About 100 Sydney families will lose their homes to make way for the country's largest transport project, the NSW government has revealed.
The WestConnex motorway will link the city's west and east with its airport and port and is due for completion in 2023.
Roads Minister Duncan Gay on Thursday called for expressions of interest from industry to widen the M4 from six to eight lanes and released the concept design for the M4 East tunnel which is to run under the Parramatta Road corridor towards Haberfield.
He has previously said only "very few" homes would be demolished to make way for the roads network, but on Thursday he offered a figure for the first time.
"Building the motorway will require some property acquisitions, but we will try to keep them to a minimum," Mr Gay said in a statement.
"The exact number is not known at this stage as the final route alignment has not been determined, but it is expected to be about 100 properties.
"This is substantially fewer than comparable projects such as the Warringah Expressway or the Sydney Harbour Bridge."
The first stage of WestConnex includes widening the M4 from three to four lanes in each direction between Parramatta and Homebush.
Next comes an extension of the motorway - the M4 East - via a six-kilometre tunnel of three lanes in each direction from west of Concord Road, North Strathfield to Parramatta Road and the City-West Link at Haberfield.
The planning application for the M4 East has now been lodged and all stage-one plans are open for community consultation.
Mr Gay said the changes would transform Parramatta Road and cut travel times across the length of the planned roads.
"(Parramatta Road) is chaos, it's practically at a standstill," he told Macquarie Radio.
"We're removing those trucks and cars and putting them underground ... We want to mitigate the amount of houses we remove but the end product is going to be a better community for the people that live there."
Greens NSW Roads spokeswoman Mehreen Faruqi said residents in the inner west suburbs of North Strathfield, Ashfield, Concord and Haberfield would not only lose homes to WestConnex but face increased pollution and congestion.
"The billions going into Westconnex to build tunnels and acquire homes is billions not going into improving public transport to reduce congestion, make commutes faster and reduce pollution," Dr Faruqi said.
The Greens want light rail along Parramatta Road.
But Mr Gay scoffed at that suggestion.
"Spare me," he told Macquarie Radio.
"Seven years to construct the thing, where are the trucks going to go in the interim and how are you going to carry your fridge back from Bunnings on light rail?"
Leichhardt Council, which covers two suburbs through which the M4 East extension would run, said there had been so little transparency from the NSW government that it was holding a public meeting next week to inform residents about the plans.
"We haven't been given any meaningful evidence about what impact the project will have on Parramatta Road or our local streets," Mayor Darcy Byrne said in a statement on Thursday.
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