Our paper has written at length on the inadequacies of the existing design of the intersection and despite various attempts by the Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) to overcome these inadequacies nothing appears to have changed because once again we have had to report on another accident at the intersection. 

Fortunately this  time and it was only luck no one was seriously hurt. 

In February we reported on a fatality at the intersection and there have been other serious accidents at the site.

As a daily user of that road you see, on virtually  every trip,  a near miss at the intersection.

From our viewpoint the problem lies with the traffic coming from the Golden Highway not expecting to find themselves suddenly at an intersection with another major highway.

The other concern relates to the frustration of drivers waiting to make a right hand turn from the Golden Highway onto the New England Highway.

At peak times the queue waiting to make that turn from the Golden Highway is more than a kilometre in length.

Human nature being what it is people get frustrated in the delay and can make poor choices once they get to the head of the  queue.

What is needed at the intersection is not another bandaid solution but planning for and then construction of an overpass.

An overpass would solve the problems at the intersection by removing the queueing to make a safe right hand turn and by removing the sudden arrival at a major and difficult intersection for many visiting road users.

Surely thats not too much to ask from our governments because the Argus does not want to report on another serious accident at the site. Nor do our local emergency service volunteers want to attend another accident at the intersection. 

The Hunter Expressway is a wonderful piece of infrastructure but to complete the road network on our area we need a safe intersection at the Golden and New England Highways and we need it now. No ifs no buts.