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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-11-28 Daily Xml
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Public Works Committee: Mount Barker and VerDun Interchange Upgrades

Mr BROWN (Florey) (11:25): I move:

That the 105th report of the committee, entitled Mount Barker and Verdun Interchange Upgrades, be noted.

The Mount Barker and Verdun interchanges provide vital connections to the South Eastern Freeway for the Mount Barker and Adelaide Hills area. Due to the existing and projected population growth in the region, the current road infrastructure is no longer sufficient for the increased traffic demands.

The existing Mount Barker interchange experiences 23,000 vehicles per day and has reached capacity, with significant congestion caused by the lack of separated turning functions onto the South Eastern Freeway. To alleviate this congestion the Department for Infrastructure and Transport—which I will refer to as 'the department'—proposes to construct a new three-lane bridge over the freeway for northbound traffic as well as increase the capacity of existing ramps to and from Adelaide. The Verdun interchange, which experiences 13,000 vehicles per day, currently has no direct access for the southbound traffic to enter the freeway toward Mount Barker and beyond. Similarly, there is no westbound exit ramp for traffic to exit the freeway at this location. To improve access, the department proposes to construct a new eastbound entry ramp and westbound exit ramp to improve traffic flow through the interchange.

More broadly, the upgrades to both interchanges aim to improve network efficiency and connectivity to the South Eastern Freeway; increase capacity to accommodate further housing growth in the region; increase network resilience by improving emergency vehicle access; and improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

The proposed works at the Mount Barker interchange will build a new three-lane bridge over the South Eastern Freeway for northbound traffic; install a dedicated right-turn lane for access toward Murray Bridge; convert the existing bridge to accommodate southbound traffic; create a dedicated right-turn lane for access toward Adelaide; incorporate a shared-use path on the existing bridge and create a northbound on-road bike lane; upgrade all existing ramps; build a new signalled intersection for Adelaide Road and the freeway exit ramp at Murray Bridge; create a new priority bus lane at the existing Adelaide Road intersection; upgrade Adelaide Road to include a U-turn facility as well as a passive pedestrian crossing; and construct and install new drainage, LED lighting, safety barriers, anti-throw screens, pavement surfacing and line marking.

The proposed works at the Verdun interchange will build new eastbound entry and westbound exit ramps; construct a new bridge on the existing westbound entry ramp; install a new single-lane roundabout at the junction of Mount Barker Road and Silver Road; and construct and install new drainage, LED lighting, safety barriers, pavement surfacing and line marking.

The project is funded by a joint commitment of $150 million on an 80:20 ratio between the Australian and South Australian governments and is expected to support approximately 260 full-time equivalent jobs annually over the life of the construction period. Ongoing operational costs will be sourced from the department's annual operating budget. Concept design identified the need to acquire full and partial acquisition of several properties, with the department stating that all acquisitions are complete and were executed in accordance with the Land Acquisition Act.

The project is being delivered through separate design and construct contracts and procurement will be undertaken in accordance with the state government's procurement management framework, complying with South Australian government guidelines. The construction works will be managed in accordance with the General Conditions of Contract and external resources may be engaged where required. Construction of both sites is scheduled to commence in late 2025, with the aim of both interchanges being operationally complete in the second half of 2027. Risk management will be an integral part of the project, with the following potential risks identified:

impacts to the road network and local businesses, for which the department will work with local councils and develop traffic management plans to minimise impacts where possible;

delays in obtaining approvals, for which early engagement aims to accommodate potential delays; and

construction delays caused by service relocations, for which early engagement with service authorities aims to implement relocations in advance of the main construction works.

The department has prepared a sustainable development report approved by the Department for Environment and Water, with initiatives that include:

consideration of resources including recycled asphalt, crushed concrete and crumb rubber, as well as high rates of cement replacement in concrete;

use of biodiesel or alternative fuels;

a contamination remediation management plan;

a soil erosion and drainage management plan; and

the requirement that the contractor develop and implement a contractor's environmental management plan.

The works require the removal of a combination of native and amenity vegetation, and appropriate approvals will be sought as required in accordance with the department's Vegetation Impact Assessment Guideline. The department notes that the project will be required to deliver landscaping that ensures a 20 per cent increase of tree canopy across the site compared with existing levels.

The Mount Barker and Verdun interchanges are located within traditional lands. The Register of Aboriginal Sites and Objects indicates no record of Aboriginal sites, objects or remains at either site. The project area lies within or adjacent to the Kaurna people native title claim area, but the department states they do not anticipate any native title implications for the project sites. A non-Aboriginal heritage assessment indicates the project will not directly impact any commonwealth, state or local heritage-listed places.

A community and stakeholder management plan has been prepared, outlining the communication and engagement activities with relevant stakeholders, residents, property owners, and businesses. The department states all relevant stakeholders and the community have been informed and updated about the project throughout the concept design phase, and this communication will continue throughout the project's life span.

Similarly, adjacent landowners and affected businesses are being engaged to minimise construction impacts. Early identification of potentially impacted businesses and commercial property owners will be undertaken in line with the department's Small Business Support Framework.

The committee examined written and oral evidence in relation to the Mount Barker and Verdun interchange upgrades. Witnesses who appeared before the committee were Andrew Excell, Executive Director, Transport, Strategy and Planning, Department for Infrastructure and Transport; and Dariusz Fenok, Delivery Manager, Infrastructure Delivery, Department for Infrastructure and Transport. I thank the witnesses for their time. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the member for Heysen, who provided a statement to the committee regarding the part of this project that is in his electorate.

Based upon 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 work.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (11:32): I rise to commend the motion. I thank the Chair for his report of the work of the Public Works Committee necessarily in relation to these important works. For reasons that I hope the house will find understandable, I will focus my remarks on the Verdun end of what is now a combination of works involving Mount Barker and also further down the line as well.

It is important to note that we have just heard a timeline being described as commencement I think late next year and then completion at the end of 2027. There are two things to bear in mind about that.

One is that we have unfortunately seen a really quite considerable delay now as the result of, on the one hand, all of the money—state and federal—having first been withdrawn. I think that was led by the Albanese Labor government doing its assessment of projects nationally and somehow coming up with an assessment initially that this work was unmeritorious and should not be funded. It took a fair amount of arm-twisting in the review to say, 'Far from being unmeritorious, this is work that had been the subject of state and federal Liberal commitments to the tune of $250 million,' precisely because it is urgently required to improve access to the freeway and amenity, particularly for the residents and the community of Hahndorf and south of Hahndorf.

What we have seen in the restoration of federal money is that the state has been dragged back to the table. They have had to say, 'Alright, well, if the federal money is back on, we'd better chip in.' As the Chair said, it is an 80:20 arrangement, so there has been the state money restored to that extent but it is nothing like the $250 million that was on the table previously for those works, and the result is that we are only seeing one end of the Hahndorf bypass, the Verdun end. The Verdun end is welcome and it is necessary and it will improve the whole situation, but there is more that needs to be done and we have still had a walking away from the commitment to do the other end of Hahndorf.

So we are still going to see the congestion problems that beset Hahndorf, particularly on weekends and at its absolute height through the summer period that is just ahead of us. It is not lost on the community of Hahndorf that state Labor in particular was completely prepared to walk away from this altogether. What we have now seen is a partial restoration of money that is led by the federal Labor government having been dragged back to it and then state Labor saying, 'Alright, we've got to put something towards it,' so we are going to see Verdun done, and that is good.

We have heard the Chair say that there is necessary acquisition ready for the construction. That is precisely because preparation works were done way back when the Liberal money was there. I have dealt with constituents affected by that necessity; that has been a work in itself, and that is all laid out and ready to go. So let's get on with Verdun just as quickly as we possibly can.

What also does not get a mention—and there is no criticism particularly of the Chair, but it is important context—is that as part of doing the Verdun works, it will be an absolute no-brainer and a brilliant opportunity that Mount Barker council and Adelaide Hills Council are well and truly on board with. Mount Barker in particular is responsible for the particular site, but it is very close to the Adelaide Hills Council boundary. There is an excellent opportunity for there to be a during and post-works construction of, effectively, a park-and-ride facility at Verdun, a visitation landing point and, together with initiatives that can easily happen in conjunction with all this, the possibility for there to be a shuttle bus service and so on from that landing point at Verdun into and through Hahndorf.

There is a lot of community and local government engagement with all this. There has been for now some years. There is a great deal of pent-up expectation that this be done just as soon as it can possibly be done, and the work remains to ensure that the Hahndorf bypass is constructed as well. That is going to need more money and no-one is holding their breath that state or federal Labor is in the least bit interested in going there. What we now see is that the Verdun works are going to go some of the way to assisting those residents of Hahndorf, but the poor old folks on River Road are still left to suffer through what half-measures look like.

We have seen the government do everything it can to avoid Public Works Committee scrutiny of changes that it has made to shovel trucks down River Road. We have seen the debacle that has played out. The community has been up in arms for now the last couple of years in that regard. Verdun is an important building block. There is not enough money that is committed. More needs to be done in order to get the Hahndorf bypass complete.

My residents, the Heysen residents in the Hills, will have a red-hot opportunity to send a message to federal Labor just as soon as a federal election comes around sometime early in the new year. We continue to watch this space. In the meantime, these works are welcome. I welcome the fact that it has come through the Public Works Committee. Let us just get on with doing the work.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:40): I rise to speak to this motion in regard to the Verdun and Mount Barker interchanges. Although I acknowledge this work, it is essentially a halfway house to what could have been. As the member for Heysen lamented, I, too, lament the opportunity lost. We did not see the leadership from state and federal Labor to do the full Hahndorf bypass project. It also relates to what could have been done on the Truro freight bypass project to assist in getting heavy freight out of Adelaide.

State and federal Labor turned their backs on these very good projects that would have alleviated a whole lot of freight stress and also commuter stress on either side of the Hills. It is just deplorable that the Albanese Labor government, alongside the Malinauskas Labor government, has cut the guts out of both these projects. It just does not assist the communities, especially the communities around Hahndorf, in regard to this project, as it should have and could have done.

We have seen freeway upgrades over the years. As a kid, I saw it happen over time. We used to have to come up the old road all the way into Adelaide. It probably added an extra hour at least to the travelling time from Coomandook to get into Adelaide. I saw the upgrades unveil as the dual lane extended all the way to Murray Bridge and then to Tailem Bend, but that took many years. With population growth, as we have heard, we are going to need more roadworks into the future.

Certainly, with this project there has been a real missed opportunity in getting that Hahndorf bypass right. I think it could have been done; I think it should have been done. Working alongside the leader and the member for Heysen, speaking with the locals up there about the impact it has had on residents of River Road, logging trucks have to go through there. I have ridden in a logging truck. To take a right-hand turn off that main through road into Hahndorf from Verdun, you cannot be sitting in the right-hand turn lane because you just will not get round. You have to sit out in the through lane and block all the traffic.

We get native vegetation block up a heap of projects with the Native Vegetation Council. We heard yesterday of how a phone tower at Ceduna, vital communication infrastructure that takes up next to no space in the scheme of things, which would really have helped in the member for Flinders' area with communication, has been blocked by the Native Vegetation Council—how completely outrageous. When it comes to River Road, there were many significant trees along there, and quite a few—I think it was over 20—had to be ripped down to at least try to make River Road safer for the residents and the people who normally used that road before the heavy freight was diverted along it.

It is a real opportunity lost with the Hahndorf bypass. That was a $250 million project that would have really boosted connectivity. It would have really boosted tourism in the main street of Hahndorf. Hahndorf gets about a million visitors a year. It is a beautiful town to visit, and it would have made the town much more accessible, especially for that visitor dollar and also for the traders of that town.

Getting back to the intersections that are going to be worked on here, the Verdun intersection, that would have been part of the Hahndorf project, certainly needs to be done to alleviate the stresses at that end of what would have been the overall Hahndorf bypass project. The one I am most familiar with is the exit from the Murray Bridge end of the freeway coming into Mount Barker. It has been a dog's breakfast for many years, quite like the development of Mount Barker, to be frank. When you come off the freeway, if you are running into Mount Barker to the left, that is all right, but if you want to turn right across the freeway towards Totness, or the other side of the freeway, it is quite painful just waiting, trying to get a clear line to get around the traffic congestion coming from the Totness side of the freeway through to Mount Barker.

Quite a few times I have decided that it is just too hard and I will just swing left and go part way into Mount Barker and rip around the roundabout and get to where I need to go. I think there is a new three-lane bridge going in there and traffic lights, which will do a lot to alleviate the stress of people coming from my end of the state into Mount Barker or wanting to head over to the Totness side of the freeway, which has quite a few big industries and big store locations along there, and car dealers, etc. That will certainly alleviate a lot of issues.

The problem is that it is an opportunity lost and it is a real shame that that opportunity has been lost. I would like to think that sometime in the not-too-distant future we can just have the reality of what we need to complete this project, to, alongside these two interchanges, complete the full Hahndorf project, the bypass, as proposed by the former federal Liberal government alongside the former state Liberal government. I certainly commend these works, but it is a full opportunity missed.

Mr BROWN (Florey) (11:47): I would like to take the opportunity to thank the members for Heysen and Hammond for their contributions. They were nothing if not forthright in their views expressed in the chamber, as is their right as members of parliament. We do not necessarily have to agree with everything they said. I think there might have been a few facts in there that might be contested, but we will leave that for another day. I recommend that we support this motion.

Motion carried.

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