Motorists face paying two sets of tolls to drive from western parts of Sydney to the city's main airport as property and construction giant Lendlease seeks the rights to build a crucial motorway link from the WestConnex toll road to both the airport and port.
Lendlease, which is riding a construction boom in NSW, has lodged an unsolicited proposal with the state government for the so-called Sydney gateway, extending from a major interchange for WestConnex at St Peters in Sydney's inner west to Mascot.
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While few details of the link's likely final shape have been released, the government says the gateway will not be part of the distance-based tolling regime for WestConnex, which is capped at $8.60 in today's dollars.
That means motorists driving from parts of western Sydney such as Parramatta to the airport face paying well above the toll cap if separate charges are imposed on the gateway.
The Berejiklian government has been under pressure to reveal its intentions for the gateway because it was one of the original justifications for the 33-kilometre WestConnex tollroad.
The Minister for WestConnex, Stuart Ayres, and the Roads Minister, Melinda Pavey, will be grilled about the gateway when they appear before budget estimates hearings on Wednesday.
Labor's transport spokeswoman, Jodi McKay, said the government needed to reveal what the tolling regime would be for the gateway, given it had made clear it was now not part of WestConnex.
"There are real questions that the government has to answer about how much it is going to cost people in western Sydney to get to the airport, and whether they will be tolled twice," she said. "There is so much secrecy around this whole thing."
![The gateway will connect to the interchange for WestConnex at St Peters.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170904043749im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/6/2/i/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gy9nk8.png/1504447822393.jpg)
A spokesman for Mrs Pavey declined to answer questions about what tolls would be imposed on the gateway, but reiterated that it would not be part of the tolling regime for WestConnex and that the government was working with key stakeholders on a design concept.
"Unlike Labor, we are committed to delivering key infrastructure projects like Sydney gateway that will connect to WestConnex by 2023," he said.
![The so-called Sydney gateway was listed as part of the second stage of WestConnex in the business case.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170904043749im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/g/x/i/4/c/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gy9nk8.png/1504447822393.jpg)
Lendlease, which declined to comment, boasts among its senior ranks Jason de Sousa, an ex-chief of staff to former NSW roads minister Duncan Gay.
Christopher Swann, a former Macquarie Bank executive who managed the second stage of WestConnex, has also been at the Lendlease-owned infrastructure financier Capella Capital since February.
The gateway to the airport falls under the management of NSW Roads and Maritime Services, which has been conducting extensive modelling of traffic for the proposed link.
The roads authority has refused Fairfax Media's request under freedom-of-information laws for access to the traffic modelling and other reports about the gateway.
The gateway link has been complicated by the large number of federal and government agencies, and companies such as Sydney Airport and Qube, which are affected by its development.
Construction of the gateway is planned to dovetail with the proposed duplication of the rail line from Port Botany to Sydney's west. That may require moving the rail line near the northern boundary of the airport about 500 metres north.
A Transport for NSW document obtained last month by Labor estimated that the cost of the link to the port and airport had more than doubled to as much as $1.8 billion.
The updated business case for WestConnex, released in late 2015, lists the gateway as part of stage two of the project, and due to open "at the latest" by 2023.
Yet the government insists it is not part of WestConnex, and that the $800 million for the gateway included in the total cost of the $16.8 billion toll road project was an "allocation".
A Lendlease consortium is also one of two groups the state government shortlisted in June to build the final stage of WestConnex, which comprises twin tunnels between Haberfield and St Peters known as the M4-M5 link.
Lendlease is involved in constructing the nine-kilometre NorthConnex tunnel linking the M1 motorway to the M2 in Sydney's north, and major road upgrades near the site of the proposed Western Sydney Airport at Badgerys Creek.
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