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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-09-19 Daily Xml
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SEAFORD RAIL BRIDGE

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:54): I rise this afternoon to talk about a very special celebration in the south over the weekend. On Saturday night and Saturday afternoon we invited the community to come along and celebrate the completion of the Seaford rail bridge, which is the third longest, incrementally loaded bridge anywhere in the world. People in the local area have been watching it grow during the past year as span by span from the north and the south have been pushed out during the construction phase until, finally, just over a week ago, the bridge joined up in the middle.

On Saturday, we had nearly 10,000 local people come along and enjoy face painting and displays by the local aviation club and by the very hardworking people from the CFS and SES. Not only are they there when we need them in times of floods, storms, bushfires and car accidents, but they are also training day in, day out and week in, week out, and it was fantastic to see them meeting with local people and showing off what good work they do in the local community.

The bridge, now that has completed, will help form part of the extension of the Noarlunga rail line through to Seaford, which is expected to take 10 minutes off the travel time from Seaford into the city and attract 6,000 passengers on a week day, something that the community has been really keen to have for several years. It is great to see it all coming to fruition now. There is 5.7 kilometres of dual track in the extension. The stations and park-and-ride facilities are at Seaford Meadows and Seaford. There is a bus interchange at the Seaford station which will help people from areas like Aldinga, McLaren Vale, McLaren Flat and Willunga get to the train station. It will be a much shorter bus trip than currently to Noarlunga.

The rail overpass bridge is also being built at Old Honeypot Road, and road bridges are being built over the track at Goldsmith Drive, Seaford Road and at Lynton Terrace. To all those people who have been inconvenienced during the building of these major works, we say sorry but, by building them, it means that there are going to be no railway crossings over the roads so that will, in fact, mean a much smoother trip for people on trains and also motorists.

The Onkaparinga River, of course, proved to be somewhat of a challenge, and the fact that previous governments had sold off different lots of land meant that the corridor that was available to put the train line down did not meet up with the shortest crossing point at the river. It meant that we had to construct a 1.2 kilometre bridge, which obviously is not cheap. It cost $291.2 million, and I want to thank the federal government for paying for the bridge. The state government will pay for the electrification and extension to Seaford, but we could not have done it without that $291 million from the federal government.

I really want to thank our local federal member, the member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth. Amanda is a champion at going in to bat for our local area and I cannot think of anyone I would rather work with to get funding for major infrastructure projects. Together, we have been able to get a fair bit of money out of our respective governments, and the south is being set up now for a fantastic future thanks to the infrastructure that is being put in place.

We worked together to get the McLaren Vale overpass, an $18 million build which will save a lot of time and, more importantly, a lot of lives. We had an awful triple fatality at that intersection a few years ago. The state government increased the vision lines, as they are called, by extending the left turn lane to McLaren Vale from the Victor Harbor Road. At the time, I said, 'Congratulations, but it is still not what we need long term. When the money is there, we really need an overpass to get people safely onto the Victor Harbor Road from Main Road, McLaren Vale.' It is a deadly intersection and I am very glad to have worked with Amanda on this one.

We have seen the bridge come together over the past year and now this overpass is being built. The first cars will be on that next month and, by the end of the year, it will be pretty much completed and ready for commissioning in the new year; and during the autumn they will plant the trees and other vegetation to do the landscaping on it. It will add a lot to our local area in terms of safety but, also, ease for tourists to get around as well.

If we are going to talk about making it easy for tourists, there is nothing better that we could do than to get rid of that stupid Liberal one-way expressway. Nothing confused people more than having to ask, 'What time does the road open?' Far dinkum, anywhere else in the world you go, you do not have to find out what time the road is open. Maybe you need to find out what time the plane leaves, what time the bus leaves or what time the train leaves, but here you have to find out and book ahead to get onto a road.

It was very unusual planning by the former Liberal government. But even worse than building the one-way expressway was not building those bridges across the expressway long enough to allow for future expansion. It is all very well for them to say, 'We didn't have the money, but we did have the land there to do it.' Well, if you had the money, why not spend a fraction more just to make those bridges long enough? Everyone coming up and down the expressway these days comes across the 60 km/h and the 40 km/h zones. They are there because the former Liberal government did not build the bridges long enough. We have to slow people down where work is being carried out, and the only reason that work is being carried out is to extend the bridges and to blast out the rock face as well. I apologise to everyone in the south who has to put up with these daily delays. I can guarantee that, by mid-2014, not only will they not have the delays anymore but they will have an expressway that goes both ways 24/7.

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