NEWS this week of another couple of developments in the $2.5 billion project to duplicate the Great Western Highway from Lithgow to Katoomba was welcome.
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The problem was that the developments were so modest.
What has been exciting from the start about this project - announced in Bathurst in the lead-up to the 2019 state election - has been the sheer size of it.
We're used to seeing billions spent on roads in the Sydney basin, but it's much more rare to see it spent on the other side of the sandstone curtain - even if only part of this project qualifies as being on the other side of the sandstone curtain.
What shouldn't be allowed to happen, however, is for the size of the project to perpetually delay a shiny shovel finally breaking a dusty sod somewhere along the route.
One year on from the state election, and three years away from the next, we've had community information sessions and calls for feedback and, this week, a tender put out for design help on the Medlow Bath section (and another call for community feedback).
That's all good.
But it still, unfortunately, leaves a number of steps before work starts somewhere, anywhere along the route.
There's no denying the complexity of the project - bypasses and tunnels and bridges are all possibilities for the tricky Blackheath section.
But the stretch from the bottom of Victoria Pass to Lithgow, where the speed limit will rise to 100 kilometres an hour when the highway is duplicated, must be nowhere near as difficult and can surely be started much sooner.
To keep faith with the communities that have been watching the updates on this $2.5b project with guarded enthusiasm, the NSW Government is going to need to show some physical progress.
The time has come. In fact, the time had come some time ago.
