The residents of Woorang Street in Eastwood have a unique lane reservation that has been around for over 70 years. While the majority of residential land is under the control of Local Government, the front yard of the Woorang residents is actually part of a proposed freeway that sits in the land portfolio of Transport for NSW. The freeway, known as Eastwood County Road was part of the major highway plans that arose from the freeway boom of the 1950s and 1960s and would see a major six lane freeway that would connect between Eastwood at Blaxland Road (with additional proposals to extend to Stewart Street to the west towards Parramatta) and Epping Road at Marsfield.
The land was gazetted for road construction in July 1951 and while progress was made on some of the corridor with retaining walls and new overpasses to the west as documented in the Eastwood County Road history by OzRoads, large opposition by Ryde Council, local residents and an overall negative reaction for highway construction in the 1980s saw little efforts of any roadwork between Eastwood and Marsfield. This however didn’t stop some initial starts by the-then Department of Main Roads and Roads and Traffic Authority on obtaining planning approval with an 1995 Environmental Impact Statement showing increased support for the county road but the next door opening of the M2 Motorway in 1997 saw again the proposal shelved due to the lack of interchange facilities with the new motorway, lack of government support and projected results of light traffic.
The land designation also has caused headache as both Ryde Council and Transport for NSW have conflicting plans on what to do with the proposed land. Ryde Council has revisited the corridor by proposing numerous transport concepts including reserving the land for a potential light rail corridor or active transport corridor in 2019. Ryde council has also had some permission to introduce cycleways and new recreational playgrounds on small parts of the corridor. The recent completion of the upgrade of Kent Road Public School on the corridor has also made it difficult to complete the original road proposal. Nevertheless, TfNSW has yet made a decision on the project and may consider rezoning back to residential, doing nothing or attempting another go incorporating both a more moderate proposal with road and active transport.
To this day, the road lives on paper in the Ryde Local Environmental Plan as a classified road waiting for an expected opening despite the 1960s proposal sitting in the RMS library. The road reservation is a good example of quod periit, periit. The greenfield land is there, hoping for something sustainable in the near future.
@kypros1992 
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