Residents tell of causeway chaos

MIDWAY Point residents say another two lanes desperately need to be added to the Sorell-Midway Point causeways to alleviate the traffic chaos crippling the area.

Homeowners told the Mercury traffic is so dire it’s driving people out of the suburb, with a trip to the city taking more than an hour on some days despite being only 20km away.

Couple Brett Sutton and Pamela Jones, who have lived in the area for more than 20 years, say the congestion is getting worse every day as more families commute across Pitt Water.

“They didn’t count on this area growing so rapidly, they never accommodated for it and now it shows,” Ms Jones said.

“Every day it gets worse, it starts at about 3.30pm and lasts until after 6pm,” Mr Sutton added.

“I work in Rokeby and can sit on this little stretch of the causeway for 20 minutes.”

Ann McBain, who lives in the neighbouring street, said adding two lanes to both sides of the causeways was the only thing that would help.

“The only answer is to duplicate the bridge all the way, or else it will just bottleneck at Sorell,” she said.

“If they can’t do that, they need to take another bridge all the way around.”

The RACT yesterday identified the Eastern Hobart approach as one of five largescale projects they want to see prioritised in next month’s Federal Budget.

Nicole Jordan labelled her drive to and from the city every day as “painful”.

“It can take anywhere from an hour to an hour and 15 minutes to get from here to Hobart every morning and night,” she said.

“If there was no traffic it would never take any more than 25 minutes.”

Retiree Beverley Chamberlain said on most days the cars crawl between 20km/h and 40km/h.