Councillor Paul Jacob reveals ideas to fix Townsville’s northern suburbs bottlenecks on Woolcock St

A Townsville councillor says we need to act now to fix horror traffic jams or risk the northern suburbs growing beyond capacity. SEE THE OPTIONS.

Councillor Paul Jacob believes two options can help ease bottlenecks on the roads out to the northern beaches. Picture: Shae Beplate.

A Townsville councillor says action must be taken to ease bottlenecks for residents in the city’s northern suburbs as more land becomes unlocked in the booming area.

Last week, the state government revealed $36m would be allocated for trunk road infrastructure and land activation in North Queensland. This included a $29.5m boost for the council’s $42m Northern Beaches Trunk Road Infrastructure Package.

This includes connecting Svensson Rd to the Bruce Highway to unlock further development opportunities.

Division one councillor, Paul Jacob, said while the upgrades would make a difference, more work was needed to address issues for road users.

“We have a future problem, or actually we have a problem now, where all the North Shore suburbs that are being developed like North Shore Burdell, and Bushland Beach, are all funnelling into the Shaw Road intersection with the North Shore Boulevard,” Cr Jacob said.

“That itself is the bottleneck, but the biggest bottleneck is the two bridges (over the Bohle River) that we’ve got, one going into town, two lanes one coming out of town, two lanes, generally if we’ve had a lot of rain that bottom lower bridge is closed.”

“So that we have that funnelling effect occurring on a lane each week, and it’s very difficult for residents, especially in my division and division two to get in and out of the city.”

This comes after the state government made the call not to fund a business case into finding a solution to the bottleneck on North Townsville Rd (Woolcock St), at the Shaw Rd and North Shore Bld intersections.

It was deemed too expensive to deliver a solution with meaningful improvement at the intersection with the money that had been allocated.

The government had previously allocated $10m to improving the intersections on Mount Low to Deeragun on North Townsville Rd. This funding is no longer in the budget.

Bruce Highway (Woolcock Street) and Shaw Road (Ring Road) Intersection looking down the Bruce Highway towards the North Shore Development Drive.

Cr Jacob said there were two options that would alleviate the issue, including a new bridge to replace the city-bound lane over the Bohle River. However, he said this would be a logistical nightmare while the bridge was being constructed.

His second suggestion was a new bridge, which would join North Shore Boulevard to Ingham Road, to service the new developments in the area.

“Really the only option that won’t cause any disruptions will be a second bridge that’ll be somewhere in those environments to get across the Bohle and join up with Ingham Road,” Cr Jacob said.

“And even when they join up to Ingham Road then they can funnel that onto Woolcock Street because once you get onto Woolcock Street on the city side there doesn’t seem to be a problem.”

He said with the North Shore continuing to grow, the need for easing traffic congestion has come to the forefront again.

“Our first priority with the government was to try and get trunk infrastructure for council so we could continue the development in the northern beaches,” Mr Jacobs said.

“It’s just because of that and because they’ve put the money in for that trunk infrastructure and those roads at Svensson and those sort of places, but it’s really going to accentuate the problem to get those people into town.”

A spokesman for Transport and Main Roads said that three projects for North Townsville Road were in the 2025/26 Queensland Transport and Roads Investment Program, which included Charters Towers Road to Tenth Avenue, the Dalrymple and Woolcock Street intersection and Weston Street to Pilkington Street. 

Originally published as Councillor Paul Jacob reveals ideas to fix Townsville’s northern suburbs bottlenecks on Woolcock St