The Albion Park Rail bypass should have been built before the Princes Highway upgrade at Gerringong, an NRMA director claims.
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Director representing the South Coast Alan Evans was in Albion Park on Monday to launch the NRMA's audit of the Princes Highway.
The NSW government has already started upgrading the highway at Gerringong and plans to stretch the upgrade to Bomaderry.
But Mr Evans said the long-planned Albion Park Rail bypass should have been completed first.
He conceded there were a series of issues - including the fate of the Croom Regional Sporting Complex - that needed to be addressed before work could begin.
"In hindsight, it would have been better to do the bypass here," Mr Evans said.
"But [it would mean] asking for a billion dollars and dealing with all the community issues with the sports ground - there are some significant issues they've got to address. Let's make sure they're all done. Just too often you see a plan for a road and then five years later you still haven't seen a sod turned because they haven't sorted out all the other issues."
The audit suggests the possibility of a staged construction of the Albion Park Rail bypass.
A two-lane road could be built along the preferred route option - which southbound traffic would use - while northbound traffic would travel along the Princes Highway.
It would have the effect of easing congestion northbound by eliminating the roundabout at the Illawarra Highway intersection.
"We've got to prioritise the funds we do get. We think $150 million building a two-lane road on the southern approach would ease a lot of the congestion and give you more time to come up with the funds to build the full bypass, and also allow other work to be done on the higher risk areas south."
Those areas are south of Jervis Bay - the audit rates 16 sections of that part of the highway as "high risk" due to the high number of crashes relative to the traffic volumes.
The audit found 75 per cent of the 1104 casualty crashes happened on undivided sections of the highway.
The suggestion was to create 2+1 lane configurations, which consist of two lanes in one direction and a single lane in the other, alternating after a few kilometres.
A wire rope barrier would separate the lanes and reduce head-on crashes.