Parliamentary Committees

Public Works Committee: TULLOCH ROAD INTERSECTION UPGRADE

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:01): I move:

That the 18^th report of the committee for the Fifty-Fourth Parliament, entitled Tulloch Road Intersection Upgrade, be noted.

Tulloch Road is a key collector road in Evanston. The road provides access to and from Main North Road for a local school precinct as well as commercial developments. Access to Main North Road from Tulloch Road is currently unsignalised, and the committee has heard that community campaigning for a signalised upgrade at this intersection dates back to at least 2014. It is understood that currently some motor vehicles wait up to eight minutes at this intersection during peak times.

The intersection upgrade aims to improve safety outcomes for pedestrians and other road users, as well as reduce the current delay to motorists turning right from Tulloch Road into Main North Road. As part of the proposed works, the Main North Road intersection with Tulloch Road and Morrow Avenue will be upgraded, and this will include the duplication of Main North Road on approach and through the intersection.

There will also be a new dedicated left-hand turn lane from Main North Road into Tulloch Road, as well as a new through lane from Tulloch Road into Morrow Avenue. Other features of the upgrade include dedicated bicycle lanes on Main North Road; new signalised pedestrian crossings across Main North Road, Tulloch Road and Morrow Avenue; new and upgraded footpaths; upgraded lighting; and a pedestrian refuge at the intersection of Tulloch Road and the future Barnet Road cul-de-sac.

The estimated total cost of the project is $7.5 million and the expected time frame for completing the works is the early second quarter of 2019-20. The Public Works Committee has examined written and oral evidence in relation to this project, and the committee has been assured by officials from the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure that acquittals have been received from the Department of Treasury and Finance, Premier and Cabinet and the Crown Solicitor that the works and procedures contemplated are lawful.

The committee is satisfied that the proposal has been subject to the appropriate agency consultation and meets the criteria for examination of projects as described in the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991. Based on the evidence considered and pursuant to section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991, the Public Works Committee reports to parliament that it recommends the proposed public works.

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (11:04): I also rise to speak on this 18^th report of the Public Works Committee, entitled Tulloch Road Intersection Upgrade. I would like to say that it examined the history of the proposal itself and the efficacy of the application of South Australian taxpayer funds to this Tulloch Road intersection upgrade.

Just in terms of Tulloch Road, it is a key collector road, even though it is smaller. It provides access to and from commercial developments in the area but also the local school, the Gawler and District College, onto Main North Road. Access to Main North Road from Tulloch Road is currently unsignalised. There has been significant public campaigning for a signalised upgrade dating back to 2014. This was on the back of complaints around the intersection from students and parents from Gawler and District College but also from some of the customers of some of the commercial developments around there, including the Gawler Green Shopping Centre precinct.

The need for the upgrade is in response to this and also increased traffic volumes on Tulloch Road, which are linked to those commercial developments. I mentioned Gawler Green Shopping Centre. There is also a Bunnings and Coles in that Gawler precinct and a Hungry Jack's and Aldi as well, so there is quite a significant volume of traffic there.

This caused there to be, unfortunately, 17 reported crashes at the intersection of Main North Road and Tulloch Road over a five-year period, from 2013 to 2017. Eleven of those had property damage to the cars themselves and, unfortunately, six resulted in injuries. Luckily, they were minor injuries. Of those crashes occurring at the intersection, 74 per cent were right-angle crashes. Quite often cars on Tulloch Road want to turn right onto Main North Road.

Traffic surveys as a result of these crashes were undertaken twice, in March 2015 and February 2017. They revealed a consistent pattern of traffic movements on Tulloch Road. In particular, the studies revealed that 345 cars were attempting to exit Tulloch Road on weekdays, especially during the period of 3.15 to 4.00 in the afternoon, which is of course when many parents collect their children from the Gawler and District College and try to get onto Main North Road to go home.

On some occasions, up to 18 cars were observed queueing to turn right onto Main North Road from Tulloch Road. This is an unsignalised intersection. These 18 cars really exceeded the length of the sheltered right-hand turn there, which caused gridlock for movements on Tulloch Road. All these cars bank up, and the average delays at these times continued even after 4 o'clock and intermittently until 6 o'clock, so it took a while, with this big bank of traffic, for it to actually clear. The reason was that the average turn-right time for a car was about two minutes, so each car would get across in two minutes.

It was observed that sometimes it took eight minutes for a car that wanted to turn right onto Main North Road to actually be able to do so safely. The result was that many of these motorists abandoned their attempt to turn right onto Main North Road and instead tried to turn left onto Main North Road and then, further up, either did a U-turn or went into one of the side streets, maybe Ames Drive, and then did a U-turn to come back down the other way.

Because of this, an upgrade was looked at and advocated for by many people. This is what the Public Works Committee examined. The idea of the upgrade will really be to significantly reduce the delay to motorists turning right from Tulloch Road onto Main North Road and, importantly, improve the safety for road users and also pedestrians. You can imagine that, when 18 cars are queued up, people have to walk in between cars and the like.

Just in terms of placing the intersection, it is located approximately 200 metres north of the nearby intersection of Main North Road, Potts Road and Para Road in Evanston, which is also looking at being upgraded. In terms of the upgrade itself, it will involve the duplication of Main North Road and, importantly, construction of new traffic signals at that intersection of Main North Road, Tulloch Road and Morrow Road.

The Tulloch Road intersection upgrade forms part of DPTI's commitment to continually develop and upgrade the key arterial road network and aims to improve accessibility and connectivity to the road network, Main North Road being the main one, and support growth and investment in the area. As I mentioned before, there is a Bunnings quite close by, an Aldi store, the Gawler Green Shopping Centre, Coles and also the Gawler and District College, so the upgrade will provide both economic and social benefits by connecting people to those services.

It will certainly look to improve safety outcomes for all road users, pedestrians and cyclists by extending the walking and cycling infrastructure in the area and providing additional footpaths and upgraded pedestrian facilities. It will also provide local traffic with safer access to Main North Road, reduce travel times, especially for those trying to turn right, and create efficiency through the signalisation of the turn movements.

It also looks to minimise impacts on the travelling public, business operations and the wider community during construction where practically possible. Obviously, doing these upgrades causes inconvenience and we have to be mindful of other upgrades in the area as well. The upgrade, as I said before, aligns with the state government's commitment to improve the reliability of the transport system. In terms of the site ownership, Main North Road is under the care and control of DPTI; Tulloch Road and Morrow Avenue are under the care and control of the Town of Gawler.

Turning to some of the design features of this upgrade, they will involve the installation of traffic signals at the Main North Road/Tulloch Road/Morrow Avenue intersection, which will include pedestrian crossings across Main North Road between Tulloch Road and Morrow Avenue. It will involve the construction of a new dedicated left-turn lane from Main North Road into Tulloch Road and construction of a new through lane from Tulloch Road into Morrow Avenue; however, it should be noted that the Morrow Avenue exit will be retained as a left turn only, so you would not be able to turn right onto Main North Road from Morrow Avenue.

There will be new bicycle lanes northbound on Main North Road within the project's scope of works and construction of a new pedestrian footpath on the western side of Main North Road south of Tulloch Road. Footpaths on the eastern side of Main North Road will be upgraded from Ames Drive up to where the upgrade will occur. The new and upgraded footpaths will tie into the footpaths at the intersection of Main North Road with Potts Road and Para Road.

The project also looks at the construction of a new pedestrian refuge and ramps across Barnet Road, near the Gawler and District College at the intersection of Tulloch Road, and a future Barnet Road cul-de-sac. There is new kerbing and guttering on both sides of Main North Road, between Ames Drive and the intersection upgrade, and also an upgrade of the Tulloch Road junction with Barnet Road to ensure that traffic from the college can safely access Tulloch Road. Road lighting will be upgraded to LED lighting for the extent of the works and this upgrade is expected to reduce operating costs, improve visibility and enhance road night-time safety.

We looked at the whole-of-life cost of the project and this intersection being upgraded over two financial years: 2018-19 with a budget of $2 million, and 2019-20 with a budget of $5.5 million, giving a total project cost of $7.5 million. Of that, $6.5 million is proposed to be construction costs with $1 million for project and contract management. In terms of the net effect of the work, a cost-benefit analysis was undertaken that looked at the benefits and the costs in terms of the upgrade. It looked at the impact on travel times, vehicle operating costs and road costs.

In light of that, the Public Works Committee examined the written and oral evidence given in relation to the Tulloch Road intersection upgrade. Based on that evidence, and pursuant to section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act, the Public Works Committee reports to parliament that it recommends the proposed public work.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (11:14): I would like to speak in support of this motion to note the report supporting the upgrade of Tulloch Road. I am glad to report to the parliament that work has commenced on that intersection. I would like to provide some background on how this problem arose and a couple of other matters that have not been raised in the debate so far.

This road was created as a result of the rezoning of the southern part of the Gawler racecourse some years ago. It was rezoned for the purposes of commercial and retail usage, which I supported at the time. It had a long history because the council of the day opposed it. It ended up in the Supreme Court, which chucked out the council's appeal. The proceeds from the sale of the racecourse and a contribution from the then state Labor government enabled the racecourse to be entirely redeveloped, and we now have a state-of-the-art racecourse. In fact, it is probably the best racecourse in the state. It is certainly doing very well.

The issue arose as a result of the commercial and retail development occurring in stages, application by application. As each application was considered—Coles, Bunnings, Aldi—none of them were considered to generate enough traffic in their own right to warrant a developer contribution, but collectively they created a major problem at this intersection. If there is one thing that I need to say it is that there was a flaw, which was partly in the development provisions at the time but also, in my view, between the council of the day and DPTI.

They did not work together closely enough to ensure that the developers made a contribution to this cost. In the end, unfortunately, the taxpayers picked up 100 per cent of the cost of this project when they should not have had to. Clearly, the cost should have been shared. The developers should have made some contribution. That is water under the bridge, but we need to learn from these experiences to make sure that a situation like this incrementalism is not allowed to grow in other communities so that taxpayers have to pick up the whole cost in the end.

The previous speaker rightly indicated that there was quite a bit of support and agitation to have this intersection upgraded. At one point in time, there were around 60,000 social media interactions about this particular intersection, so it was a major issue. I certainly advocated for it during my last term in parliament, and I am happy to say that I convinced the treasurer and the transport minister of the day to make a significant contribution.

In fact, in the Mid-Year Budget Review of 2017, the then state Labor government made a commitment of $4 million to this project to make sure that it happened. The second part of the upgrade in that area, including the upgrade of Potts Road, Para Road and Main North Road, is an important project that is starting at the moment. We now move forward.

The project that came to the committee, rather than costing $4 million, costs $7.5 million. I understand that the project has been rescoped. I suppose the rescoping justifies the additional $3.5 million. It includes the footpath from Ames Drive to this intersection, a raised pedestrian refuge on Barnet Road and a deceleration lane of a few hundred metres to turn into. If that is what we get for $3.5 million, we need to look at the way we do projects. I raised my concern that the cost of the project has unfortunately blown out. Having said that, I think it is a good investment, and we certainly need it.

On a less positive note, one thing that the government is not doing is funding some upgrades of the intersection of Coleman Parade and Potts Road. That is a very important intersection because, as indicated by the previous speaker, part of the project is to ensure that we do not get too much through traffic on Morrow Avenue, which is a residential street. There are some restrictions in that regard, which I fully support.

That means people have to get across to the shopping centre and travel north-south before they get to the shopping centre; they need to either go down into Gawler, almost into Sheriff Street, or to Potts Road. Unfortunately, Potts Road has now been upgraded as part of the Gawler East Link Road—again, something I support—but there will be no traffic improvements at the intersection of Potts Road and Coleman Parade. This government has failed to fund that, and that will be a problem in the future.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: No, the project is being built now. Your government is actually finalising the project. You need to accept some responsibility at some time. So that will be a major issue, particularly—

The SPEAKER: Would the member for Light please address his remarks through the Chair.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: Perhaps you could call the interjections to order, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: I intend to do that.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Mr Pederick: You lot don't learn, do you?

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: I am still here.

Mr Pederick: You had 16 years to do all that.

The SPEAKER: The member for Hammond is called to order.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: Didn't you learn from yesterday? It is unfortunate that the government has decided not to fund those intersection improvements because it will cause a major problem for those people who live along Coleman Parade. There are a couple of retirement villages as well as a nursing home in that area, and it is something the community will notice. Having said that, part of the failure has been that the local council has also failed to advocate on that issue—and that was evidence given to the committee.

I would also like to indicate that as part of this project there will be some associated works that will improve the traffic management in that locality and make it very safe for students who attend the Gawler and District College as well as the children's centre. Some of the roads will be closed off and new roads built. Overall, it is a huge improvement to the locality and to road safety.

As mentioned, this intersection will now stop people from turning right and also from using Ames Drive as a rat race to get back on to do a right-hand turn. This project will stop that from happening. I am glad to see the work started and look forward to using the intersection very shortly.

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:22): I thank the committee, for its diligent work in bringing forward this report, our executive officers and those members who have made a contribution today, particularly those who are closely familiar with the project because of its proximity to their community.

Motion carried.