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 government had actually acquired most of the land to build it, but through a series of disastrous decisions over the following decades (which would need a whole blog post to talk about), the land was sold, which is why we find ourselves in the position we’re in today, looking at spending enormous amounts of money to build tunnels when the entire network could have been built for much less.
Now what we have is a transport department that won’t even acknowledge the need to (eventually) connect the South-Eastern Freeway to the new north-south motorway. They have no plan to do this and seem to be quite happy to build the north-south motorway in a way that would make it impossible.
The need for this connection should be obvious. The hills have a growing population, which will only increase as more land is released in Mount Barker and beyond to build the affordable housing that we so desperately need. This will put more traffic on the South Eastern Freeway, which will put more strain on the already-congested intersection at Glen Osmond and on the already-congested roads that distribute traffic from it, which are Cross Road, Portrush Road and Glen Osmond Road. A long-term solution is clearly needed, and part of that will be a motorway connecting the end of the South Eastern Freeway to the new north-south motorway.
This connection would greatly improve travel time between the hills and many parts of the Adelaide suburbs, including the western and southern suburbs and part of the northern suburbs, while the eastern and northeastern suburbs would continue to be served by Portrush Road. Most of the truck traffic would be removed from Portrush Road, freeing up capacity for other vehicles. This crucial east-west link will also provide faster travel between the eastern suburbs and southern/western suburbs.
And crucially, this will form a non-stop freight link as part of the national highway network, providing for the efficient movement of freight in and out of Adelaide, which will help promote economic growth and reduce the cost of goods for people in Adelaide and regional SA.
The transport department has used the phrase “building the missing link” to promote the Torrens To Darlington project, as it aptly describes the importance of this project in completing the North-South motorway from Old Noarlunga to Gawler. But what about the other missing link, the link to the South Eastern Freeway?
Yet despite this obvious need (which won’t be too far in the future), the transport department seems to be happy to completely ignore it to the point of making no provision for it in their plans. When I have raised this with them (on multiple occasions), the responses I got were:
“That’s not in the scope of this project.”
“We don’t need it – Cross Road has sufficient capacity, with minor improvements such as the Fullarton Road intersection upgrade.”
“We can still build that link, but it will have to connect to South Road instead of connecting directly to the motorway.”
This is short-term thinking at its worst, and will come back to bite them in the long run.
If the government’s tunnels plan were to go ahead, then it is inevitable that at some point in the future there will be talk about connecting the South Eastern Freeway to it, but it will be extremely expensive because of the mistakes that will have been made. Fixing the mess may well create an even bigger mess.
I hope the SA government makes the right decision, because I would hate to be the one to say “I told you so” while the people of South Australia are left paying for these mistake. Our history is already littered with planning mistakes that have cost us dearly; let’s not add an more to the pile. We owe it to future residents of South Australia to do the right thing with this.