Imagine a better future for Adelaide, one in which travel between all parts of the metropolitan area is fast and hassle-free, in which freight and commercial traffic is able to get where it needs to go quickly and efficiently, stimulating economic growth and facilitating the growth of our city. One which opens up new opportunities and possibilities for residents and businesses in all parts of the metropolitan area.
Imagine if infrastructure were planned and built to meet the needs of the future, not only the present.
In order to have that future, we need to design present infrastructure projects with the future in mind. Unfortunately, the government’s Torrens to Darlington project doesn’t cut the mustard. It is an exorbitantly expensive, flawed design that will not meet the future needs of Adelaide. This design would:
- Cost twice as much as it should.
- Provide insufficient connections to important arterial roads and to the airport.
- Make no provision for a future motorway connection to the South Eastern Freeway.
- Be unable to carry dangerous goods trucks, leaving them on our arterial roads.
- Save a measly 30% of the properties that would be required for an open motorway. In other words, it requires almost as many properties as an open motorway would require.
The transport department, in its decision to build tunnels, has not properly considered alternative ways to solve the problems that tunnels were intended to solve, all while coming up with a design that seems to be the worst of both worlds – being as expensive as tunnels are, while still requiring almost as many properties as an open motorway.
There is a better way to do this, one which will give a much better outcome for our city’s long-term needs while also being much more affordable and addressing the concerns that led them to favour tunnels in the first place.
That alternative is described in detail in this document.
When governments take pride in shameful things
An excellent road network does not come about by accident. It requires careful, well-integrated planning over the entire metropolitan area, over many decades, as well as a will to implement these plans, and a commitment to see them through to completion. Unfortunately, Adelaide has a sad history of great plans that were never implemented, and…
Response to T2D Project Assessment Report
This is a copy of the submission I made to the consultation on the T2D project’s Project Assessment Report. This response relates mainly to the “Traffic and Transport” topic in the PAR, but also touches on other topics, such as impacts nearby homeowners and those facing property acquisition. This response raises several major issues with…
A better idea for the Tennyson Centre
The Tennyson Centre is a large commercial building on the western side of South Road, about 500 metres north of Anzac Highway, hosting a large number of business tenants, all of them in the healthcare industry. A casual look at a satellite image shows that, if the motorway were to continue straight north from the…
A little extra compensation goes a long way
Most significant transportation projects require land acquisition, and even those that don’t may have impacts on nearby properties and those who live in them. The Torrens to Darlington project is no exception, despite the use of tunnels, which don’t save nearly as many properties as the government claimed they would. Yet these impacts should not…
Time to fix Marion Rd
Anyone who goes anywhere near South Road knows that it’s a traffic bottleneck. It gets congested even at times when other roads usually aren’t. Yet there is a simple short-term solution available that the government is largely missing: fix Marion Road. The Marion Road corridor (which includes Holbrooks Road and East Avenue) is the most…
The Other “Missing Link”
Transport planning in Adelaide has lacked vision for the last 50 years. I say 50 years because if you go back just a few years more, there was the MATS plan, which was a visionary plan for a comprehensive network of motorways for Adelaide, and also included some visionary ideas about the rail network. The…