This is a document I submitted in response to the Torrens to Darlington 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 the project as well as some issues with the consultation process surrounding it.

Lack of provision for future motorway connections

The North South Corridor is not the only major economic corridor in Adelaide. The current plans have a single focus on this to the neglect of the others. We need not just one motorway, but a connected network of motorways to provide efficient, convenient access to all parts of the Adelaide suburbs, including the eastern and northeastern suburbs and hills. The current plans for the Torrens to Darlington project are severely deficient in that they lack any consideration or plan for how other motorways would be connected to it in the future to create a connected network. In particular:

• The hills are an area with a lot of growth potential (especially east of Mt Barker) – not just residential but industrial too. This will require motorway connections from the end of the South Eastern freeway, including a connection to the North-South motorway. Cross Road represents the most reasonable alignment for this, yet that presents a serious problem if the North South motorway is intended to be in a tunnel under Cross Road. In other words, the current plans make no provision for connecting to the South Eastern Freeway, and would make it virtually impossible to build this connection, which would be a planning disaster. The surface-level motorway needs to be extended at least some distance south of Cross Road to make this connection a possibility.
• The northeastern suburbs should have a decent motorway connection too. Extending the port river expressway east to Modbury would be a good first step, and it could then be extended through the hills toward Murray Bridge to provide an alternative to the South Eastern freeway for trucks destined for the northern suburbs. However, this alone won’t be enough.
• A second north-south motorway will eventually be needed on the eastern side of the city, running from Glen Osmond to Modbury to Elizabeth and then connecting to the Northern Expressway near Andrews Farm. This will be needed for two reasons: firstly, because one north-south motorway won’t handle future traffic volumes, especially if has only three lanes in each direction, and secondly, because because the eastern and northeastern suburbs need a more convenient north-south route. Only then will Adelaide have a reasonably complete motorway network.
• The motorway connection along Cross Road is essential regardless of whether or not this second North-South motorway is built, as it will form a crucial link between the two north-south motorways and to the South Eastern Freeway.
• Australia’s population is growing, and Adelaide should have its fair share of that. Our population growth and economic growth finally seems to be coming out of 50 years of relative stagnation (compared to the rest of the country), so we need to consider what will be needed to support that. One three-lane motorway from north to south will not cut it.

Deficiency of entries and exits, and resulting traffic problems

• The hybrid tunnels solution was meant to provide an “airport link” (those words appeared in several places on plans released in 2021, despite the plans having no meaningful link to the airport). Under current plans, traffic to/from the northern suburbs would need to enter/exit the motorway north of Port Road to access the airport. This is unfair to residents of the northern suburbs (which is where more and more people will live in the future) and embarrassing to the city of Adelaide.
• The motorway entry/exit north of Port Road would be overloaded with traffic, as the next entry/exit to the south would be at Richmond Road. The Port Road entry/exit was not designed to handle this much traffic, and the result will be accidents and congestion at that entry, and the volume of traffic entering and merging will slow down traffic on the motorway, possibly causing traffic jams that may back up all the way into the tunnel.
• A north-facing entry and exit just north of Henley Beach Rd (for northbound traffic to enter and southbound traffic to exit) would solve both of the above problems, and also give residents of the western suburbs much better access to the motorway. This entry/exit isn’t included in current plans, and should be added.
• Access to Daws Rd, especially for traffic to/from the north, is highly desirable. The lack of this in the current plans means that many people and businesses in the local area would miss out on the full benefits of the motorway.
• Lack of a Daws Rd entry will result in a lot more traffic turning right from Ayliffes Rd to South Rd to get onto the motorway. The existing right turn facility at that intersection was designed for only small amounts of traffic.
• The Anzac Hwy intersection, in its proposed form, won’t handle the volume of traffic turning right from Anzac Hwy to the motorway, especially to go South (due to lack of a southbound entry at Cross Rd). Addition of this entry/exit at Cross Rd would help, but not completely solve this problem with the intersection design.

Lack of good cycling infrastructure

The current “Hybrid tunnels” plan would leave large parts of South Road without cycling lanes. The cheaper open motorway option would fix this automatically, just like the completed parts north of the Torrens River have done. The department says they will enhance cycling options in the back streets near to South Road, but a casual look at a map reveals that this would involve many dog-legs, and in some cases there are no parallel road near South Rd at all. Even if there was a fairly straight option, cyclists would still need to leave the South Rd corridor to get to it. As I once heard a former president of BikeSA say, every road should be a cycling road. Serious cyclists, especially those with experience, do not want to be slowed down by weaving through the back streets. There is no substitute for bike lanes on South Road, so it’s fair to say that the current design neglects the needs of cyclists.

Economic implications of excluding dangerous goods

This is meant to be Adelaide’s main freight corridor, yet the department has neglected the needs of dangerous goods vehicles (those carrying fuel, chemicals or other dangerous goods), because they won’t be allowed in the tunnels. And because there is no alternative non-stop freight corridor for them to use, they would have no option but to use South Road, taking about ten minutes longer. Inefficient freight transportation has an economic impact on supply chains, which will impact business and consumers in the southern suburbs. And the continued presence of these trucks on South Road will have an impact on other road users. Adelaide should have at least one non-stop north-south freight corridor that is open to all kinds of freight.

Missed opportunity for public transport integration

Failing to think outside of the scope of a single project often leads to missed opportunities. Transportation should always be thought of as an integrated system, and there are significant opportunities for integration that are ruled out by the tunnels option. In particular, having an exit at Henley Beach Rd (for traffic coming from the north) and at Sir Donald Bradman Drive (for traffic coming from the south) would give direct access to the city, which would be great for express bus services, especially from the northern suburbs. This would work very well with the existing bus lanes on Henley Beach Rd and Currie St/Grenfell St. Without the motorway exit at Henley Beach Rd, any bus from the north would need to exit at Port Road, which would take several minutes longer at the best of times, and be much more likely to run into congestion due to the larger amount of traffic that would use this exit if there isn’t one at Henley Beach Rd. This will make a big difference to the quality of public transport services that can be offered to residents of the northern suburbs, especially new growth areas like Virginia, Two Wells and Riverlea. Given that the north will be a big area of growth, I consider this a serious problem.

High cost to taxpayers and opportunity cost of investing that money in other projects

Tunnels were acknowledged to be the more expensive option long before the cost blew out to over $15 billion, so why is the government still pursuing an option that is significantly more expensive and also objectively inferior for all the reasons mentioned above? The cost of doing so amounts to thousands of dollars per South Australian, which they will have to pay one way or another. It also represents a missed opportunity to invest that money in other important infrastructure projects, including the other “missing link” to connect the South Eastern Freeway to the network. The federal government will also be less willing to contribute money to future projects after the state has burned through such a large amount on a single project.

Excess property demolition in some places

The department’s claims about how many properties would be saved by building tunnels failed to account for excess properties required around the tunnel entrances due to the excess width of the motorway in those places, compared to the 60-70m width needed for the motorway and South Road surface road (including verges and footpaths) in the Torrens to Torrens project.

Compensation of nearby homeowners was not considered

When I mentioned compensating nearby homeowners for noise and other impacts from the motorway, as an alternative to building tunnels (and for a small fraction of the cost), I was almost laughed out of the room by people in the transport department who said “you can’t give people money for doing nothing”. What would those people say if they found out that this kind of compensation for “near neighbours” is exactly what has long been done around wind farm projects, and is now also being done around high-voltage transmission line projects as part of the upgrades to the national electricity grid? See this story for an example of this.

If this kind of compensation is reasonable for transmission lines, then why not for roads? And if it can be done for a fraction of the additional cost of building tunnels, then I think it’s clearly the better option.

Problems with the consultation process.

The consultation process has been seriously biased in many ways:

• It consulted mainly with those who live near the project, and largely neglected to involve the broader Adelaide community.
• It presented a single design, rather than multiple alternative options.
• It didn’t openly and honestly discuss problems with that design, including those mention above.
• Discussion of costs of alternatives was conspicuously absent.
• It relied too much on voluntary feedback rather than polling and other unbiased means of sampling public opinion.
• It appealed to people’s self-interest rather than the needs of the entire city.

A better approach to consultation would have used a citizen’s jury randomly selected from across the Adelaide suburbs, which would be presented with all the options, without prejudice to the tunnels option, and informed of the costs and all the pros and cons of each option. I feel like the consultation process was designed from the beginning to give a specific, predetermined outcome.