Truck drivers and motorists stuck in their vehicles in the Blue Mountains overnight have complained about a lack of communication, with authorities not alerting them to how long the roads might be closed.
The Great Western Highway and Bells Line of Road were both shut overnight following heavy snowfall, causing queues of hundreds of motorists.
Tim Williams was returning to his home in Bathurst after a meeting in Blacktown on Tuesday night. He made it to Katoomba before coming across a roadblock where he was told that the Great Western Highway was closed along with the Bells Line of Road.
"That was around about 11.45pm, and they finally got the thing cleared and traffic went through at 9.15 this morning," he said.
"The disappointing thing was that that after having been told by the roadblock guys that that's as far as you can go - there was absolutely no communication at all all the way through [the night].
Mr Williams said he met the roadblock as the eighth car in the queue, but after four cars left and returned east through the Blue Mountains, he finished up as the fourth in line.
"There was just absolutely no communication," Mr Williams said, and compared the situation to the time the F3 [now the M1] was closed for nine hours on an April night in 2010.
"There was a great hoo-ha about that. It wasn't heat that was the problem this time, it was the cold," he said.
Mark Spence, a truck driver on an overnight run to Orange, was stuck on the Great Western Highway at Blackheath for almost 12 hours overnight.
"The road was closed at 9.30pm and I pulled up near to 10pm - we were not able to move until about 9am," said Mr Spence.
"We just had to sit in the truck and wait and see, no one told us anything that was happening."
The snow on the road was 30 centimetres deep, Mr Spence said, who has since moved to the road house at Mount Victoria to wait for a replacement driver.
"Because we didn't know what was happening, we had to sleep with one eye open. If someone came through and told us the road wasn't going to reopen, we could have gone to sleep," he said.
"The communication up here was shocking."
At midday, the Bells Line of Road was still closed, but the Great Western Highway had reopened.
Transport for NSW said crews could not reopen the roads until snow and ice had melted, fallen trees had been cleared and the road surface had been checked for damage.
"Once a road is closed due to the bad weather, it is difficult to know when it will reopen," a spokeswoman said.
Authorities had "worked through the night in difficult conditions to close the roads to ensure the safety of the public", she said.
"They also conducted regular checks of the closed section of road to provide assistance to anyone needing help.
"While some motorists may have been frustrated by the road closures, it was simply too dangerous to allow them through."
She said Transport for NSW had used electronic message boards on the M4, Great Western Highway and as far west as Bathurst to inform drivers of the closures.
