Port Wakefield Road in urgent need of repairs: RAA

Major works are needed to fix the Port Wakefield Road bottleneck, the motoring lobby says, as Iron Triangle leaders back a push to extend the National Highway by 200km.

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Port Wakefield Rd between the town and Adelaide’s northern suburbs needs major repair works, the RAA has warned.

RAA spokesman Matthew Vertudaches said the organisation’s members had been “very vocal’’ about the condition of the road and raised this issued through RAA’s Report-a-Road program.

“Late last year RAA assessed the road between Virginia and Port Wakefield and identified — despite some repair work in the past 18 months — there were large sections of the road in a poor state of maintenance which urgently required a reseal,’’ he said.

“It is imperative that repair works are made along the entire corridor to keep the road safe and serviceable.’’

The 68km stretch of highway from Port Wakefield to the Northern Expressway is ranked by the RAA as the fifth most dangerous in SA with a “medium-high” rating.

North of the town there will be a major upgrading of the highway at the intersection with the Copper Coast Highway, but this $90 million overhaul will only be to improve a notorious bottleneck for Adelaide/Yorke Peninsula/Mid North traffic.

A modified version of the project was promised by the Marshall government at the 2018 State Election. Now, in funding partnership with the Federal Government it is expected to be completed by 2022.

The most significant work in the area, the $885 million Northern Connector, will run parallel to Port Wakefield Rd but does not include any upgrade of the rd itself.

A grain truck. Picture: Andy Rogers

200km highway can drive future for Iron Triangle

Community leaders in the Iron Triangle towns of Whyalla, Port Pirie and Port Augusta have backed a push to extend the duplication of the National Highway 1 an extra 200km.

The RAA has pledged to make the duplication of a 200km stretch from Port Wakefield to Port Augusta a federal election issue. The road links Adelaide to the state’s north and west.

The stretch of road has previously been called a “death corridor” by the Civil Contractors Federation of SA, which estimated it would cost $1.2 billion to duplicate in 2016.

Whyalla Council chief executive Chris Cowley said more than $1 billion of projects and a potential population boom was in the pipeline for the region, and duplication of the highway was needed to improve safety.

“With the upper Spencer Gulf experiencing high levels of commercial development, we can only expect the levels of vehicles that will traverse from Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Whyalla to increase substantially,” Mr Cowley said.

“Recently, two sets of overtaking lanes have been created, which we welcome and they have worked to provide a level of safety, but the optimal outcome is a duplication of that road.” SIMEC Zen Energy is building a US$1 billion 280MW solar farm at Cultana, just outside Whyalla, while Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance will invest $600 million into Whyalla’s steelworks.

The council predicts the town’s population will increase from 22,000 to 80,000 in the next two decades.

RAA general manager of government and public policy Jayne Flaherty said the growth would put enormous pressure on the region’s roads and transport system.

“Given Augusta Hwy is going to see more traffic than ever before, an upgrade to this crucial corridor is now urgent,” she said. “And while it was great to see two new overtaking lanes constructed recently on the Lincoln Highway between Whyalla and Port Augusta, the feasibility of further upgrades to the Lincoln Highway, including the section between Whyalla and Port Lincoln, needs to be investigated, too.”

Port Pirie Mayor Leon Stephens also backed the push to duplicate the Augusta Highway. “To have economic growth, and with our position of having one of the largest lead smelters in the world, duplication for a dual highway between Adelaide and Whyalla should be the very least we accept,” Mr Stephens said.

He said some sections of the road also needed a surface upgrade, including the stretch between Redhill and Crystal Brook.

“If you’re going through there at 100-110km/h, the road has big ruts in it and you can actually aquaplane in your vehicle,” Mr Stephens said.

“We’ve got a good record from outside West Virginia to Port Wakefield … but the road gets progressively worse as you get towards the Mid North and Port Augusta and Whyalla.”

In December, an elderly Port Pirie couple were killed when their car and a truck collided at Augusta Highway’s intersection with Lake View Rd, near Redhill.

Port Augusta Mayor Brett Benbow said traffic on the highway had increased “dramatically” in recent years, with many more B-double trucks on the road. He believed the highway should be duplicated — at least between Adelaide and his hometown — but potentially all the way to Whyalla if the projected population boom came to fruition.

“With the congestion on the road, it becomes unsafe,” Mr Benbow said.

“If you have two or three B-doubles and then two or three caravans in the same link, it becomes a very slow trip. Cars can’t pass people before the overtaking lanes run out.”

— Erin Jones & Michelle Etheridge