14 August 2008

Pialligo Avenue fixed by Christmas - election missed

| johnboy
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Mr Stanhope has announced that the dupication of Pialligo Avenue (near the airport) will not be finished before the election.

But he wants you to be sure the cheque’s in the mail and it will be open before Christmas.

Even better they managed to shake some of the cost out of the darkness on the edge of town otherwise known as the airport:

    “Minister for Territory and Municipal Services John Hargreaves said the duplication of Pialligo Avenue is being funded by the ACT Government ($7.5 m) and the Canberra Airport ($6.7 million).

    “The Pialligo Avenue duplication is the first stage of a two stage road works program identified by a taskforce I set up to examine traffic congestion on roads in the vicinity of the airport,” Mr Hargreaves said.”

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Before Snow became a property developer, that road was busy, but it always flowed. Once he mucked up the balance by building a CBD out there, the road became a disaster, and it doesn’t look like any of the current shennanigans is going to change that. it used to flow, and now it doesn’t. Thanks, Snow. So glad we can sit in traffic while you get rich.

The eastern-most part of the upgrade looks great. ie: Once you get past the final set of traffic lights there will be a fantasic 1 minute run for the remainder of the journey to the airport.

But if you are starting from anywhere further west than Pialligo this drive will be much worse than before. Maybe the road could be called Fyshwick Extension – in recognition that this will be another red light district?

…and that land is public land, and Snow gets to use it for car parks. What can’t he do?

and the Canberra Airport ($6.7 million)

I wonder if that figure is just for the duplication or if Snow’s including the other work as well. The road that goes from the front of the petrol station to the airport entrance/exit road has been moved across what was the park so Snow can add more car parking spaces for the airport temporarily, that work will have to be undone when the new entrance roads are built in that space.

This project won’t “fix” that congestion, it’ll just move the bottlenecks to other points. It’s largely a project by Snow to grandify the entrance to the airport. And the intersections will have traffic lights now, surely a step backwards. We’ll get to try it all out when Epicentre opens, look at all the new traffic lights on Canberra Avenue. It’s a mobile carpark during rush hour now, these new ones will make that worse.

In my latest work locale I use this road many times a day. There is no way on God’s green earth this thing will be anything close to finished by Xmas this year. I will be interested to see what Sonic’s definition of ‘duplicated’ is. Technically with the parallel dirt track at the moment it is ‘duplicated’.

The bloke couldn’t lie straight in bed, unless it was made with sheets that came from a country that complied with his human rights legislation and used cotton grown in an arboreteum

JC is right – we need less lights. The ACT government must have an arrangement with some company that produces traffic lights. If we must have traffic lights, why is it we can put man on the moon but can’t have intelligent lights that sense when the lights need to change?

JC, roundabouts aren’t meant to handle heavy traffic. Ligts will improve the traffic flow at heavy use times.

Thy’ll slow it down at other times though – i know which i prefer.

Forgot to say, wonder what the servo thinks of all this? The only business they will get now is traffic LEAVING the airport. There is no way in there. If coming from Civic it seems as if you need to do a full lap of the airport to get to it, or go past and come back through Snow Town.

What has this to do with the election? Bloody hell I wonder sometimes…..

As for this road works, yet again a balls up (John Boy if you want to bag the gov maybe this is how). Why so many bloody traffic lights? Why not leave the round-abouts as they are? I didn’t realise they were going to extend the highway like they are and make it all the way through to majura road. But looking at it, if the planners had half a brain they would put in some propper turn offs for people off Moreshead drive onto the highway, if they did they they probably wouldn’t need lights or roundabouts.

Sorry, meant “definitely dual carriageway, two lanes each way”.

This map shows the flyover as four lanes wide.

Definitely dual carriageway, according to the plans:

http://www.canberraairport.com.au/pdfs/airportroads.pdf

and yeah, “stage 1a” is to be completed by December.

They have a render of the flyover too:

http://www.canberraairport.com.au/pdfs/road_upgrade.pdf

Anyway, I’ll be interested to see how they’re going to fit dual carriageway on the flyover. It doesn’t look wide enough for four lanes to me. Or are they doing a “GDE” and just going to build it single lane and leave room for it to be duplicated later on?…

It’ll probably be, “Left lane exit to airport, Right lane straight through to Queanbeyan”.

I think the section between Fairbairn Avenue and the airport (i.e. the new flyover) is meant to be finished by Christmas.

I think there’s a link somewhere on the CIA website somewhere…

Anyway, I’ll be interested to see how they’re going to fit dual carriageway on the flyover. It doesn’t look wide enough for four lanes to me. Or are they doing a “GDE” and just going to build it single lane and leave room for it to be duplicated later on?…

Funny, most of the signage has March 09 as the completion date. Room for error, or the government making unrealistic promises?

As for Hargreaves’ taskforce recommendation, wasn’t the same recommendation made some time before the most recent one?

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