Not everyone believes so and in fact one Lithgow Council member believes the money should instead be re-allocated to the upper Blue Mountains.

RMS, as part of the Mt Victoria to Lithgow upgrade of the Great Western Highway, is planning a significant re-routing of the Forty Bends and intends making this an early stage in the program.

Already the work is around a year behind the schedule announced by Roads Minister Duncan Gay at a media call on site in 2012.

The Hartley section of the upgrade has attracted most of the haggling over recent years but there has been an 11th hour attempt to have Lithgow Council oppose the Forty0 Bends plan.

South Bowenfels resident Sarah Childs said that spending $100 million of taxpayer funds on this short section of highway was badly planned and would be of no real benefit.

In fact, she claimed, a planned bridge over a small creek on the deviation would result in more winter ice and make the road even less safe.

“The latest announcement of a 20 year delay on the Hartley upgrade shows the folly of this,” Ms Childs said.

“And travellers can expect a lot of delays due to futile roadworks.”

Ms Childs pointed out that the road underwent a major reconstruction only in 1990 ‘and is in excellent condition’.

She said Forty Bends was now one of the safest sections of highway in the district and a report recommending it as a priority for upgrade was well out of date.

“Squandering all of this money at a time of austerity is obscene,” she said.

Cr Col Hunter agreed and submitted a notice of motion calling on council to ask the government and RMS to defer the Forty Bends work and allocate the funds to other safety upgrades on the Great Western Highway.

Cr Hunter said the expenditure was unjustified particularly in view of the improved safety record.

“The money would be better spent on notorious black spots that can not get funding,” he said.

“The planned Whites Creek bridge will become an ice rink.”

Cr Hunter said the simple solution to existing winter ice problems at Forty Bends would be to ‘get a chainsaw and remove some trees’.

Cr Joe McGinnes claimed ‘the whole of the Mt Victoria to Lithgow plan is a folly.

“They talk about a tunnel and a slippery dip.”

Cr McGinnes said a meeting of residents at Hartley’s Comet Inn had voted unanimously for a preference for a Darling Causeway-Newnes Plateau route that would bypass Lithgow and Hartley.

Cr Frank Inzitari said that Cr Hunter’s notice of motion was ‘... one of the most disappointing I have heard’.

He said Forty Bends had a ‘record of absolute tragedies’.

“If they take the money away it will go to the North Coast,” he warned.

“To say we don’t want it because no one has been killed in a couple of years is the silliest motion I have heard.”

Cr Peter Pilbeam said council had previously voted for Forty Bends to be a priority and pointed out that it had been Cr Hunter who had moved for the entire $250 million funding from a Blackheath to Lithgow section to be spent on the Lithgow section.

Cr Hunter stuck with his latest viewpoint, however, and said the first money should be spent on the Blackheath to Mt Victoria section.

“I don’t care if the money goes to another local government area,” he said.

The motion was lost with only Crs Hunter, McGinnes and Ticehurst voting for the motion for the work to be deferred.