Letter to Mr Paul McLeay, Minister for the Illawarra RE: Princes Hwy @ Heathcote
Recently, the RTA has taken steps to try and implement a Clearway on the Princes Highway at Heathcote. This is the 4th largest road into Australia's largest city, and should be treated as such - with a Clearway in the peak periods and a reasonable speed limit. Unfortunately, while this is common sense, a very small minority of people in Heathcote are waging a campaign and appealing to the local member - who is also Minister for the Illawarra - and demanding he stop the RTA from making this road a little less miserable.
If you agree with the content of the email below, please feel free to (re)use it and email the Minister to voice your anger and frustration at the way a vocal minority are making life painful for the majority. The road was there first. It is a major road. If isn't a suburban back street or a little road out the front of the corner store. It should be treated as such, and the Minister needs to be reminded there are a lot more votes in his marginal seat in the northern Illawarra than there are in Heathcote. You can email the Minister at
Dear Minister,
As one of the tens of thousands of motorists who travel along one of the four major roads into Sydney each day, I wanted to join what is surely a chorus of frustration and disgust at how a very small and noisy minority of people in Heathcote are costing ordinary, working people of the Illawarra millions and millions of dollars each year.
Aside from the tremendous waste of time the current Princes Hwy arrangements cost the thousands and thousands of South Coast residents who have to use that road each day, there are also significant costs in both economic and environmental terms as thousands of cars at a time sit idling and burning fuel.
I implore you to make whatever representations you can to the RTA to see Clearways implemented and a more appropriate speed limit reapplied to the Princes Hwy at Heathcote.
This road is the fourth most important road coming into Australia’s largest City after the M5, M4 and F7/M2. It isn’t a sleepy backstreet or hamlet where people should expect the right to park right out the front of the corner store as they duck in and get the morning paper. It isn’t a quiet neighbourhood where pedestrians can jay-walk against the lights and everything will be fine. The Princes Hwy is also not a new road: it was there before all of residents and shopkeepers in Heathcote.
The Princes Hwy is a major road, that connects a great many of your constituents to their work, to their airport, to their state. By my estimation, if someone drives that road each day for work, the current arrangements (a 10 minute delay each way, 5 days a week) are costing them over 80 hours per year – more than 2 weeks of work time! This is a direct cost that the current arrangements are imposing on every one of the Illawarra’s thousands of commuters (and voters).
The other major arterials leading into Sydney have speed limits that reflect the road’s importance: 50kph should be reserved for suburban streets, not major national roads. There are many, many less important and heavily used roads in our state that have clearways. Sure, these clearways can be an inconvenience, but they serve and important purpose on any important and congested road – something that Princes Hwy surely is.
The citizens of the Southern Highlands, the Western Suburbs, the Hunter, the Central Coast and the Blue Mountains are treated much much better than the people of the Illawarra: please represent the reasonable interests and needs of your constituents by helping to push through the Clearway and push up the speed limit on this road, so that your constituents don’t keep feeling like 2nd class citizens.
Yours Sincerely,
Geoff McQueen
