Judd:

The Roads & Traffic Authority's involvement with the Sydney Harbour Tunnel really goes back to about the late 1970s. At that stage it was known that a second harbour crossing was needed. A whole variety of projects were investigated.

Neilson:

About 6 years ago now we were approached by a guy who was an old friend of the company's who, with some of his associates, had an idea for a tunnel and they came to us with a route marked up on some road maps really and we took that concept and developed it into what we thought was an engineering solution to problem that we recognised. In about the end of 1985 we took our proposal to the Transfield constructions and they immediately seized on the opportunity. They in turn invited Kumagai-Gumi to participate.

Judd:

The Roads and Traffic Authority reviewed that project, reviewed the costing of the project and decided that that should be the project that we should proceed with.

Neville Wran, NSW Premier:

It's at a cost which we think the motorist in this state can afford. We think its environmental impact is minimal and from an engineering point of view we are confident that its practical.

Laurie Brereton, Minister for Roads:

Well, certainly we've got to go through all of the environmental processes. The laws of this state will be fully complied with. I am extremely confident that it will be built and that we'll start work on it before the end of next year.

Bathgate:

What would happen if nothing were done basically would be that traffic levels on the bridge would continue to increase until by the year 2000 you are looking at traffic levels of about 230,000 plus on an average week day and that would translate into a peak period which extended from 12 to 13 hours a day. In other words not really clearing till fairly late in the evening and that would just mean that the congestion across the bridge would basically set in, that there'd be very little effective communication between both sides, enormous costs in fuel and transport usage and just a very deficient method of communication.

Blunden:

A lot of peak spreading is natural but quite apart from that there's not much lost in scheduling your journey making to get the best utilisation of a very expensive facility. And of course whilst this is all happening public transport becomes relatively more attractive. People ask themselves whether they are living in the right place or working in the right place and so you get changes in the land use patterns.

Finlay:

We felt there was a real possibility of economic downturn for Sydney if congestion on the Bridge stayed the way it was. We considered it was really starting to effect business.

Mack:

Congestion is actually an excellent thing because it is the main means of control, in fact it is the only means of control. It is an interesting thing throughout the world that when people do anything to increase the average speed of cars which interestingly enough is about 16 km/hr in most cities in peak hours. If you do anything to increase that speed, right, then simply more cars come till the level falls again to 16 km/hr. It all seems to work on a public acceptance level which is pretty common the world over. You don't have to do anything about the road problem. You just leave it the same and let congestion determine the shape of the city. Because if there's enough congestion around the North Sydney area a new business area will created at Hornsby, which is in fact what's happening.

Blunden:

Politicians are well aware that their voting public are addicted to motor cars and paranoid about congestion and to dangle a carrot to get rid of it, my main claim is that you won't get rid of it, there'll be more. What you're going to do is convert the present bottle neck, and the bridge is a bottle neck, into a bigger bottle neck.