[COM] Southern Expressway Duplication | $445m | 22km

[Will]

Great news. The one-way Southern Expressway is in the same basket as the old airport and the old bus station, as things which people use to attack us as being backward. Getting rid of the ammunition for the trolls is always a good thing. Also, this will be a good thing to help the Southern suburbs, as they appear to be getting little of the same attention as the northern suburbs regarding economic growth.

[Shuz]

And no-one believed me when I told you lot that my Liberal party source told me they were going to do so about a month ago...

Anyways. Great news! Long overdue. Starting to really build up on Adelaide's freeway network.

It's pretty obvious the direction which is already built is the southbound, and the northbound will require more extensive earthworks. The engineering task will be pretty significant; from creating flyovers for the Patalinga Road intersection, new bridges, removing and rebuilding each on and off-ramp to suit the duplicated at-grade diamond interchange format, expanding capacity of Stage II to 3x3 (hopefully) gantry overheads, electronic signage, a new interchange at Majors Road (hopefully) property acquisition where required, etc. Expect cost blowouts, but I'm not complaining. It's an integral part of our north-south corridor.

The design of the Darlington Interchange sounds very interesting also; I assume this means they do want to extend the Tonsley rail line to Flinders Medical Centre / University as well?

[muzzamo]

The design of the Darlington Interchange sounds very interesting also; I assume this means they do want to extend the Tonsley rail line to Flinders Medical Centre / University as well?

My guess is absolutely yes. That whole area down there needed a holistic, final solution that included the expressway, south road, sturt road and the interchange. And it sounds like this is going to provide it. Great work!

[Nathan]

Not needed. Just because a vocal bunch bleat on about it, doesn't make it necessary. The current expressway takes care of peak flows, and if you're going the opposite direction South Rd is perfectly fine.

This will just encourage more people to live 20-30kms away from where they work. Instead we should be working on the density of the CBD and inner suburbs, so people are able to cut their commute time, by cutting the actual commute.

[waz94]

I smell an election coming up. More vote buying at its brilliant best.

[muzzamo]

While I agree that it is obviously a pre-election commitment I can see where this fits in with their plan: A non-stop freeway from seaford to Gawler.

Rann/Foley have done or are doing more for this vision that any other government in the past 50 years and I'm all for it.

To those who think you can just increase density to avoid needing to do this: I'll give you a clue, it won't work. We will need a mixture of both inner city density and urban freeways because Australians still want to live in the suburbs. If we don't start planning for it now there will be gridlock and it will cost us a fortune in lost productivity.

Adelaidenow have a pretty crappy render online, no doubt produced in a rush:

http://player.video.news.com.au/adelaid ... Jr7QRm_kpG

which is from here in google maps:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... .77,,0,6.1

[Briggzy_03]

Hallelujah!

Here's hoping that since both parties are promising this, it wont become a false promise. This is long overdue. It will be interesting to see the differences between the two party's plans..

Not needed. Just because a vocal bunch bleat on about it, doesn't make it necessary. The current expressway takes care of peak flows, and if you're going the opposite direction South Rd is perfectly fine.

Bull. Do you drive down there often? South road is a stop start marathon. This is essentially catch up to what is being done north of Adelaide and should have been done properly in the south years ago.

[Nathan]

Not needed. Just because a vocal bunch bleat on about it, doesn't make it necessary. The current expressway takes care of peak flows, and if you're going the opposite direction South Rd is perfectly fine.

Bull. Do you drive down there often? South road is a stop start marathon. This is essentially catch up to what is being done north of Adelaide and should have been done properly in the south years ago.

If you're driving in peak, sure - but then you have the right direction on the expressway. If you're driving non-peak, or in the opposite direction to the peak traffic, then it's hardly a stop start marathon.

[Briggzy_03]

Not needed. Just because a vocal bunch bleat on about it, doesn't make it necessary. The current expressway takes care of peak flows, and if you're going the opposite direction South Rd is perfectly fine.

Bull. Do you drive down there often? South road is a stop start marathon. This is essentially catch up to what is being done north of Adelaide and should have been done properly in the south years ago.

If you're driving in peak, sure - but then you have the right direction on the expressway. If you're driving non-peak, or in the opposite direction to the peak traffic, then it's hardly a stop start marathon.

It cuts a good 10 minutes out of a drive from Seaford to Sheidow Park. As the 30 year plan suggests, an increase in 100,000 people within the next few decades means that it is essential in order to prevent serious congestion. I do agree with you Nathan that limiting the urban sprawl and encouraging growth in the inner suburbs is priority, but duplicating the expressway was always inevitable. If it saves a lot of headaches and money with work on the Darlington interchange then it should be done sooner rather than later. The RAA chief's comment that the money would be better spent on duplication of Victor Harbour road is true though..... and if it wasn't for the Darlington problem I would probably agree that it should be done first.

If the train line were extended to Flinders, where exactly would this new interchange be? I can't quite picture where it would be placed.

[Aidan]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's unenthusiastic about this! There are other parts of South Road (and Victor Harbor Road) that more urgently need upgrading, and bringing this forward is likely to delay them. And I regard a subway as more urgently needed than any of those!

However, I disagree with Nathan - if you're going the opposite direction, South Road is still significantly slower. And it won't encourage people to live further from where they work - unless they work further out than they live. And as house prices are lower further out, there's likely to be a good reason for that. For example, they may be married to people working nearer the City.

And Shuz, your hope that stage II be upgraded to 3x3 is nothing short of ludicrous. Nine lanes are more than twice as many as what's needed. And even upgrading it to 3+3 lanes would be more trouble than it's worth - it would make it unnecessarily difficult for traffic from Panalatinga and South roads to join, unless stage 1 were upgraded to 4 lanes northbound.

[muzzamo]

If the train line were extended to Flinders, where exactly would this new interchange be? I can't quite picture where it would be placed.

In the past they have said that it isn't being extended to flinders and isn't crossing south road, but terminates just short of that. Ie there would be an interchange on the south west corner of sturt road and south road.

There is another render online that captures the imagination a bit. This state is starting to get serious about road infrastructure and it shows.



Also here is the press release:

http://resources.news.com.au/files/2010 ... essway.pdf

[Briggzy_03]

Interesting.... Where is that? It kind of looks like South road with the Sturt road intersection in the distance..

[Shuz]

Here's the full image; looks like the expressway actually then sinks under as it goes beneath the Main South Road bridges to go into the Sturt Road underpass. Which would explain the slip lanes diverging before the bridges so that they could actually then merge with the MSR slip lanes for the underpass.

[Ben]

I'm angry at this for two reasons.

- The current Labor government is eithier constructing or promising to construct these expressways on the northern and southern ends of the city with nothing in the metropolitan area where majority of people live and commute. They're bringing everyone in faster but once there are here they can not move as we have a 2 lane major corridor, that is full of traffic lights and bottle necks. When will they realise they need to work in to out not vice versa as this clogging up our roads!!

- Secondly another short sighted decision. reducing the number of lanes from 3 down to 2. This is not going to ease congestion but actually induce it by reducing the number of lanes.

What we NEED is actually quite simple. We need a non stop North - South corridor of 3 lanes or more, with no traffic lights, frieght/train/tram crossings.

[muzzamo]

If you take a look at the render, the expressway splits in two at the end (northbound). The two northbound lanes merge into south road (through it's centre). Where does the other single northbound lane go? I'm guessing into Flinders, Sturt road or both. Its going to be an amazing piece of road design when intersection with Flinders and Sturt road is included too.