According to NSW Roads and Maritime Services, approximately 31,000 vehicles cross the Blue Mountains every day, including about 3000 on Bells Line Of Road. This is about the same number of vehicles that use the infamously slow, universally loathed Parramatta Road each day.

What’s worse is the traffic volume across the Blue Mountains has risen twice as fast over the past decade as the population in regional NSW. Heavy vehicles carrying freight and tourists from Sydney have been the main reasons for this growth.

Even when the traffic comes down off the mountains and passes into the Central West, the traffic count is still high and climbing higher. In 2017, the average daily traffic count was 9620 recorded at the vehicle-counting station at Raglan – up 23 per cent on volumes recorded just 10 years ago.

But this is not an article just about statistics. Unfortunately, traffic volumes, distances travelled, and driver fatigue come at a terrible social and personal cost. In 2016, 384 people died on NSW roads and over 12,000 were injured. A staggering two-thirds of fatalities in NSW occur on country roads.

The Mitchell Highway between Bathurst and Orange has been notorious for serious accidents, with the Central Western Daily quoting figures showing there were 14 fatal crashes between 2007 and 2016.

As most readers know, the roadway in question links two major inland cities each with over 40,000 residents. It carries over 6700 vehicles each day, including over 1000 heavy vehicles, yet it has barely had any improvements in 20 years.

There are four major roads leaving Sydney. Three of them (north, south and south-west) are national highways and have been upgraded into dual-carriage motorways for most, if not all, of their lengths.

The fourth major highway leaving Sydney travels west. It is called the Great Western Highway, but there is precious little that’s great about it. For the first 30 kilometres, it is adequately serviced by a dual carriageway.

Beyond Penrith, the so-called highway reverts to a narrow road of one or two lanes in each direction, crawling its way through towns and villages. The road has so many different speed limits, it is a wonder that more drivers don’t become totally confused.

Statistics have shown that increasing the width of a road leads to a decrease in the number of motor vehicle collisions. When the roads are separated, as in a dual carriageway, road collisions leading to injuries and deaths are halved.

The state government should be congratulated on spending almost a quarter of a billion dollars since 2012 improving the Great Western Highway between Katoomba and Lithgow, with the upgrade between Forty Bends and Hartley Vale using a significant portion of that funding.

However, in comparison, almost $5 billion was spent over the same period completing the dual carriageway rollout on the Pacific Highway.

It is time that the state government stopped ignoring the needs of the million or more people who live west of the Great Divide.

It should seriously reconsider its wasteful investment in Sydney-based stadia and redirect a large proportion of those funds to a significant upgrade in the road over the Blue Mountains and beyond.

The people who use the prime thoroughfare through this region do not deserve to be injured or killed on an inferior road.