Connect - 16 October 2020

Consultation open for the future of road safety

Our road safety team is involved in some great work to deliver a new Road Safety Strategy that will carry us through to 2031.

Critical to this is the involvement of the community to gain an understanding on how people move about their communities, their goals for improving road safety and the issues they would like to see addressed in the strategy.

This is critical to helping decrease the number of injuries and lives lost on our roads.

If you use the roads in anyway - driving, riding, cycling or as a pedestrian - I encourage you to get involved in our yourSAy survey (this survey is now closed).

You can comment other government initiatives through the yourSAy website.

Acknowledging autonomous vehicle success

The department’s autonomous vehicle project based in Renmark has been selected as a finalist for the ‘Connected and Automated Vehicle Award’, as part of the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) Australia National Awards 2020.

South Australia’s first regional autonomous vehicle, named Murray (pictured below), first provided a new transport service for the Renmark community in August last year.

The project is jointly conducted by the Department, EasyMile, SAGE Automation, the Renmark Paringa Council and Flinders University. While the service is currently not taking passengers, Murray provided a free loop service around Renmark, connected to a world first custom-built traffic control signal to enable safe navigation across a dual carriageway and featured an electric retractable ramp to allow for a wheelchair and accessibility needs.

Congratulations to the Future Mobility team!

Gawler East Link Road Project

This week we held a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of the $67.7 million Gawler East Link Road Project.

Construction of this project, which comprises 62,360 square metres of road and footpaths, required 16,007 tonnes of asphalt, 2362 cubic metres of concrete and 465 tonnes of precast concrete.

The project will open to traffic for the first time this Sunday at 2pm, eliminating the need to travel through the Gawler town centre and providing new essential infrastructure access for new dwellings in surrounding suburbs.

The project also improves accessibility for local residents with two new local roads, Schomburgk Drive and Mullamar Way.

Duplicating Joy Baluch AM Bridge

The $200 million Joy Baluch AM Bridge Duplication Project is ramping up in Port Augusta with the design for the project now finalised and available on the PW2PA Alliance website.

The project will see the construction of a new bridge next to the existing bridge to allow for two lanes of traffic in both directions between Mackay Street (east of the bridge) and Burgoyne Street (west of the bridge). Once complete, the project will improve road safety, travel efficiency and freight productivity for this critical road link.

Some construction works are now visible on the ground with the western causeway being constructed for the new bridge abutment. Construction will also soon begin on the Eastside Foreshore to enable construction of a temporary wharf. The temporary wharf will be used to transport new bridge piles and beams into position to construct the duplicate bridge.

Above: Drone image of the Joy Baluch AM Bridge.

Feedback driving better road navigation

After listening to concerns from the community, steps have been taken to provide more navigational information around the new Darlington Upgrade Project.

Additional directional signage was installed around the project site this week to help those already on the road, particularly those accessing the Flinders Medical Centre, and a number of user experience videos to help those planning to travel through the area.

All videos can be found on the Darlington project website.

Above: One of the new blue directional signs installed at the Darlington Upgrade Project.

Friday Flashback

Our Joy Baluch AM Bridge Duplication project team recently came across a historical photo of the construction of the original bridge in the Departmental archive.

In 1966 it was announced a new bridge would be built at the top of the Spencer Gulf to replace the ‘Great Western Bridge’ after it was deemed to be inadequate for heavy loads. This new bridge, pictured under construction below, was originally named the ‘Port Augusta Bridge’ and was officially opened in 1972.

It was later named the ‘Joy Baluch AM Bridge’ in honour of the Australian politician and long-term Mayor of Port Augusta of the same name who served from 1981 to 1993, and again from 1995 until she passed away in 2013.

The ‘Port Augusta Bridge’ under construction in 1972, now known as the Joy Baluch AM Bridge.