There is no doubt there are many property line setbacks for proposed road widenings that are either shelved, or moved so far into the future that they may as well be. I can think of two not far from my place, Liverpool Rd and Frederick St in Ashfield. Neither of these road widenings are happening any time soon, Frederick St because of a narrow, dog legged, six track railway overbridge, and Liverpool Rd because the setbacks are only between Parramatta Rd and Grosvenor Cres/Elizabeth St. There were small land parcels near my place from abandoned DMR/RTA projects that were supposed to become small reserves of trees and open space, but when O’Farrell was elected these blocks were flogged off to developers and now have buildings on them.
While I’m disappointed that the Royal Oak was demolished, and I’m not convinced there wasn’t a design work around that could have avoided that, the outcome reflects the maggot brained mediocrity of everything this government does, and speaks for itself. Trees, heritage, environmental preservation, habitat for endangered wildlife - all just annoying ”externalities” standing in the way of the Moloch Juggernaut of criminal greed and fundamentalist “lordship over the earth”. This is a regime of viciously ignorant, venal and stupid individuals. The kindest thing you can say is they don’t know any better, but I’m not prepared to be that kind as I think that a lot of them relish this destruction for its own sake, for their own atavistic ideological and religious motives.
As for your revisionist proclamations about buses and metro, I totally disagree for all the reasons I’ve said previously. You can’t blame the bureaucracy for poor tramway design and performance entirely without recognising the institutional knowledge was gutted and discarded by the attacks of Greiner and Baird in the 90s, and under the Westminster system incompetence is a ministerial responsibility, and if the minister(s) are too lazy, incompetent or indifferent to outcomes they only obtain advice and information from one incompetent source the responsibility is still theirs. The results so far, a battery operated kiddie ride and an overbuilt, gold plated underperforming joke, speak for themselves. It doesn’t discredit tramway/light rail as a mode, but the competence of the designers, operator and administrators.
BTW, I have a theory as to why the CSELR is operated so badly, but I won’t go into that now as it might make you choke on your popcorn.
Tony
> On 2 Jul 2020, at 10:32 am, TP historyworks@...> wrote:
>
> If you go along Church St North Parramatta (or take a cruise through Google maps/streetview) you'll notice many properties along the road set back more than others, with the setback ones being younger buildings. The fact is that Church St was planned for widening a long time back (in the 1950s I think) and new buildings have had to be set back on the new alignment, with old buildings gradually being demolished as the opportunity arises and some sections of the road already progressively widened. The fact is that the poor old Royal Oak has been marked for demolition for many years anyway. The light rail project has simply precipitated that. No conspiracy agendas here. Mind you, I have such a dim view of the outcome of light rail projects in Sydney now that I think I'd rather the hotel remain and the tram scrapped. I suspect buses would be able to do its job quite adequately.
>
> Tony P
>
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