Overtaking lanes key to highway traffic woes fix

SO, according to today’s Bulletin, the Woodstock battery plant is to be bigger than planned.

That’s great! I can only assume it will mean an increase in traffic on Flinders Highway due, not only to the plant’s vehicular traffic, but also the 1500 employees travelling to and from work.

Well, I hope that the current situation with regards to traffic on the highway has been taken into account and that the necessary improvements to accommodate this increase will be made in a timely manner.

As a resident of Woodstock, it seems that the number of road trains using the highway has exploded in recent months.

On a typical day travelling to and from Townsville – a distance of approximately 40km – it is not uncommon to pass 20 of these, and other slow moving vehicles travelling in the opposite direction, not to mention being held up behind two or three of them going my way at well below the speed limit.

The opportunities for overtaking are very limited both because of the oncoming traffic and the fact that there are no slow vehicle/overtaking lanes on the whole stretch of road from Stuart to Woodstock and beyond.

In fact, there are no overtaking lanes between Stuart and the bottom of the Mingela Range – a distance of over 80km, which means that traffic coming from Charters Towers is already backed up behind heavy vehicles before getting to Woodstock.

Not so long ago a great deal of money was spent ‘upgrading’ the highway by installing double centre lines – a perfect opportunity to add a couple of overtaking lanes but that was not done and, if the road is to be improved as it needs to be, we will be faced with even more disruption to traffic while it is completed.

Not a happy thought! MARIANNE SAVAGE, Woodstock.