Holidaying motorists who leave early to ‘‘beat the rush’’ might actually be prolonging the rush, according to the Transport Management Centre.
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The centre’s David Wright said there were five main areas on the South Coast where they are expecting heavy holiday traffic, including the usual bottleneck of Albion Park.
Other areas are Berry, Nowra, Milton/Ulladulla and Batemans Bay.
Mr Wright said some people may try and leave before Good Friday in the hope it will give them a easier run on what the centre calls the ‘‘bump-out’’.
‘‘We are anticipating people will have a half-day [on Thursday] and try to leave a little bit earlier to try and beat the rush,’’ Mr Wright said.
‘‘What’s happening is that’s becoming more and more of a trend so the bump-out tend to start a day earlier.
‘‘Based on previous data we find the busiest time to travel is between 10 o’clock in the morning and five in the afternoon and it really does peak around that midday to 1pm period.’’
In reality, he said it was hard to avoid the holiday traffic because the South Coast is a very popular spot which means a lot of cars travelling along country roads.
He said the traffic congestion at most places on the South Coast occurs at the built-up areas.
‘‘It’s the townships that cause the problem,’’ he said.
‘‘We’ve got traffic signals there and roundabouts. People like to take rest stops or comfort breaks at these places and that exacerbates the problem as well.’’
Mr Wright said there will be staff working at the Transport Management Centre over the Easter long weekend to alleviate traffic congestion as much as possible.
‘‘What we do is we have a traffic light technician who will try and give as much green time as we can for those major thoroughfares,’’ he said.
‘‘At these areas we’ll have special crews that are responding there - extra tow trucks and traffic commanders.
‘‘We’ll have people monitoring the queue lengths to make sure we’re kept aware how big the queue lengths are.’’