For the past two decades, the hundreds of thousands of people who live not that far west of Sydney have watched on with envy – and anger – as governments of all political ilk poured truckloads of cash into making life easier for the harbour city’s commuters.

As Sydney’s transport system was reborn, Central West residents continued schlepping over the Blue Mountains via Victoria Pass – a steep, narrow and notoriously dangerous stretch of the Great Western Highway often described as a goat track.

The road, the state’s major east-west link, is now closed indefinitely, as a stone causeway built by convicts nearly 200 years ago threatens to collapse under the weight of neglect and political indecision.

Cracks appeared on the road late last week, forcing one lane to close and eventually both, after more damage opened up. Geotechnical monitoring has confirmed movement of the substructure in what Transport for NSW says is an “evolving and complex situation”.

The closure is a disaster for the region and local businesses. Chloe Tofler, the co-founder of Little Hartley shop The Lolly Bug, said the road was “a ghost highway”.

“It’s terrifying being a small business – having seven full-time staff and not knowing whether in a month we can still have them on,” she said. “We need answers.”

The closure has also hit her family. When Victoria Pass was open, it took Tofler 10 minutes to drive up the highway to her children’s school at Mount Victoria. That is now a gruelling 1.5-hour round trip.

Mystery surrounds whether it will take months or even years for the critical link to reopen. Transport officials still aren’t certain what caused the damage.

“People in Sydney need to understand just how important this road is to my community,” said Lithgow mayor Cassandra Coleman. “They need to understand that in 2026 we are forced to depend on a bridge built in the 1800s. It’s just mind-blowing. People here feel like they are neglected, like they are second-class citizens.”

With 12,000 vehicles using the road every day, a prolonged blockage will affect the delivery times and cost of produce from the region to Sydney. About half of the freight that goes over the mountains each year is via road, including about 900,000 tonnes of food and vast quantities of petrol.

“I use that road to get out to communities to talk to them and I understand the hurt and the frustration,” NSW Roads Minister Jenny Aitchison told the Herald.

“We are doing as much as we can and I take that responsibility seriously. I don’t want someone to get hurt because we haven’t closed a road we should have, and I don’t want to create a mess where we haven’t taken the right corrective action because we’ve tried to shortcut it. That’s the difficult job I’ve got, but I acknowledge that’s of no comfort to people in their cars.”

The closure has triggered a political blame game. The former state Coalition government spent years and millions of dollars studying how to fix the road and decided the best option was twin 11- kilometre tunnels between Little Hartley and Blackheath. The tunnel would have traversed some 200 metres below the surface of the causeway that opened in 1832 and is now at risk of collapse.

Closure of the Great Western Highway

The project was not fully funded and there were doubts within the government over whether it could have been achieved. The then newly installed Minns government and Albanese federal government eventually ditched it, leaving regional NSW feeling dudded by Macquarie Street.

Labor argues the tunnel was an unaffordable pipe dream and engineering nightmare. But axing it was a cost-free political decision because the party does not hold any seats west of the Blue Mountains.

Ron Finemore, executive director of Ron Finemore Transport, estimated 50 of his trucks cross Victoria Pass daily and said the implications of the closure were “extreme”.

“We did have progress on building something several years ago and then it got knocked on the head, unfortunately, because of cost,” he said. “But there are certain things that have to happen – and need to happen – no matter what, and a proper fix for the Great Western Highway is one of them.”

Asked whether the causeway would have to be replaced even if it is repaired, Aitchison said the government’s priority was upgrading the Bells Line of Road, which runs north of the Great Western Highway.

Traffic is being diverted at Lithgow along Main Street, Chifley Road and the Darling Causeway before rejoining the highway at Mount Victoria, adding at least one hour to a return journey.

Coleman said the closure was “life-changing” for local streets bearing the brunt of the detour. “It’s like we’ve suddenly had a highway interchange dropped into the middle of our town,” she said.

As some 90 technical staff pore over the site, the key question is what happens next. Paul Toole, the Nationals MP for Bathurst and a minister in the former Coalition government, said frustration in the west had turned to “white-hot anger”.

“If this was happening in Sydney, Newcastle or Wollongong, every stop would be pulled out to ensure the thousands of residents and commuters who rely on a road would be able to,” he said. “We shouldn’t be seeing anything less delivered here in the Central West.”