Government Preliminary Design (Bad News)

In June 2018, the NSW government released a document called F6 Extension Stage 1 New M5 Motorway at Arncliffe to President Avenue at Kogarah - Project overview to tell us what they are planning for stage 1 of the F6. The two diagrams from this page are taken from this document.

As you can see in the diagrams and as the document states, stage 1 terminates at President Avenue, Kogarah and at the New M5 in Arncliffe. There are no other interchanges.

This design has the following problems:

• There will be significant impact on the parklands near the President Avenue interchange. Firstly, the F6 exit itself will cut through the park lands to the north of President Avenue. Also, the part of President Avenue between the parklands will be widened and raised by up to three meters (to protect against floods).
• The intersections of President Avenue with Grand Parade and Princess Highway will need to be upgraded. I am concerned that this may lead to unsightly fly-overs.
• To the north of President Avenue, the first interchange with the surface roads will the giant St Peters interchange. Giant interchanges that turn suburbs into traffic hubs are obviously detrimental to those suburbs. But they don't just focus traffic on particular suburbs. They also cause people to drive greater distances between the motorway network and their journey endpoints. And probably also greater distances in total if people exit the motorway and then go in the opposite direction to reach their journey endpoints. The reason for the paucity of interchanges is that the F6 and New M5 are deep underground.