Fremantle Eastern Bypass deletion proceeds

8/4/04
The State Government has fulfilled its election promise to delete the Fremantle Eastern Bypass from the Metropolitan Regional Scheme (MRS).
The bypass was a controversial 1970's road proposal that would have cut through the heart of Fremantle, dividing the Fremantle community.

Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan said the MRS amendment passed its final hurdle yesterday with the Legislative Council defeating a disallowance motion.
"Western Australia today has entered a new era for dealing with freight and transport demand in Perth," Ms MacTiernan said.
"This is a paradigm shift in the way we manage traffic, safety and planning in the south-western metropolitan corridor.
"We have seen some of the world's most populated cities with expansive road networks experiencing horrific traffic problems.
"We need to learn from those mistakes and our change in direction means Perth will avoid some of the motorcar-driven disasters in other parts of the world."
However, the Minister said Perth still had a heavy dependence on cars and while WA had been able to manage this dependency so far, the tired old 'predict and provide' model was not sustainable given the growth of the city.
"The planning commission considered all submissions and made its decision based on the merit of the arguments," she said.
"Many of the concerns raised in the submissions would not have been resolved by the FEB and need more creative solutions.
"The planning commission observed that to simply build more roads is not Perth's, or any other major city's, solution to managing growth in transport demand.
"A fundamental change is required in land use and transport planning to encourage alternative solutions.
"The Government's alternative is a package of measures including better planning, better interfaces between transport modes, improving existing transport networks, reducing demand from private cars and improving public transport.
"The Freight Network Review which brought together the community, industry and Government over 2001-2002 devised better ways of moving freight in the metropolitan area resulting in the six-point plan."
The six steps in the six-point plan were:

• extend Roe Highway to Kwinana Freeway;
• put more freight on rail (there has already been a 164 per cent increase in the amount of containers being moved on rail - equating to 100 trucks being taken off the road);
• build inland container terminals;
• better logistics;
• plan for the Outer Harbour at Kwinana; and
• improve existing roads.

Ms MacTiernan said the Government would now move quickly on freeing up land previously reserved and that funds raised from the sale of the land would be put towards the six-point plan.
Minister's office: 9213 6400