For Parents

What's happening?

The latest reference design released by Roads and Maritime Services NSW (July 2018) tells us that:

• Four major projects are planned for our area: Metro Tunnelling, Western Harbour Tunnel, Warringah Expressway Reconfiguration and Northern Beaches Tunnel

• Cammeray and Naremburn are major construction hubs - this means millions of tonnes of spoil from digging the tunnel will come out at these sites.

• Unfiltered ventilation stacks and operations buildings will be built to service the tunnels across the residential area – these are close to schools, homes & hospitals.

• The Warringah Freeway will be reconfigured from Milsons Point to Naremburn

• Valuable green spaces will be lost to construction sites - these will take over substantial parts of Cammeray Gold Course and Naremburn’s Flat Rock Baseball Diamond or Flat Rock Drive. Safe use of neighboring sports facilities is unlikely – this impacts Bicentennial Reserve, the Willoughby Leisure Centre netball courts, Cammeray Tennis Club, Cammeray Park all-weather football pitch and the skate park.

• Construction will be 24 hours/7 days – this means non-stop noise and trucks in our streets

• Heavy equipment will be used in our residential areas for at least 5-6 years

Won’t we benefit?

There are no specific benefits for Cammeray, Naremburn and the surrounding suburbs. The Northern Beaches Link tunnel is designed to reduce traffic congestion around the Northern Beaches and the Mosman & Spit Bridge area. No data is given to support reduced traffic on our streets...this problem is likely to increase!

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A tunnel designed to bring more road users into the city will likely result in more road users looking for parking in and around portal exits close to the city transport hubs i.e Artarmon and St Leonards trains, Chatswood and Crows Nest Light rail and Willoughby, Northbridge and Cammeray buses.

Here’s what you need to know

Non-stop truck movements at tunnel construction sites and significant disruption

• Imagine 70 trucks/hour driving from Flat Rock Drive up Brook St and onto the Warringah Freeway. Traffic will divert through Northbridge and Cammeray.  

• Reports from Northconnex residents indicate this would be 70 truck movements per hour… some quote 5000 per day.

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It will be noisy

• Trucks, drilling, ground work and preparation activities would create noise along and around the construction corridor. Noise travels and will impact residents, students and local businesses for at least 5 years.

• Noise pollution affects sleep, concentration, stress levels and health. Given the project time line is at least 5 years, the long-term impact of constant noise could be significant in a child’s lifetime.

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Students going to and from school are at risk of harm from the continuous flow of trucks & more traffic

• Cammeray and Anzac Park students must cross even busier and unsafe roads to get to school.

• Our local areas will experience considerable increased traffic & parking issues - there will be hundreds of heavy vehicles on our roads and construction workers parking in the area.

• Traffic will divert into our local streets to avoid construction-related bottlenecks.

• Traffic in and around sports facilities on Saturday mornings would be made even worse than it is now!

Sports and community recreation will suffer

• Flat Rock Baseball Diamond and a substantial part of Cammeray Gold Course will be out-of-bounds should they become construction sites. Tunks Park may be contaminated due to run off from Flat Rock Creek.   

• Bicentennial Reserve (sealed courts and fields) may not be safe to use due to air pollution from fine dust particles – these enter the air in and around construction sites and transport corridors.

• Cammeray’s tennis courts, all-weather football pitch and skate park are next to tunnel portal construction sites and the permanent tunnel ventilation facilities.

There are serious health risks associated with constructing and operating tunnels (especially in residential areas)

• Fine dust particles entering the air in and around tunnel spoil sites (i.e. Flat Rock Baseball Diamond/Drive and Cammeray Golf Course) transport corridors (such as Brook St and Flat Rock Drive) pose a risk to human health.

• The World Health Organisation classifies silica dust from sandstone and granite processing to be carcinogenic. It is likely that homes around construction sites will be contaminated by silica dust, sporting teams playing adjacent may breathe it, and local school communities would encounter this dust

• Unfiltered ventilation facilities (aka smoke stacks) pose a huge concern, with several needed to service the tunnels across a predominantly residential area. Unfiltered stacks simply extract, condense and then disperse road pollution across an environment.  Adding more stacks to an area (we already have two) with many schools, pre-schools and hospitals on the Lower North Shore is a major concern.

• Flat Rock Gully is an old tip site. Surface and ground works will disturb asbestos and chemicals dumped there, posing a risk to neighbouring residents and park users.

Want to know more?

A detailed analysis of the Western Harbour Tunnel and Warringah Freeway Environmental Impact Statement/ Plans can be found on the final plans page under "Our Analysis". Further summaries will be added to this page once the Beaches Link Environmental Impact Assessment becomes available in the 3rd quarter of 2020. Information has been gathered from scoping reports, reference design documents interviews with technical experts and government representatives.

To read our original scoping analysis which includes community background information please see:  report on this site 

To read the original government documents and community submissions go to  Learn More