As things stand, though, such a reassessment is difficult. The Government and its roads bureaucrats appear to believe the only way to induce motorists to use new tolled motorways is to make traffic so bad elsewhere that they will accept paying the toll. If that is good planning practice, there is something wrong with planning.

Of even greater benefit here, though, would be a systems view of transport – one which did not favour, as the State Government does for what appear to be ideological reasons, roads over all other modes of transport. Sydney's residents have long experience of transport promises. They know that when road and rail projects are announced, the roads will be built and the railways mostly shelved. They have heard so many fables about, for example, fast-train projects that these now resemble unicorns or flying pigs.

On Monday the Herald reported that when Cabinet considered whether to proceed with WestConnex, the briefings and recommendations had deliberately excluded any consideration of rail alternatives. We reported in April that advice about a possible F6 through southern Sydney to Wollongong was deliberately skewed in the same way against rail. This shows that the planning of transport in this State is fundamentally flawed.

How flawed? The answer can only be sketchy, because the Government, outrageously, keeps most of its analyses secret from the public it is elected to serve, and from the taxpayers whose money it spends. But in cost-benefit terms, the worst-performing of the four options for a rail link between Parramatta and the CBD matches the performance (a ratio of $1.70 in benefits to $1 of cost) of WestConnex, which parallels the route in part. The best rail option is far superior (2.5 to 1). In backing road over rail as NSW routinely does, we are thus backing the fourth place-getter. If there were a transport Olympics, that's not even a podium finish.