THE bottleneck at the New England Highway and Bridgman Road intersection will soon be no more with the NSW Government announcing $2 million in upgrades.
Singleton Council is hoping to start work as early as August with work to be complete by December this year.
Singleton Council’s director operations Gary Woodman told The Singleton Argus yesterday the funding was great news for Singleton.
Mr Woodman said future housing developments in Singleton including Bridgman Ridge and The Pinnacle would create further traffic congestion at the intersection with upgrades helping to allieviate delays.
“It’s really pleasing that it is going to go ahead and that it will ward off a foreseeable problem, it is a fantastic idea,” Mr Woodman said.
In 2006, Singleton Council commissioned a traffic and parking study with modelling predicting an average future queue length during peak traffic times of 600 metres in comparison to an average of 120 metres during peak times taken at the time of the study.
Major features of the improvements will be the introduction of four lanes travelling north after the Hunter Crossing bridge.
Two lanes will be for traffic turning right into Bridgman Road, one lane will be for traffic continuing north and one lane will be for traffic turning left.
Bridgman Road south and north of the intersection of the New England Highway will be upgraded as well as Dunolly Road, Phillip and Newtown Streets in accordance with the local area traffic management scheme. The intersection with Darlington and Dunolly Road will also be upgraded.
The upgrade has created much excitement along Newton Street with traffic crossing Dunolly Bridge from the CBD set to be directed onto Dunolly Road and linking with Bridgman Road.
Mr Woodman said the design of the project had commenced, subject to RTA approval, with finer details such as the future of both streets currently being assessed.
“We have to work out what the best solution is whether we make (Newtown Street) a cul-de-sac or make it a left in or left out, we only have a small budget to do it,” he said.
“It will be the same with Phillip Street.”
Under the infrastructure program, Singleton Council will be given an interest free loan which will be repaid over 10 years at $200,000 per annum with the money to come from developer contributions under section 94.
“We are hoping from the financial side there is sufficient development to pay for the loan payments but we are being conservative,” Mr Woodman said.
“We are working on 50 blocks of land being developed in north Singleton which is fairly conservative,” he said.
Under the conditions of the State government’s local infrastructure funding upgrades are to be finished within 18 months.
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