Brisbane traffic: Gateway Motorway upgrade shifts bottleneck from Nudgee to Deagon

A major Brisbane motorway upgrade that cost $1.143 billion, took three years to build and hasn’t even officially opened is already plagued by chronic traffic jams.

The new Gateway extension for northbound traffic has opened but has only moved the traffic jam up the road to the Deagon Deviation area. Picture: AAP/David Clark

A MAJOR Brisbane road upgrade that cost $1.143 billion, took three years to build and hasn’t even officially opened is already plagued by traffic jams.

Angry motorists have complained the Gateway North Upgrade (GUN) turns into a “carpark” in the afternoon peak hour as the project simply shifted a bottleneck 10km to the north, a problem the RACQ had warned about for years.

Gateway Motorway upgrade: Deagon Deviation to finally open

End in sight for Gateway Upgrade North project

Queensland Transport heralded a soft opening of the upgrade, which added an extra lane in either direction between Nudgee and Deagon, on social media on February 18.

The post, announcing speed limits had returned to 100km/h, was met with near universal ridicule as hundreds of motorists fumed that instead of speeding home along the gateway they were trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Same problem, different location. Picture: AAP/David Clark

“Yes wonderful news Department of Main Roads, you have managed to move the bottle neck from Nudgee Caltex now to Deagon,” one motorist wrote.

DTMR was lampooned online for the “idiotic” and “pathetic” decision to funnel three northbound lanes back down to two lanes for a short section through Bracken Ridge before the Bruce Highway merge at the Pine Rivers Bridge.

A DTMR spokeswoman said the “scope” of the funding package, which was split 80/20 between the federal and state governments, did not include funds for additional lanes north of Deagon.

She said there had been “significant improvements” in traffic flow on the motorway since the additional lanes between Nudgee and Deagon opened to traffic in late 2018.

“We are aware there is occasional traffic congestion during peak travel times, due to traffic incidents (for example breakdowns and crashes) and as a flow-on effect when similar incidents occur on the Bruce Highway,” she said in a statement.

“To minimise delays to road users, we monitor the road network and coordinate responses to these incidents.”

RACQ head of public policy Rebecca Michael said the peak body had been warning since the project’s “infancy” that unless it was built with three lanes all the way to the Bruce Highway it was “inevitable” the bottleneck would only shift north.

“At the time planning for the project was being undertaken, traffic volumes were already high so it was only inevitable that it would become another choke point,” she said.

She said the problem would only get worse in the coming years as traffic and freight volumes on the Gateway increased.