Hornsby Shire Housing Strategy

My last post commented on letters in the latest Monthly Chronicle relating to the recently amended Hornsby Shire Housing Strategy.
A letter from Nick Berman, Hornsby Mayor, argues that further residential development is essential, in view of Treasurer Wayne Swan's prediction that Australia's population would grow by 13 million to 35 million by 2049.
It is not clear how heaping more people onto Sydney's straining traffic nightmare can be deemed a viable solution to the flood of immigrants. If Mr Swan wants to make Sydney absorb much of this huge increase, then surely the Federal government needs to ensure that the Sydney infrastructure can cope - one desalination plant and a CBD Metro don't seem sufficient, somehow!
Mr Berman points out that the amended Housing Strategy will be exhibited to the public in early 2010, to enable local residents to provide feedback. It seems we need to consider our position carefully and, if appropriate, to be ready to defend it.
The plan to concentrate new housing along the rail corridor is fine if, in fact, the occupants of these new houses are somehow constrained to use the train to get to the city.
But since the opening of the Lane Cove Tunnel, road access to the city has improved enormously for Beecroft and Cheltenham residents, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that all the cars parked under these new residential developments will stay in the garage each morning, rather than fighting to get out onto Beecroft Road to join the crowd coming in from further afield.
To that extent, it's not just Beecroft and Cheltenham residents who should be objecting to this proposal, but all the commuters who flood down Beecroft Road every weekday morning.