It's a fine thing that the NSW government has a transportation plan for Greater Newcastle that looks out to 2056. That's long-term thinking - just what we want governments to do.

But get this: the document has hardly anything to say about roads.

So far as the state government is concerned, the major roads that we have now are just about the only ones we'll ever have.

The government knows our population will rise; it acknowledges that in the document, which is called the Greater Newcastle Future Transportation Plan.

So, obviously, we'll want more road capacity for our cars. But the plan talks more about public transport (which hardly anyone wants to use) than cars (which just about everyone wants to use).

Actually, its "vision for 2056" has more to say about cycling than driving.

This article is one of a series about how we should be planning now to help later generations make the best of Greater Newcastle - which the state government defines approximately as the five Lower Hunter local government areas. An important theme of the series is providing for future arterial roads.

We can thank the state planners of the decades just after World War II for the big roads we have now. We'd be in a mess without them.

Just imagine what traveling in the Newcastle urban area would be like if we didn't have such roads as the divided carriageway from the city centre through Hamilton and Lambton to Wallsend; its southward extension, Lake Road; the widened Pacific Highway from Swansea to Merewether; or the widened highway linking Mayfield and East Maitland.

All these roads and others that we depend on - and even more that have never been built - were planned after the war. The former Department of Main Roads did most of this work.

The department's planners and the politicians who backed them imagined a Newcastle of the future with a network of high-capacity arterial roads.

Today's NSW government looks to the future and imagines bicycles.

So let's give its imagination some help.

The route from Newcastle city centre to Wallsend has just about hit capacity, particularly along the section formed by Newcastle Road. This is largely because it now leads not just to Lake Road but also to the Pacific Motorway and the excellent Hunter Expressway.

But we could open a route to relieve pressure on Newcastle Road: we could build a road that was formerly planned and later abandoned. Its land is still there.

It was to be a heavy-truck route connecting Wallsend with Industrial Drive (another of our good post-war roads). The heavy-truck route would have run from Lake Road through Cowper and Cameron streets, Wallsend, then along a former railway alignment parallel to Wilkinson Avenue, Birmingham Gardens. From there it was to follow University Drive and turn north to pass through Warabrook and join Industrial Drive at Maitland Road. (See the map.)

In fact, we don't need to send heavy trucks through that part of Newcastle. A spokesperson for the council explains that the route was abandoned when the state decided to build the Newcastle Inner City Bypass. (Trucks can use Maitland Road when travelling between the bypass and Industrial Drive.)

Forget the trucks. The government should revive this reservation so it can eventually build a road along it for ordinary vehicles. Let's call it the Wallsend-Mayfield Arterial.

It could take traffic from Shortland, Callaghan, Waratah and Mayfield that would otherwise use Newcastle Road. And it would divert vehicles from narrow streets in Mayfield and Waratah that, most unsuitably, are serving as major roads. Maud Street is the worst example.

Why would governments prefer to overload those streets indefinitely instead of maintaining a reservation for a good, wide road that could properly cope with the traffic?

Because building a new road means upsetting someone, of course. From a politician's point of view, it's better to let the current sufferers continue to suffer (even if they include all of us when we have to use inadequate roads).

And future generations can neither make a fuss now nor vote in the next election.

The Wallsend-Mayfield route is not perfect for an arterial road, because it goes close to houses. It also divides Warabrook and runs through the commercial centre of Wallsend.

It's pretty good, though. Warabrook was designed to accommodate this route, so the houses there back onto it rather than face it, and about 40% of the path through that suburb is lined with light industry.

Immediately south of Warabrook there are no buildings along the route. Houses in Birmingham Gardens and Jesmond, and many in Wallsend, also back onto it.

At the Wallsend end, the former reservation even has a direct path to the Newcastle Link Road.

For our densest population zone, stretching from Wallsend to the ocean, building the Wallsend-Mayfield Arterial would greatly improve access to and from the Pacific Motorway, Hunter Valley and the urban area around the north and west of the lake. It would do that directly by serving some of the dense population zone itself, and indirectly by relieving pressure on Newcastle Road.

Inserting an arterial road into old, thickly populated suburbs is usually hard: it typically involves a lot of demolition and disruption. Yet here we have a path for one that is ready to go.

It might, in fact, be the last possible route for an arterial road for Newcastle's old suburbs (or maybe the second last, because there's an intriguing additional possibility that we'll cover in a later article in this series).

With a smaller catchment area, the Wallsend-Mayfield Arterial would not be as busy as Newcastle Road. Its traffic would probably be more like what we see on Turton Road at Waratah (and, yes, Turton Road is another contribution from post-war planners).

Because the entire alignment of the Wallsend-Mayfield Arterial is available now as open land, the only immediate action we need from the state government is restoring it as a road reservation. Construction can follow when traffic demands it and the state has the money.

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Asked about the route, Newcastle City Council points out that the Wallsend and Birmingham Gardens sections are used for utilities and a key cycleway. (There are those bikes again.)

Well, utilities can be moved, at a price. And I don't see how a few people on bicycles have a better claim to a road alignment than a vastly larger number of people in cars.

Anyway, another path could be found for cycling. A cycleway is a simple thing to move.

When it comes to cycling, you can call me unfashionable and politically incorrect. I think you can also say that the great majority of people would agree that cycling ranks behind travelling in cars as a priority.

I should add that three new major roads do appear in the government's transportation plan - but without much discussion, presumably because they involve no pedalling. They are the last section of the Newcastle Inner City Bypass, the Pacific Motorway link between Black Hill and Raymond Terrace, and upgrading Nelson Bay Road.

Notice that none of those is politically difficult.

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