Matthew Abraham: Adelaide’s roadworks — such as the Darlington upgrade and T2T — have created a traffic nightmare

STOP, go, slow — any wonder motorists are fed up with Adelaide’s constant roadworks, says Matthew Abraham.

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FIFTY. Twenty-five. Forty. Fifty. Twenty-five. Fifteen. Fifty. Forty. Fifty. Sixty, woops, fifty. Twenty-five. Fifty.

This is the drumbeat of driving in Adelaide. Repeat every 10 minutes. If the pain persists, get out and walk. It will be marginally slower but at least it will not do your head in.

“It’s kind of an Adelaide experience,” is how one ALP contact described it this week. “Like going to the casino, only with kilometres.”

Our much-vaunted 20-minute city has become one giant motoring roulette wheel. How long will it take to get from Point A to Point B? Who knows? Put your money on red and cross your fingers.

When motorists bitch about it, the government thanks us for our patience while they build a new motoring nirvana.

It is true that you cannot perform open-heart surgery on a major arterial road without bleeding everywhere.

The enormous disruption of the South Road corridor is a case in point.

It looks like they have drained the planet’s entire reserves of tar to pave the Darlington Upgrade Project — and it has yet to get into top gear.

The $620 million upgrade of 3.3km of South Rd — made possible with federal Coalition funding of $496 million — promises a “non-stop motorway between the Southern Expressway and Tonsley Boulevard”. Jolly good.

They are also extending the existing Tonsley rail line through this maze to Flinders Medical Centre and the university precinct. At $86 million, that is a bargain and a rare example of good policy meets good politics.

At the other end of South Rd, the Torrens Rd to River Torrens Project, or T2T to its friends, is creating similar traffic migraines. This is almost a billion dollars worth of kit — split equally between the SA and federal governments — and is a key piece of what the Weatherill government promises will eventually be a non-stop North-South corridor.

For almost $2 billion of taxpayer cash, you would hope so. But will it be a non-stop corridor? No, it won’t.

Infrastructure work along South Rd, Darlington. Picture: Emma Brasier/AAP

As Graham Richardson, a former senior minister in the Hawke and Keating governments observed recently, we all know new roads just get you to the next traffic jam faster.

As Tonsley Boulevard disappears in your rear-view mirror, it will be time to hit the skids at Castle Plaza, a hopeless bottleneck complete with swamp-green pool fencing down the centre strip.

Motorists will also vie for space with heavy trucks because the corridor is being deliberately designed as a magnet for B-doubles.

But massive projects like this are not the only problem with driving in Adelaide.

In general, the consortiums building them manage traffic flow surprisingly well.

Besides, without them, our unemployment rate would be nudging double figures, rather than in the fives.

Until recently, one roadblock was the blokey, we-know-best culture critics say characterised the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, or DPTI.

During the week, Liberal defector and now Labor’s frequent flyer, Martin Hamilton-Smith, tweeted: “Glad to hear continued support for the Blackwood roundabout — DPTI are working hard on getting it right.”

It’s a roundabout, Marty, not a moon landing. They should be able to design it in their sleep.

A Labor source tells me that after the 2014 election, Premier Jay Weatherill did not just neck transport chief Rod Hook but, “in that crazy vicious way of his”, culled senior people in the department who he blamed for making dreadful mistakes.

“He went after them and got rid of them,” they said. Baby steps.

The real problem is far more intractable — the farcical absence of any genuine co-ordination in managing federal, state and local government road projects, be they major highways or piddly little side streets.

Everyone recognises the city’s traffic flow has become a mess that’s getting worse, not better. Everyone, that is, except the people we pay to run the joint.

The cavalier way in which roads are shut or slowed down with no warning, no sense of urgency and no regard for the impact on drivers or local businesses is a disgrace.

Want to put on a fashion show? Shut King William Rd for a couple of days.

Fixing a pothole? No problem. Bang up a 25km/h speed restriction zone for 500 metres on both sides of a four-lane road, then knock off for the weekend. Or vanish for the week. Or the month. Who cares? It’s only a road.