Bizarre planning laws are requiring developers to build “absurd” half-width streets in Western Sydney, with local councils and the state government blaming each other for allowing it.
Roads that are only one lane wide are popping up on the outskirts of Sydney, as developers buy up paddocks and build new housing.
But the laws allowing developers to build public roads around new housing projects have failed to account for situations where neighbouring landowners do not want to sell.
In one street in the suburb of Tallawong, hundreds of people living in four six-storey apartment complexes have been squeezing two-way traffic down a one-lane road for more than three years.
“I’ve got in two fights before,” Ayla Street resident Gloria said, as she left home for work.
“And I have to be constantly scared of [whether] my car is going to graze the fences over there.”
State government and councils blame each other
Their situation has no end in sight and has state and local governments blaming each other.
Warren Kirby, the Member for Riverstone, said poorly constructed government planning controls were allowing developers to build unsatisfactory communities in Sydney’s west.
“A situation like this is completely absurd,” he said.
“The dividing line is just wide enough to fit a car down but not wide enough to fit two cars passing each other.”
Under state government planning laws, housing developers can opt to build some public infrastructure themselves, as part of their mandated “developer contributions”.
The “works-in-kind” arrangement is agreed between the developer and the local council.
Mr Kirby said at several new sites in his electorate, developers had been allowed to build “their” side of the street as part of their contributions.
But at Ayla Street, no developer has bought the property across the road and therefore no-one has built the other side of the street.
“You have a farmer on one side of the road tending to his crops on a day-to-day basis, and then six-storey unit towers on the other side of the road,” he said.
“What happens if one of these catches on fire, and you need to get a series of fire trucks down here?”
Vineet Gambhir, who moved into his apartment off Ayla Street eight months ago, said trying to navigate oncoming traffic in peak hour had not been a good experience.
“When I started, I was like, is it actually a single road where you have to go every day?” he said.
“Not a great idea.”
‘A maze of narrow streets’
In Rouse Hill, a block of homes off Tallawong Road developed as house-and-land packages, is also encircled by half-width roads just big enough for one car to ease past another.
But across one of those roads, housing developer Bathla Group has applied to build another 116 residences and will eventually construct the other half of the street.
Member for Leppington Nathan Hagarty, whose electorate is also undergoing rapid growth, said previous governments had approved too much fragmented development.
“This has resulted in a maze of narrow streets, causing major disruption and inconvenience,” he said.
He also partly blames the local council, Liverpool City Council, for approving developments “without imposing sensible conditions”.
A Liverpool Council spokesman said it was a “serious failure of the current land release development system”.
“Overall responsibility lies with the state government, which re-zoned the area without an integrated development plan that would have co-ordinated the pace of development and ensured developers co-ordinated on items like road construction,” they said.
In a statement, a Blacktown City Council spokesman said developers were building according to a state government-designed precinct plan.
“In Blacktown City, many of these roads are planned along rural property boundaries,” the spokesman said.
“This means each half of these roads will be delivered as each neighbouring property is developed.
“Council empathises with residents who move in during the earlier stages of development.
“However, council cannot force landowners to develop their property.”
Asked if council could force developers to build two sides of a street, the spokesman said it could not.
Calls for improved planning laws
Planning Minister Paul Scully declined to comment, but in a statement, a Planning Department spokesperson pointed the finger at the Blacktown City Council.
“Council has issued the development consent and the developer is delivering what was permissible under that consent,” the statement said.
Adam Leto, chief executive of the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue, has called for better planning laws as the region rapidly expands.
“We’ve got hundreds of thousands of homes being built in Western Sydney over the next five years. These sorts of things can’t be happening,” he said.
“I think the new [state government] reforms introduced last year will go some way towards preventing these sort of situations from happening again.”
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