Feeling in a generous mood the Feds later “weighed in” another $1.5 billion, no doubt as intentional propaganda “bragging rights” for the project.

With the recent completion of a 33 kilometre section of the WestConnex; the most enduring “slug” for state taxpayers came to an end - a historic $16.8 billion paid out to contractors.

After, in the fading days of August, the Berejiklian government announced a consortium, led by Transurban, will pay $9.3 billion for 51 per cent of the motorway. The NSW Treasurer Mr Dominic Perrottet said about $5.3 billion of the sale price would be spent delivering the final third stage of WestConnex leaving over $4 billion to invest in schools and hospitals, road and rail.

It’s not going to happen. The reason? Taxpayers will be called upon to pay compensation to the owners of WestConnex (Transurban) for any delays or changes building the new section of motorway.

For example; after design and construction changes to the project, contractors building the new M5 from Beverly Hills to St Peters, have decided against accepting a $9.3 million offer. The reason, the alterations from the original plans, see the contractors entitled to “change costs” running into hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2017 an independent draft report predicted undisclosed modifications and building costs would turn the WestConnex into the most expensive road project in the world.

Here is a short extract from page four of the report: “In fact, the City has identified $28.5 billion worth of extra costs attached to the project, bringing the total cost to an estimated $45.3 billion. That’s because every extension of WestConnex, every exit and every entrance generates hundreds of millions of dollars of publicly funded road upgrades required to funnel traffic to the tollway and to take traffic from it”.

Dominic, you are dreaming.

John Macleod, Berry

As recently reported, residents of South Berry have been severely affected by the poor road design and engineering failures of the RMS to provide noise abatement barriers south of the Kangaroo Valley Road overpass.

The road noise from, particularly trucks, is excruciating. It is observed that 100km/h seems to be the slowest speed of vehicles at that location.

Investigations have shown that the RMS failed to perform any ambient noise measurements at that location prior to road construction using the excuse that the highway was always there.

However, the new highway is now four lanes versus the previous two lanes and is about four metres higher.

In addition, the new highway is now  a through road and not a road slowing to 50km/h at the location in question.

Residents of Albion Park need to be vigilant to prevent this problem being repeated for their "bypass" and to be wary of promises made by the RMS and the NSW Government.

David Lambert, Berry