The truck accident that closed down the M1 Princes Motorway on Monday was a “wake up call” that the region’s roads need work, said a transport expert.
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On Monday morning a crash involving two trucks near the bottom of Mt Ousley closed the M1 Princes Motorway for most of the day.
The flow-on effects led to extended traffic traffic queues along the M1 but also on the alternate routes.
University of Wollongong academic and transport expert Associate Professor Philip Laird said the accident and the gridlock it caused were signs that changes needed to be made to the Illawarra road network.
“I think yesterday was a wake-up call,” Prof Laird
“It cannot be the status quo, we need to get more freight onto rail and we need to continue to upgrade the road system to meet the growing volumes of road traffic – both heavy and light.”
Prof Laird said the accident showed how much pressure the key roads in and out of the Illawarra region were under.
He said the best thing to do was to move towards transporting goods on rail, which would take a large number of trucks off the M1 Princes Motorway.
Otherwise, as the port of Port Kembla continues to grow, traffic on the motorway will get worse and worse.
“As the traffic volumes grow – this is both the heavy traffic and the light traffic with the cars – it puts more and more stress on the existing road system, which needs upgrading,” Prof Laird said.
“But at the same time we can’t solve it by road upgrades alone,
“We need to be upgrading the rail system – both the existing line and the completion of Maldon-Dombarton to ensure not only the long term but the medium-term viability of our region.”