This is the 16th in a series of essays by journalist Bradley Perrett on long-term planning ideas to provide a discussion about a better future for the people of Greater Newcastle and the Hunter Region.
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Novocastrians of the future will have more money, more population and more technology.
What they will not have is more land. For that, they can only rely on us.
That's why land reservations are critical to long-term development of our city. It's why former state governments took seriously the idea of making far-seeing plans and setting aside space for such future infrastructure as major roads.
I'm one of those unfashionable people - about 99 per cent of Novocastrians - who think that getting around in a car on fast, free-flowing roads is a good thing. Anti-car fanatics tell me I'm wrong. They have the ear of the state government, which thinks talk about bicycles is more important than planning new arterial roads in Greater Newcastle.
One place where the state certainly should be planning them is the area between the eastern shore of Lake Macquarie and the Pacific Highway. Densification in that district will produce a hefty population increase this century.
The key problem is that the area now relies on a completely unsuitable shoreline route for an arterial road - one that runs too close to shops and residences, separates people from the lake and can never offer high capacity and good speed. Also, we have no provision for the cross-lake tunnel that later generations will surely want to build.
So today's Hunter Essay suggests a new long-term arterial road plan for the zone between Belmont, Boolaroo and Charlestown. As the map shows, this plan is integrated with the proposal in last week's article about a West Lake Motorway.
If adopted and refined by the government, the combined scheme could serve as an ultimate plan for both sides of the lake, one that needs little change as the population rises.
New roads for the east side would not be cheap, however, because the terrain there is mostly rugged. And the cross-lake tunnel might cost several billion dollars. So this is a plan that really relies on the assumption that our successors will be rich.
It's correct to do so. Using even conservative assumptions about growth in population and average incomes, we can estimate that the economy of Greater Newcastle will be about three times larger in the 2070s than it is now.
Consider also that construction technology always becomes more efficient. For example, big cuts in tunnelling costs may not be far away.
So, in planning arterial roads for later in the century, we should not be frightened by the need for cuttings, tunnels and viaducts.
Now let's look at the plan, starting with the cross-lake tunnel.
The location for the crossing must balance cost and usefulness. Tunnels from Eleebana to Bolton Point or from Swansea to Wangi Wangi would be shortest and therefore cheapest. But the first of those options doesn't offer a great improvement in travelling distance and the second is too far from where the bulk of users are likely to live and work.
So the most attractive line is from Valentine to Toronto. Importantly, those two places also offer space for high-capacity access roads.
Old mine workings are not show-stoppers for crossing either the lake or Newcastle Harbour, because underwater tunnels can be built as tubes lowered into trenches. Grouting might be needed.
We can't afford a lake tunnel now but we can and should plan the route and put aside land for access roads. On the western side, it should link to the West Lake Motorway. At Valentine, it would feed into a new major road that would also largely replace the inadequate shoreline arterial.
An alignment for the new major road is available; it would include an electricity transmission corridor that runs from Belmont to Eleebana. So let's call this future road Electric Drive.
Roads and high-tension electricity lines can share land; the cables can be buried, often right under carriageways. Grid operators just need access pits for maintenance where lengths of cable are joined.
Ausgrid owns this and other transmission lines around Newcastle. Without commenting on any specific corridor, a spokesperson says that, when a line is buried under a road, the company wants the pits to be accessible without stopping traffic. That shouldn't be hard to arrange.
The southern end of the Electric Drive alignment is hilly, so construction would be costly. This isn't surprising, because electricity lines don't need easy terrain.
As for connections with other roads, Electric Drive could extend through the residential area in the north of Belmont then across the wetlands park to another new road, which we can call the East Lake Motorway. That would take traffic away from Belmont town centre and the lake shore. A viaduct might be needed over the wetlands, further increasing cost.
Heading north, Electric Drive should continue dead straight along Burton Road and through a tunnel under the Bayview Street ridge to end at Hillsborough Road.
If we make plans, reserve land and adjust zoning, we can ensure that when Electric Drive is built there will be no houses next to it. We can also prepare for its connections with east-west roads, some of which would be upgraded.
Tingira Drive should be extended to create a connection to the Pacific Highway and the East Lake Motorway, which was designed 70 years ago but later abandoned. Earlier Hunter Essays advocated reviving those plans.
The final major feature of this proposal is a North Lake Motorway, an east-west arterial from Boolaroo to Adamstown Heights. It would distribute Electric Drive traffic to inner Newcastle, the Hunter Valley and a likely future development zone between Boolaroo and Holmesville. It would do that by connecting with other major arteries, including the West Lake Motorway.
It would also give the western side of the lake a new route to inner Newcastle, easing pressure on overburdened Newcastle Road.
And it would serve as a north Charlestown bypass by taking city-bound traffic off Charlestown Road. It would, in fact, be the third road to divert vehicles away from traffic-pummelled Charlestown, following the Newcastle Inner City Bypass and East Lake Motorway.
Unfortunately, the North Lake Motorway, like Electric Drive, has a rugged route.
At its western end, my proposed alignment runs through inexpensive light-industrial land and traverses Munibung Hill. In part, it follows a former reservation for what was once supposed to be a local road connecting Boolaroo and Hillsborough.
The reservation's land is still available, including a passage along the southern edges of Macquarie Hills and Cardiff South.
As I researched for this article, Lake Macquarie City Council helpfully looked into the history of the reservation, finding it had been abandoned around 20 years ago because of the difficulty of the terrain. Munibung Hill is about 160 metres high, a council spokesperson points out.
But we can assume that our successors will be able to afford a tunnel under the hill, and they'd be grateful for us leaving the rest of the alignment free of housing.
Further east, the North Lake Motorway route briefly follows Hillsborough Road, where it meets Electric Drive, then diverts along another electricity transmission corridor. That corridor completes the route, which terminates where the water towers are on the Pacific Highway at Adamstown Heights.
Because the transmission corridor runs along the slope of a ridge, its terrain is just awful. But it's only a question of when our successors will be able to afford to tackle it. My guess is that they'd run much of the road on a viaduct.
Let them work that out. Our job is just to reserve all the road's land for them.
