthermore if the expressway is extended to the north it will threaten Blackbutt and if extended south it will threaten the Belmont Wetlands.

The rural styled expressway is more destructive in the urban context because of its width and geometry and provides less access for local traffic than a normal highway.

The Charlestown bypass route is one segment of a roadway planned as part of the Northumberland Country Planning Scheme 1960 and was never intended to be an expressway route.

A divided carriageway road now skirts Blackbutt Reserve and should have been extended through to Windale creating the bypass around the Charlestown Shopping Centre as well as providing access for local people without the social and environmental disruption of the current expressway proposal.

A sensitively designed dual carriageway highway conceived within the overall framework of the road network was really required rather than the isolated expressway proposal currently being built.

The entire route from Sandgate to Jewells should still be considered as a ring road distributor and be part of a lacy network of good roads providing convenience and access for all. Above all heavy bypass traffic should not be attracted from the F3 National Highway in the west to clog up the coastal network.

Every effort should be made now to have the road reservations for the coastal expressway from Belmont to Merewether Heights removed from the Lake Macquarie and Newcastle Local Environmental Plans which are currently being reviewed.