A local mayor has asked the New South Wales Premier Chris Minns to personally visit what he calls his region’s “greatest traffic bottleneck” along a major freight thoroughfare.
Port Macquarie Hastings mayor Adam Roberts wants Minns to see first-hand the bottleneck at Wrights Road to the Lake Road segment of the Oxley Highway.
The road, managed by the NSW government through Transport for NSW (TfNSW), is notorious for truckies trying to get through Port Macquarie. The mayor wrote to the premier on February 17 asking for a face-to-face meeting on site to discuss the transport issue.
Since taking office late last year, mayor Roberts says he has already had face-to-face meetings with TfNSW representatives and NSW regional transport and roads minister Jenny Aitchison to push for urgent planning and funding support to fix the congested traffic bottleneck on the Oxley Highway.
MORE OWNERDRIVER TRENDING STORIES:
- Morgans keeps it in the family with new K220
- Floods cause Bruce Highway closures
- SRV Road Freight acquires food and beverage carrier
- December TOTM: AKV Haulage’s tribute truck
- Works to repair busy Western Highway for grain trucks
“Having met with all of the people responsible for this road corridor to this point, it is clear to me that no urgency in addressing this well-known congestion and infrastructure issue is being applied by the NSW government,” he says.
“If there was a critical issue that our council organisation wasn’t addressing as a matter of urgency, then as mayor, I would reasonably be asked to step in and provide detailed commentary, or to push a matter forward.
“As such, Premier Minns is ultimately responsible for the current situation at Wrights Road and Lake Road and it is therefore reasonable for me to request a face-to-face meeting on site, particularly given that there appears to be no appetite to add urgency to addressing this well-known issue.”
Mayor Roberts says the Port Macquarie Hastings region is one of the largest and fastest growing regional areas of the Mid North Coast of NSW and with that comes pressures on council to deliver the infrastructure required.
“The reality is, this road corridor is a NSW government segment which is getting progressively worse, in an area that they already know has reached functional capacity a number of years ago,” he says.
“I hope that through a face-to-face meeting with the Premier on site, that we can discuss and progress immediate improvements while laying down a timeline for longer-term solutions to improve the traffic flow and remedy the congestion in this area.”
Subscribe to the weekly Owner//Driver newsletter here.