Jones:

And so this leads me to one of the other problems of EIS procedure and that is that every project is considered isolated from all others and one of the things that we are concerned about is the problem of cumulative effects so that any one of which.... Any one project may not have a serious effect but if you add them up over a period of time you wind up perhaps with very serious effects.

Zines:

More often than not, if we talk about the broader issue of sustainable development then I think you can say very clearly that Environmental Impacts do very little at present to contribute to sustainable development. They're small isolated cases that fit into a whole picture.

Morrison:

Chiefly my interest at the moment is in the low level of air quality in the Western region of Sydney; the high levels of ozone and photochemical smog and those areas are currently experiencing up to two and a half times the World Health Organisation levels of photochemical smog and ozone and 75% of those problems are caused by road based transport.

High levels of pollution aren't being created there. They're being created on the Eastern Seaboard and being blown inland and they're trapped there by the Blue Mountains.

I think it is acknowledged that cars are a major contributer to the Greenhouse Effect, cars and trucks; road based transport generally.

Toon:

The other side to it is that if you increase capacity you've got to then have a system, particularly in the Central Business District, which is going to be able to absorb additional cars. What that really means is that you've got to have more streets in the city, more space for cars in the city simply to absorb the higher number of cars.

Hensher:

I might also add that the traffic forecasts did make some strong assumption about the great majority of that traffic being through traffic and that's since shown to be absolutely incorrect. In fact a substantial amount of that traffic will be terminated in the Central Business District and you could argue, is that a good thing?

Judd:

The Sydney Harbour Tunnel will bring slightly more into the city, We don't see that as a problem at all.

Toon:

It didn't actually fit with a whole range of other government policies. It wasn't really related to issues of metropolitan growth. It wasn't related to really the crisis points where we need to invest money in roads. I mean there are many parts of the metropolitan area where we have major congestion and nothing is being done about it. All the major congestion points are out in the West, they're not in the inner city area at all.

Hensher:

The question that should have been asked at the beginning when any major investment like a tunnel or whatever is being considered is what are our priorities from an overall planning and strategic land-use transport point of view. That question was never asked in the context of this tunnel.

Judd:

The RTA's transport policy is really a two fold policy; and that's to manage the road system that we have, to improve it. And the other is to improve/develop the network of roads itself. Now the Sydney Harbour Tunnel falls of course into improvement in the network itself.