22 July 2017

Cotter duplication on track for February finish

| Ian Bushnell
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Cotter Roadworks

Drivers on the Cotter Road will face a traffic switch and diversions in mid-August as the $28.9 million duplication project moves into its concluding phases.

Acting Director of Capital Works at Transport Canberra Jeremy Smith said the project was on track to be completed by February despite some delays putting it a few months behind schedule.

He said there had been delays in the supply of concrete beams for the new bridge being built across Yarralumla Creek, and in relocating ActewAGL and Icon services along the route.

Cotter Roadworks Cotter Roadworks

“We’ll finish off the eastbound carriageway, then there will be a traffic switch in mid-August so we can start using it,” Mr Smith said.

Attention will turn to rehabilitation work on the current westbound carriageway, particularly relating to the existing bridge, construction of noise mitigation walls adjacent to the Curtin residential area and the Canberra Equestrian Park, and the completion of a shared path for cyclists and pedestrians.

“Assuming we get all this work done and there are no weather impacts there should be no more major challenges that we envisage with the project,” Mr Smith said.

Transport Canberra says Cotter Road carries more than 20,000 vehicles a day as a major thoroughfare for traffic travelling from Canberra’s inner south suburbs, Weston Creek and the new developments in Molonglo Valley through to the city.

This number will increase as residents move in to the new Molonglo suburbs.

Transport Canberra says the new dual carriageway will allow traffic to flow more smoothly and help lower congestion while also providing safer access into and out of Canberra Equestrian Park.

The completed east and westbound carriageways will have a 2.5-metre on-road cycle lane, while the three-metre-wide shared path on the south side of Cotter Road will connect the existing paths along Yarralumla Creek to Kirkpatrick Street, with connections to Curtin.

The project will complete the duplication of Cotter Road between Adelaide Avenue and John Gorton Drive, which will eventually connect to William Hovell Drive as a major north-south arterial road.

Cotter Roadworks

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bigred said :

They have certainly been making good progress on this project in recent weeks. Congratulations are due all round.
It has also been an interesting experiment in the effectiveness of road works zones. While the signposting very clearly wants motorists to slow to 60 hm/h from near North Weston bus stop to just past the Lady Denman Drive intersection, the reality is that very few vehicles actually do slow unless there is a suggestion of some enforcement/revenue raising going on. It seems to me that it is more likely that there will be more risk of a faster moving vehicle colliding with the rear of a vehicle that had slowed.

I’d suggest that’s in part for two reasons:

1- why should traffic be slowed from the North Weston bus stop when the roadworks aren’t actually being carried out at that location – the area of roadworks isn’t until after the last set of Parkway traffic lights? If roadworkers applied the reduced speed zones only to the areas where the work was actually occurring, roadusers might take them more seriously.
2- for the first few months of work, construction fences were installed at the outer edges of the sealed shoulders to the existing road. All construction work was occurring on the other side of these fences (ie. away from the traffic), so the area where the public drove was completely unaffected by the works. Most of us managed to drive at 80km/h without colliding with any of the trees that used to line the road for decades prior to the works, why could we suddenly not be trusted to drive at that same speed between the bright construction fences installed in the same position? Even after hours (when no workers were on site), the reduced speed limit was still applied.

I’ve got this little children’s book that might explain it (you might have even heard of it) – it’s called “The little boy who cried wolf!”
If you cry “Roadworks, 60km/h” often enough when there is no increased risk, people will eventually learn to ignore it. I expect many road users will only take roadworks signage (incl. speed limits) seriously when the roadworkers themselves take it seriously.

They have certainly been making good progress on this project in recent weeks. Congratulations are due all round.
It has also been an interesting experiment in the effectiveness of road works zones. While the signposting very clearly wants motorists to slow to 60 hm/h from near North Weston bus stop to just past the Lady Denman Drive intersection, the reality is that very few vehicles actually do slow unless there is a suggestion of some enforcement/revenue raising going on. It seems to me that it is more likely that there will be more risk of a faster moving vehicle colliding with the rear of a vehicle that had slowed.

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