Sydney's worst roads revealed - Drive

Parramatta Road has been judged the city's worst by motorists. Photo: Tamara Dean

The state's peak motoring body wants the Prime Minister to drop Labor's multi-billion dollar conditions on a new motorway in western Sydney that would improve some of the city's least popular and worst roads.

Releasing the results of a survey in which more than 10,000 motorists nominated Sydney's worst roads, NRMA president Wendy Machin said funding for the WestConnex motorway should come with "no strings attached".

The WestConnex motorway would, in part, require widening the existing M4 Motorway around Granville and digging a new motorway under Parramatta Road.

Parramatta Road and the M4 were nominated as the first and third worst roads in Sydney, according to the NRMA's survey, separated by Pennant Hills Road in the city's north.

"This is the largest survey of its kind," said Ms Machin, a former state National Party MP, releasing the results on Wednesday.

"We are in an election campaign, an election context: I think if politicians were to ignore the voice of over 10,000 people who are driving the roads every day, it is at their peril."

WestConnex, the state's biggest motorway project and one of the biggest transport projects in the country's history, would run 33 kilometres across western and inner western Sydney.

Federal Labor has promised $1.8 billion for the motorway, but has said it would not pay the money for about a decade and has insisted on three conditions that could add more than $5 billion to the project.

"Since that announcement was made we have had a change of prime minister and we would really like to seek a commitment from (Mr Rudd) to finish this road and to do it at the earliest opportunity," Ms Machin said.

The former state Labor roads minister David Borger agreed with Ms Machin's comments.

"It is not helpful to put conditions that are frankly unrealistic that will see the project not occur," said Mr Borger, the western Sydney director of the Sydney Business Chamber.

"I think in the heat of elections all sorts of things are said by all sides of politics but really the NRMA, I think, has a sensible approach in trying to pursue road funding that actually makes sense."

Labor's three conditions for the motorway are that it not re-impose a toll on the existing M4; that it include a direct connection to the Sydney CBD; and that it should include a direct connection to Port Botany.

The federal Coalition has pledged $1.5 billion for WestConnex without the conditions.

But the state government has not yet released detailed plans for the road, nor a business case. A "project office", which is being advised by Macquarie Group and construction giants Leighton Holdings, was to have handed a business case to the government this month but has not yet done so.

Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said: "The government has asked that a business case be developed so that the extension of the road network meets its objective of taking people to the city and freight to the port and that no new tolls be imposed on old roads."

After Parramatta Road, Pennant Hills Road and the M4 at Granville, the other worst roads in Sydney were listed as:

• the Pacific Highway at Turramurra


• Victoria Road at Drummoyne,


• the M5 East at Kingsgrove


• Spit Road at Mosman


• the Princes Highway at Kirrawee


• King Georges Road at Beverly Hills


• the M5 South Western Motorway at Casula