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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-05-15 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Curtis Road

Mr GEE (Taylor) (15:08): I rise today to speak about the unsafe conditions on Curtis Road. There are a number of issues about this road that are raised with me daily by local residents. It is an important issue in our local area, but it is really part of a much larger problem. I will be speaking about Curtis Road regularly in this place, as well as about other dangerous roads and traffic hazards that affect residents in the electorate of Taylor. Today, I am going to speak about the section of Curtis Road that runs between Main North Road and Stebonheath Road.

Curtis Road has become one of the main transport links in Adelaide's northern suburbs, running from Main North Road through to Angle Vale Road. Curtis Road is currently a single-lane road with a large median strip and fronted by a mix of residential homes and apartments, retail developments and wetlands. There is a very wide median strip that has been retained to allow for easy duplication of the road.

This road carries thousands of vehicles every day as residents and other motorists, and many heavy vehicles, use the road to access schools, businesses, the Northern Expressway and travel towards Main North Road in the east and to South Australia's fastest growing communities of Angle Vale and Virginia and access to Port Wakefield Road to the west.

Residents experience significant congestion on this road, as mentioned by my friend and colleague the member for Light in his Address in Reply. Curtis Road forms the boundary between Taylor and Light. The duplication of Curtis Road is part of the state Integrated Transport and Land Use Plan, as is the grade separation, or the separation of Curtis Road from the Adelaide to Gawler railway line. It is claimed that current traffic volumes are not above the level acceptable for a single-lane road, but Curtis Road has become inadequate at managing its current traffic load, so action is required now.

The Playford council currently manages Curtis Road and, after years of inaction, is considering approaching the Local Road Advisory Committee to have Curtis Road reclassified as a state government managed road. This is really a cop-out by the City of Playford, who should instead be working with the state and federal government to prioritise the upgrade of this road.

Amazingly, I have written over a thousand letters to Playford council on behalf of our residents about problems with, or associated with, Curtis Road. I call upon the state government and the City of Playford, with its mayor, Glenn Docherty, who is a former Liberal Party candidate, to work together and approach the federal Liberal government to secure funding for this project. The member for Light and I are going to continue calling on the City of Playford and state government to fund the upgrades to this road and its many intersections for as long as it takes.

I urge the local Playford councillors to stand up for their residents to ensure that action is taken in relation to the duplication of Curtis Road. We have both consulted widely with our communities and there is almost universal support through Andrews Farm, Davoren Park, Munno Para, Munno Para West, Smithfield and Smithfield Plains for the road to be duplicated and the grade separation at the railway line, plus safer access to shops and schools for pedestrians and footpaths that run all the way to the Northern Expressway.

In response to a survey I conducted in 2017, more than 98 per cent of respondents supported the duplication of Curtis Road and 91 per cent of respondents supported some sort of change at the railway crossing. I know that residents and businesses in Munno Para and Munno Para West want to see a solution and that they want to see it sooner rather than later, as Curtis Road is the main exit and access from Munno Para and Munno Para West. Munno Para contains the local shopping centre, two local schools and many businesses, including the Stretton Centre and town park, where the skate park and a water play area see large numbers of young people having to interact with traffic.

While the member for Light and I continue to fight for this upgrade and other road safety improvements across our electorates, I encourage residents to be patient and to drive to the road conditions and take care, especially during school times. I am writing to the new Minister for Transport to ask him to examine this issue with a view to making it a priority.

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