would u keep going on an "unlikely" nothing will be done for.....
i hope the heritage guy puts your mind at rest

He's not there right now. Have left a message.

Hae spoken to the RTA and they say the plans, though they exist, would only be for a road widening rather than a 4 lane highway. There are two lanes at the mo. Still, I'm not sure I want this.

<sigh>

If I can later object to plans, this might be the way to go, but I don't particularly want to be running a 'Save Mt Victoria's Heritage' campaign in 10 years time either.

well only you and your OH can decide if its worth it - once you have all the info in front of you. don't let your hearts rule your heads.

Ipom running a campain!!!! i think u would be far too pleasant and polite

Ha ha. There speaks a woman who doesn't know me very well.

ahh so you have a split personality then cos i've never seen anything else

Could they claim they didn't know about the plans?
Then you would have to prove they did to make the contract void.

Nope. They knew about the plans because they're on the searches recorded when they bought the property back in the early '80's.

Depends how passionately I feel about something.

So I just got the phone number for the Senior Project Development Manager in charge of the project of road widening, gave him a ring and he's called me back after I left a message. Wow! what a nice bloke! Just rang me back and had a really good chat to me about what the plans are.

Basically, he's telling me that originally, the plans were to expand the highway all the way to Mt Vic, and the money that did this came from the state. However, the State funds have been consumed in the upgrading of the 4 lanes to Katoomba.
So now it's down to Federal money and this is much harder to come by, because the Feds look at Australia wide and there are many many more important infrastructure issues for transportation in the rest of Aus than upgrading this bit of road.

Secondly, the people who were responsible for the upgrade in the first place which is the Central Western Regional Council, wanted the upgrade to be similar to the F3 in Sydney, which if you know the F3, you'll know has about 700,000 cars on it per day.

So the guy I spoke to told me that the Mt Vic road has only 3000 daily, and so in his view, the work is done and there's no actual need for anything else to be done. Certainly there is no demand for any further expansion, and because the road is heading into the township, there wouldn't be a 4 lane expansion, but where the money would go would be for 'overtaking opportunities' in places before the township.
Certainly in the township, the road is too narrow to widen and he's saying it might be that Mt Vic is bypassed completely anyway, which is one of the proposals.

Anyway, plan B as he calls it, won't start to be discussed until at least 2014 and there are opportunities for the public to make their opinions known, esp by speaking to the Central Council guy... and by pushing the acquisition scheme to be ended.... so stopping the gvt forcing acquisition of people's land...

Anyway, so the bottom line here is risk management... He can't tell me a definitive answer, but what he can tell me is how it works. Basically there's no more money to do this, and his view is that it's low need. He also mentioned he'd be retired by the time anything happened too, but that he'd be interested in coming along to the inaugural meeting of the 'Save Mt Victoria Heritage Society'

Now we just have to decide what to do. It's a more positive picture than was painted yesterday to me, but it doesn't make the decision any clearer for us.

I think a lot of the time when you are buying property there is an element of risk that there will be some kind of development that could affect the property - the difference in your case is that you know already what the potential development could be!

By the sounds of it, there isn't a particular strong need to do the roadworks where you live and the amount of people who would benefit from it would be fairly small. As the council officer said, Federal money is harder to come by and there are very high priority roads that are in desperate need for cash ie the ones with high fatality rates. From what I can tell about your road, it's not a dangerous one and the plans would be to improve road usability rather than safety reasons.

And then there's the other factor - are there any votes in it for the politicians involved? If only a few people benefit, while it would upset local residents, who would back such a scheme? Will any big businesses / government donors benefit? Unlikely...

After a period of so many years, I imagine that the circumstances have changed and the likely benefits that would accrue compared with the costs involved would make this a highly expensive project to go ahead with anyway. There's also a different attitude these days to building/widening roads, and politicians are not so keen to pander to the vehicles rather than residents.

Finally - have you had a chance to chat to the neighbours yet? Maybe they have an action plan already in place just in case!

Chels, yes, there is a politician involved and this guy suggested we talk to him....

I'm going up to speak to the neighbours this afternoon as this will affect their property more than ours.

Hope things work out how you want them too - it is good that you are remaining positive

Thanks Sas.

I am completely confused and unable to make up my mind now, so I'm going to sleep on it for a couple of days and see if anything occurs to me.
Just had a massive storm right over my house, so had to put off going to the neighbour's place.
My brain's going round in circles... so I need time for it to slow down and stop doing the merry go round thing and then it will all be clearer I think.

Yeah good idea - the best advice someone once gave me was...
if you don't know what to do about a situation/problem - do nothing - don't rush in - wait a while and mostly things develop thenselves

Sue the buggers is my first thought. Surely if they have entered into a contractual agreement they have left themselves wide-open to be sued?

Also, you should stipulate a period of waiting (using your legal advantage to pressure the vendors into agreeing to this) so as to see whether or not the plans are rejected due the heritage nature of the land?