Sydney's Parramatta Road is one of the oldest - and arguably the ugliest - stretches of bitumen in Australia, after efforts to upgrade the road abandoned by successive governments.

For centuries, the artery connecting Sydney's CBD with Parramatta has been a major thoroughfare, with its first upgrade - in the form of track widening - occurring in 1794.

Once integral to Sydney's growing colony, things rapidly changed in the wake of World War II as motor cars began to destroy the road and Sydneysiders started to loathe it.

It has since been dubbed a "ghetto," the "varicose vein of Sydney," a "filthy hole," the equivalent of "Beirut on a bad day," and "kind of skanky and in need of a good makeover."

If you switch on commercial breakfast television in the morning, you will almost always see someone in a chopper flying above Parramatta Road, telling commuters to avoid it.

And that is exactly what commuters try to do, as successive governments try desperately to fix the road, each promising to revitalise the streetscape and divert traffic.

Upgrades kept falling off agenda

The latest plan by the NSW Government, proposing a $31 billion redevelopment to transform the area around the freeway, is not the first time a makeover project has been flagged.

In 1987, the Main Roads Department, under Labor Premier Barrie Unsworth, planned to demolish 200 homes as part of an urban renewal project.

It never happened.

The road fell largely off the agenda for a few decades, until 2013, when then premier Barry O'Farrell promised a $200 million makeover to turn the strip into a leafy, cafe-lined boulevard of beauty.

The next year came another promise, a 20-year urban transformation of Parramatta Road that would create up to 50,000 jobs and 50,000 new homes.

That project, given the very pragmatic name of "New Parramatta Road", was to be a benefit of the Government's much-hyped WestConnex project, a 33 kilometre motorway to connect the M4 motorway in Sydney's west with the M5 in the south-west.

However, after Pru Goward was accused of knocking back 168 out of 170 community consultations to discuss the road another minister was appointed, and the plan went back to the drawing board.

Latest blueprint aims to ease congestion

The new Planning Minister was Rob Stokes, and in 2015, he agreed to restart community consultation on the project.

The draft plan was then released, complete with a new name: The Parramatta Road Urban Transformation Strategy.

It turned the 20-year-plan into a 30-year plan, and again promised 50,000 new homes, but this time with only 40,000 new jobs.

The Government's latest blueprint once again details a different plan for Parramatta Road, with the number of homes being built revised down to 27,000.

It has also promised to shift 50,000 vehicles into the WestConnex tollway, a statement that has been dismissed by Labor, which believes commuters will stay on Parramatta Road to try to avoid tolls.

Mr Stokes said this was the final strategy for Parramatta Road, however there have been many earnest commitments that have never manifested.

For now, Sydney will be waiting and watching, to see if this Government can successfully rectify a problem that has irked the city for far too long.