The journey from Wollongong to Sydney is a mixed experience. Just getting out of this city involves either sharing Mt Ousley road with convoys of heavy trucks grinding up the steep slope in low gear, or a sixty kph climb up Bulli Pass to reach the F-6.
Things improve rapidly on the F-6. A divided road with a speed limit of 110 kph - but then that stops suddenly when you reach the southern limits of Sydney. That 110 kph actually morphs into an almost unbelievable 50 kph - and that on a divided, four lane arterial road - but it gets even worse as you proceed further into Sydney.
You can actually see the high buildings of the Sydney CBD, but you are in the " morning crawl " of commuter traffic enjoying " stop - start " progress on roads that were never intended to take such loads - and there is absolutely no arterial road to service the south of the city.
Strangely - it is there on some old maps. Way back in 1951 a land corridor was set aside for a new expressway to connect Loftus in the south with St Peters in inner Sydney. The only problem is - it was never built !
That land still sits idle, waiting for the government to allocate funds and get the bulldozers and heavy machinery moving to create a decent system to duplicate the arterial roads that have already been constructed to service the north and the west approaches to Sydney.
We seem to be the " poor relation ". Getting work started is not even on the drawing board - and some very angry people are starting to make demands for preliminary work to get underway to at least get the road planned.
Arterial roads cost money. Lots of it ! But at least there is hope if what is to be achieved is laid out in blueprints that will be constantly waved under politicians noses.
As Confucious wisely noted. The longest journey starts with the first step !
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