HOW $104M ROADWORKS WILL SLASH YOUR COMMUTE INTO CITY
MASS tree clearing beside the Southern Access Corridor is paving the way for a $104 million plan to slash the morning commute to the Cairns CBD.
The roadside landscape has quickly transformed since construction on the Bruce Hwy upgrade between Links Dr and Aumuller St began last month.
Heavy machinery can be seen every day tearing up earth and hacking vegetation to make room for the eventual construction of an extra lane of traffic in each direction.
It will be a monumental task for lead contractor Georgiou Koppen Joint Venture, with new bridges, roundabout replacement, traffic lights, bike paths and 2.6km of road being upgraded.
Transport Minister Mark Bailey said 40,000 motorists were expected to drive the road each day by 2036 and increasing to six lanes would be critical to traffic flow.
“Replacing the roundabout at Draper and Kenny streets with traffic lights and having two three-lane bridges over Chinaman Creek will help bottlenecks in that part of town, particularly during the peak,” he said. “There will also be a shared bike rider and pedestrian path built along the 2.6km stretch we’re upgrading.”
The project will result in the loss of on-street parking on the side of the highway around Buchan and Aumuller streets, as well as a switch from angled parking to parallel spots on Lyons, Aumuller and Buchan streets.
Traffic light intersection upgrades at Buchan, Aumuller and Lyons streets are also pegged.
“This project was included in our wider Cairns Bruce Highway Master Plan released in 2010 so it was good to be up there last month to see work start,” Mr Bailey said. “We expect that work ... to finish by late 2021.”
The Federal Government has contributed 80 per cent of the project’s $104 million price — something Mr Bailey said he hoped could be replicated for motorists on the city’s northside. After months of toand-fro, he recently followed Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch’s push for an extension of the National Highway through to Smithfield.