BARRY HEALY is a Gibson Park Precinct resident and a member of the Fremantle Road to Rail campaign. In this week’s THINKING ALLOWED he warns the government’s freight route plans will change Fremantle forever.

SENATOR Scott Ludlam did Fremantle a great service on May 26 by grilling the federal transport department mandarins in Senate Estimates hearings.

As can be seen in the YouTube video of the hearing (linked to Senator Ludlam’s website and the online Herald article of a couple of weeks ago), more facts about the proposed Roe 8 extension and High Street upgrade emerged in that one session than have come out in years of “community consultation” from WA main roads.

The warnings the Fremantle Road to Rail campaign has issued about this project are now shown to be accurate. The pretence of upgrading High Street for safety reasons is gone.

The talk is of trucks, trucks and more trucks.

Trucks will be free of traffic lights anywhere between the airport and the sea port, including at the High Street and Stirling Highway intersection and Marmion Street.

The link between protecting the Beeliar wetlands and stopping the damage to the Fremantle community is now obvious: it is one road and one struggle.

Destruction

Activists have already marked the High Street trees mapped for destruction.

We now know the plans Main Roads showed Fremantle council and residents were false. The whole time Main Roads was spinning a tale to Fremantle, it was in a secret huddle with its federal counterparts planning its toll road.

The “planning” appears to be a series of corporate wish-lists rather than a thought-through transport policy. At exactly the time when we should be building sustainable infrastructure, we are being herded towards a carbon-intense future.

In a bizarre press release on May 19 WA transport minister Dean Nalder stated the $1.6 billion freeway will “remove 65,000 vehicles from the surrounding road network each and every day”.

That implies funnelling 45 trucks per minute, every minute of the day through Fremantle. That would be a continuously moving conveyer belt of nose-to-tail trucks.

Would a six-lane road cope with that? Hardly! Either the minister is ignorantly blowing bubbles or he intends eventually building a far bigger freeway.

What scale of noise walls would be needed to contain the racket? Five metres, 10 metres? Huge barriers will slice right across the Perth landscape.

How much diesel particulate pollution will be produced? What size cancer hospital will Fremantle need to cope with this?

Nalder says nothing of such concerns but claims benefits of “$5.20 for every dollar invested” will follow shortening truck travel times by “16 minutes between Reid Highway and Fremantle Port”.

Further he says the Stock Road and High Street constructions will provide “$1.70 in benefits for every dollar invested”.

Presumably those figures are cumulative, giving a far-fetched total of $6.90 in economic pay off for each dollar “invested”.

Where is the economic, environmental and public health modelling for this? When Scott Ludlam asked for the cost-benefit analysis, he found out it was secret, a matter of “national security” he quipped.

A glance at the map shows the existing freight rail route connects the two places the government is concerned about.

However, a commercial-in-confidence contract for a public-private-partnership toll road would include a promise from the government to close competing infrastructure. That has been the norm in other states.

So, far from “aspiring” to increase rail freight line use there is a real danger the government will close the line.

Luckily, Fremantle council voted in March to not voluntarily excise the section of A-Class Reserve that Main Roads requested be given over to its project.

This means the WA government has to go through state parliament to get hold of the land. Main Roads representatives pretend this is a simple matter; it is not. For a start Main Roads has to clarify exactly how much land it wants to excise. With the “plan” changing daily as ministers exude thought-balloons, it will take Main Roads some time to decide what it is asking for.

The Fremantle Road to Rail campaign is taking advantage of this to move into action.

We support the petition campaign initiated by Fremantle Transport Action that endorses Fremantle council’s stand against the road. We are looking for a minimum of 10,000 signatures so the Barnett government recognises overwhelming community opposition.

Similarly we are intending to letterbox every house in the greater Fremantle/East Fremantle area warning residents of what is coming.

We are organising a major contingent in the November 9 Fremantle Parade to allow residents to demonstrate their opinion of this madness.

We are in the process of reaching out nationally to other communities targeted by this road-building foolishness to network and build a national movement that does not just say “no” to the roads, but says “yes” to sustainable infrastructure.

Alternative

A fully-costed alternative infrastructure plan for Australia has been produced by Beyond Zero Emissions and can be viewed at its website.

Australia has finally come to the decisive fork in the road regarding sustainability: either we go down Tony Abbott’s road to carbon hell or we choose sustainability.

However, that choice will have to be forced on the government and we can’t think that some face-saving deal to delay the Roe8/High Street Upgrade project until, say, after the next election will suffice.

The government must be defeated on this project and it must be seen to be defeated. Only a people’s power movement will do it.

Please visit the Fremantle Road to Rail campaign Facebook page and get in touch. We have work for busy hands.

Fremantle, your time has come.