Former premier Mike Baird talked of “full duplication” when he committed $70 million to upgrading Nelson Bay Road in 2015, 10 days before the state election.
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That promise is now off the table despite his replacement, Gladys Berejiklian, announcing on Tuesday in Salt Ash that a re-elected Coalition government would spend $275 million – the original amount plus an extra $205 million – to build dual carriageway from Williamtown to Bobs Farm.
About 1.8km of that 10.9km stretch is already divided dual carriageway, meaning the government has pledged to add another 9km of double-lane road to the busy Port Stephens gateway.
The premier said the “best advice” she had from Roads and Maritime Services was that work could start this year and take about two years to complete.
If the work follows that ambitious timetable, it will be welcomed by residents of the peninsula who have to drive through an increasingly clogged bottleneck around Salt Ash, especially in holiday periods.
The $275 million project includes planning but no construction work on the 6km section from Williamtown to Fern Bay, according to the premier’s office, and it is anyone’s guess when the promised full duplication of the road will eventuate.
Almost half of the 36km road from Fern Bay to Nelson Bay, including the 7.5km north of Anna Bay, will remain single lane even after the newly promised upgrade.
Data from the NSW Centre for Road Safety show how valuable the divided dual carriageway sections of Nelson Bay Road have been in reducing accidents.
A map plotting crashes from 2013 to 2017 shows a concentration of accidents in the 10.9km section the government has promised to duplicate, including nine in 2017, four of which involved serious injury.
The 4.2km section between Bobs Farm and Anna Bay recorded 12 accidents in 2013-14, the two years before it was upgraded to dual carriageway, and just four in the two years after.
The data shows the section of road south of Williamtown is not as susceptible to crashes, but it is an important road link between Newcastle and the expanding airport.
The RMS’s permanent vehicle counter on top of Stockton Bridge shows traffic volumes have risen steadily over the past 10 years, from a daily average of 20,743 in 2008 to 25,735 in 2018.
Traffic leaving Nelson Bay at the end of the Queen’s birthday long weekend last year hit a pinch point at Salt Ash and backed up towards Bobs Farm.
Labor appears poised to make a commitment of its own on Nelson Bay Road after Port Stephens MP Kate Washington said this week that “we’ll have more to say” before the March 23 election.