One of the city’s busiest Swan River crossings will close for a year while the new $430 million Fremantle traffic bridge is finished.
The old Fremantle traffic bridge will close from early 2026, severing the Queen Victoria Street crossing from North Fremantle to Fremantle while the new cable-stay bridge is completed and opened 12 months later.
The new Fremantle Traffic bridge.Credit: WA Government
Transport Minister Rita Saffioti said the closure would significantly impact traffic in the area.
Modelling suggested the average motorist’s commute across the nearby Stirling Bridge would go from 5 minutes to 28 minutes.
Speaking at the site of the new bridge on Tuesday, Saffioti said Main Roads had analysed the impact the closure would have on about 100 intersections in the area and outlined a range of measures the government hoped would bring that commute time down.
These included altering eight intersections to prioritise north-south flow, increasing Transperth and school bus routes, and increasing train services to lure more people onto public transport.
“The whole aim is to keep the north-south traffic on Stirling Highway moving as freely as possible because if that is held to up at too many rounds of traffic lights, you’ll get significant congestion,” she said.
“If no modifications were undertaken, it will take up to 28 minutes [to cross the river]. With modifications to the road network, we’re looking at 10 minutes.
“But also with reducing the amount of vehicles on the road, supporting a 15 per cent increase in public transport, we’re bringing that down to eight minutes and a half.”
The changes to the road network will borrow heavily from the ethos adopted for the Armadale line shutdown, which saw the government alter intersections along Albany Highway and give buses priority at traffic lights using Bluetooth signals to allow for quicker rail replacement travel.
“There will be new lanes, new turning pockets built. There will be CCTV, Bluetooth monitors being implemented across a number of the intersections,” Saffioti said.
“There will be an incident response group stationed here to ensure that if there is a traffic accident or a breakdown, we can respond immediately.”
Saffioti said about 27 extra buses will be transferred from the Armadale line shutdown to the Fremantle area to increase services in the area and there would be “a couple” of extra train services during peak hour.
School students crossing the river, particularly to John Curtin, will be particularly impacted.
Saffioti said they were looking at implementing new specific bus services for schools students.
The government is also not considering a curfew on truck movements from Fremantle Port along Stirling Highway Bridge, but was speaking with the port and retail distribution centres about how to minimise impact.
“Not everything is going to be perfect. We understand that nothing ever is, but we do our best to work, monitor and implement decisions, to address what will be a disruption,” Saffioti said.
The shutdown is the second-longest shutdown of a major transport infrastructure this government has undertaken.
The Armadale line was shut in November 2023 and was originally promised to reopen 18 months later while the line was elevated through Victoria Park, Cannington and Armadale.
The Victoria Park to Cannington project will open in June, marking just under 19 months since the line was shut down.
The remainder of the line from Kenwick to Byford, however, will not reopen for another few months.
Saffioti defended that broken promise and said completing the Victoria Park to Cannington project within 18 months was an extraordinary achievement.
She said much of the work on the new traffic bridge was being completed off-site and the shutdown wouldn’t occur until the contractors were ready.
“I’m confident it’ll be up to 12 months,” she said.
“I have to be confident in the people that deliver these projects. They work hard. They’re very good at engineering, and they work as hard as they can to deliver.”
Piling work, which caused a stir for riverside residents due to the clanging noises from driving the piles into the riverbed, has finished, and work has started on the four bridge towers.
Cottesloe MP Sandra Brewer said she would advocate for her constituents to ensure minimal disruption and timely completion of the bridge construction.
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