They really had long-term vision after World War II. From the 1940s to 1970s, NSW planners conceived a magnificent scheme of high-capacity arterial roads for Greater Newcastle.

The network was far beyond what the city immediately needed. Indeed, some of the roads envisioned by the post-war planners would not be needed even now.

But eventually they will be needed - just about all of them.

Many of those arterial roads were built; they are in fact the major roads that we use every day in getting around our city.

The problem is not the state government's failure to build the others but its failure to preserve their reservations. They've been abandoned.

Here and there, parts have been built on. In other places, the state government has let councils declare these strips of land to be nature reserves - places basically for the enjoyment of a few locals rather than transportation for everyone in the wider metropolitan area.

Even if the post-war road plan for Greater Newcastle were still intact, it would not be enough.

Now, more than 70 years after it began taking shape, we can see further into the future. We not only need to recover the postwar road reservations; we also have to add more, not because we now need another major road here or there but because Novocastrians of the future will.

Newcastle will be much bigger in the future, but we can't be sure how much. Even if we had a target, later generations might want to increase it. The future population is not for us to decide.

What is for us to decide is how to help later generations cope. That includes not pushing them into premature reliance on public transport by leaving them with inadequate road capacity. Like us now, and indeed like anyone anywhere, they will prefer to travel in cars if they can.

This is the first in a series of articles that will address long-term planning for Greater Newcastle - basically, the five Lower Hunter local government areas. The focus will be on the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie LGAs, because that is where most of the population lives and works, where density is highest and where planning is most challenging. But we'll look at the rest of the Lower Hunter, too.

The state government does plan for the future, just not as far as it should. The main state plan for our urban area runs to 2036; there's also a transport plan that looks out to 2056. In these articles we will look further.

Planners looked further in 1951. By that year, the Newcastle Inner City Bypass was already proposed for what became the Lower Hunter's central planning document, the Northumberland County plan of 1960. Seventy years later, the bypass is still not complete, but early work has begun on the final section, between Jesmond and Rankin Park.

Many a Novocastrian complains that it should have been built much earlier. I'm not so sure: Newcastle's traffic is pretty good when compared with Sydney's. But the key point is that when the state government finally decided there was both demand and funds for completing the bypass, the land was there, ready to be built on. It had been set aside and never given up.

That didn't happen with that road's now-forgotten twin, which was also proposed in 1951 and made it into the 1960 plan. Whereas the bypass that became reality runs west of Charlestown, its twin was to be built to the east. One end was at Merewether Heights and the other at Belmont South, where it was to join the Pacific Highway for the connection to Sydney.

Following the 1980s decision to extend the Newcastle-Sydney freeway on the western side of Lake Macquarie, the value of greater traffic capacity down the whole length of the eastern side diminished. The Merewether-Belmont road was dropped and its reservation abandoned.

That was a colossal mistake, in my view, and it should be undone. The state government should restore this reservation.

The Pacific Highway at Charlestown is already close to its limit. The 2017-56 transportation plan published three years ago noted that one section of that road had already exceeded 80% of capacity; three years later, it is no doubt closer to its limit.

We cannot just shrug our shoulders about this. Charlestown is one of the key centres in Greater Newcastle, but an arterial road running through the middle of it makes it the most unpleasant retail and commercial district in the whole urban area.

Charlestown does not need to be punished like this. A bypass can be built to the east: the northern section of the Merewether-Belmont arterial road, as far south as Bennetts Green.

Planners who worked in the 1980s and earlier remember this section as the East Charlestown Bypass. If built to the same motorway standard as the Newcastle Inner City Bypass, it would draw away much of the traffic now choking Charlestown.

Even if Pacific Highway traffic grew back again, it would always be lower than without the bypass.

Although the East Charlestown Bypass reservation has been abandoned, very little of the route has been built on. Unfortunately, a housing development on a section at Whitebridge was approved only two years ago. These houses have now been built; the development is called Fettlers.

My answer is that, if another line through Whitebridge for the road can't be found, those properties should eventually be resumed. The state government, which foolishly abandoned the reservation, would pay for the resumption.

In Chinese, the money you lose because you made a stupid mistake is mockingly called your schooling fees. Today's lesson: don't abandon arterial-road reservations.

Other parts of the East Charlestown Bypass route are now nature reserves - hardly precious in the eastern Lake Macquarie area, which abounds in tree-filled land. Where the route passes Kahibah, use of the land for nature conservation has no value at all, because it abuts Glenrock, more than 5 square kilometres of nature.

At Bennetts Green, one of several available paths could be chosen to join the Pacific Highway.

The route has another great virtue. By far the worse shortcoming of an arterial road, especially a motorway, is that it divides communities. But much of this route has houses on only one side.

As for the part at Whitebridge, with homes on both sides, designers can look for ways to minimise the impact. Notice that they did a great job in Jesmond, where the motorway runs in a cutting and is not very noticeable.

Asked about the desirability of restoring the reservation, a spokesperson for Lake Macquarie City Council said transport routes should be close to and integrated with current population centres and future growth areas, such as Charlestown and Belmont. "The East Charlestown Bypass is no longer identified in either state or local government long-term strategic land use plans that apply to the Lake Macquarie City," the spokesperson added.

But I think it should be, and maybe it should even become a medium-term, not long-term, project.