CALLS for an improvement to the routes between Bathurst and Sydney are nothing new, but there does seem to have been a different tone to them this week.
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There's been the usual frustration and exasperation, but it's felt more elevated, more amplified.
It goes without saying that the biblically heavy rain that fell on the Blue Mountains last month was not the NSW Government's fault - and neither were the landslides that followed, closing Bells Line of Road.
It wasn't the NSW Government's fault that a significant chunk of Sydney wanted to go west on Good Friday and return to the big smoke on Easter Monday, clogging up the Great Western Highway in one direction each time.
It also wasn't the NSW Government's fault that there was a truck fire on the highway near Lithgow on Tuesday afternoon that closed both lanes.
What is the NSW Government's responsibility, though - what it can control and do something about - is the road itself.
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All of the events of the past few weeks - the landslides, the congestion, the closed highway - have been unfortunate in isolation, but, put together, they have been a reminder that those of us to the west of Sydney are not treated in the same way as those to the north and the south.
Transport operator Graeme Burke said as much as he excoriated both levels of government - federal and state - in this week's Advocate and he probably provided a summation of how a number of locals have felt recently as they've watched their options to get over the Blue Mountains halve, close or clog.
The NSW Government will say that it does have a plan for the Blue Mountains: its duplication of the highway from Katoomba to Lithgow.
But it's also embarking on much bigger projects in the Sydney basin - including tunnelling here and there to provide new railway lines or new roads to keep the people of the state capital happy.
It's shown no lack of appetite for big projects; no lack of appetite for the grand multi-year, multi-stage construction.
It would be nice to see the "great" earned in the Great Western Highway. Failing that, it would be good to know we can get across the Blue Mountains in a timely manner when we have to do so.
Really, that doesn't seem like too much to ask.