THE previous NSW Coalition government's proposed Great Western Highway tunnel from Blackheath to Little Hartley was both underfunded and exceptionally expensive for what it proposed, Bathurst's mayor Jess Jennings says.
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"There was next to no money in the federal budget for it and they [the federal government] were on the hook for, I think, over 80 per cent of the cost.
"It wasn't a very well-planned project for delivery and in the context of fixing the whole problem, it was a massive expense: $11 billion for 11 kilometres, I've got to say, never really rang true for me as being value for money when you recognise it doesn't solve quite a lot of the other pinch-point problems along there.
"For $11 billion, you'd really want to be getting an ultimate solution to the whole [Great Western Highway] strip."
But as Cr Jennings considers the highway stretch from Penrith to Lithgow, and its shutdowns and congestion, he says a tunnel might still be the solution.
"We need to get our heads around what is the trajectory of tunnel-boring costs. And I believe that that must be coming down - on a fairly steep decline.
"But the question is at what point does it become financially viable for us to look at tunnelling options, essentially from Penrith to Lithgow or Penrith to Hartley?
"I think we need to start exploring those sorts of options."
Cr Jennings was recently on a self-funded trip to the United States that included Las Vegas, where the underground Las Vegas Convention Center Loop has been operating since 2021 after being built in about a year.
Tesla cars driven by employees shuttle passengers through the tunnel to their stops.
"It's only a one-mile tunnel at the moment, but they're proposing 90 miles of tunnels as an underground network taxi system, essentially, for all of Las Vegas," Cr Jennings said.
"It's quite incredible what they're proposing."
Cr Jennings said Tesla and Boring Company Elon Musk - the man behind the Vegas Loop - was asked on social media five years ago how much it would cost to build a tunnel through the Blue Mountains.
Mr Musk replied it would cost about $15 million per kilometre for the two-way tunnel, with an additional $50 million per station, taking the project to an estimated $1 billion.
People would not actually drive through the tunnel, though - their vehicles would be secured on platforms that could travel at high speeds between stations.
Questions and answers
ANY sort of potential tunnel under the Blue Mountains "opens up a whole new conversation", Cr Jennings said.
"Would it just be for passenger cars? Would it be passengers and freight? Could you do one for a train?" he asked.
"Even if you just took all the passengers off the Great Western Highway except for the residents who go there and visitors who want to go there, all of those towns from Blackheath down through to Emu Plains would become so much more peaceful."
The other aspect would be easing the squeeze on the Sydney basin, Cr Jennings said.
"If you did have a tunnel that got you through in about 30 or 40 minutes or something, think of the pressure release valve for Sydney on housing and infrastructure throughout the whole Sydney basin.
"If you could get from the CBD to Lithgow in 90 minutes - that's what people do from the Central Coast and Newcastle and Wollongong to Sydney on a daily basis - it changes the game massively.
"So I think you've got to put it in the context of the old benefit-versus-cost scenario; it's hard to see how it wouldn't come out way ahead.
"Yes, it would no doubt be a massive infrastructure project.
"But what we were looking at - $11 billion for 11 kilometres - that didn't actually solve the [Great Western Highway] problem, it just didn't add up, in my mind."
Cr Jennings said the advances in technology are crucial.
"I'm very interested to get a sense and ... to understand what is the current tunnel boring equipment state of play and where is it headed and at what point would it become viable to look at the tunnel option?" he said.
"Because, really, I think in the long run, you're just going to get more and more traffic over the Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains.
"It's only going to get more and more congested and doing patch repairs, year in, year out, is always behind the eight ball."
He said he has been travelling over the Blue Mountains since he was a child and the road has "always been playing catch-up".
"A tunnel is the only way to actually break that circuit," he said.
