Road has a $120k masterplan — just no money to fix it

MORE than $100,000 has been spent on a masterplan to upgrade a road in Adelaide’s west. That was more than a year ago but there is still no money to fix it. So what happened?

A multi-million dollar plan to upgrade West Beach Rd remains on ice due to a lack of funding.

PLANS for a multi-million dollar upgrade of West Beach Rd have stalled because of a lack of funding, leaving residents to navigate potholes and heavy traffic.

Charles Sturt and West Torrens councils, which jointly own the road, spent $120,000 between them developing a so-called masterplan for the road in 2015, after receiving a community petition calling for an upgrade.

Additional funds for the masterplan came from Adelaide Airport Limited and Adelaide Shores.

The plan involves up to $5.5 million of works, including a full road reconstruction with a new median strip, new trees, parallel parking on the northern side of the street and landscaping to the south.

There would be new street lights, on-road bike lanes and an off-road shared path.

But the councils this month revealed they had missed out on grant applications to help fund the project, and they appear unwilling to pay for it on their own.

Resident Leon Williams, who has lived on the road for almost 17 years, said it was in desperate need of an upgrade.

“When I first came here it was a quiet little side street — now it’s a main arterial road,” he said.

He said Harbor Town, improvements to Adelaide Shores, new homes and sports upgrades at Barratt Reserve brought more traffic to the area.

“The infrastructure can’t keep up with that,” he said.

Mr Williams said the amount of traffic made it difficult for him to exit his driveway and the road was filled with potholes.

“The residents around here have had a gutful.”

A West Torrens Council report, released this month, stated the project missed out on money through the Local Government Association’s Special Local Roads Program because it was deemed a “low priority”.

It also missed out on funding through the Federal Government’s Black Spot program.

“Council’s administration will continue to collaborate with the City of Charles Sturt to identify further funding opportunities,” the report said.

West Torrens Mayor John Trainer said the councils could not afford to fix the road.

“It’s very difficult to fit an item like that into the normal budget without detracting from other programs and maintenance in the city,” he said.

He said borrowing money for the road upgrade was a possibility but had not yet been considered.

“Even so, I just don’t think it is really appropriate for the ratepayers in West Torrens to have to pay for a localised problem created by other agencies,” he said.

A Charles Sturt spokesman would only say the funding rejections were a “disappointing outcome”.