Kingsford Smith Drive has regularly been identified as the Brisbane City Council's 'next priority'. The major road links the Brisbane CBD to the Brisbane Airport, Port of Brisbane, Northshore Hamilton and the Australia TradeCoast area. Traffic congestion is nothing new for this major road and has been a talking point in Brisbane for decades.
Nowadays, Kingsford Smith Drive carries up to 70,000 vehicles per day, including a comparatively high number of freight vehicles and other trucks. In fact, unlike most roads where the freight traffic is around 7 - 8%, on Kingsford Smith Drive it is around 15%. The major road remains a critical arterial linking the two biggest employment zones in South East Queensland, Brisbane City and Australia TradeCoast.
We are really wanting this to be a real entry statement for the city. Given that a lot of people who come from the airports .... will take Kingsford Smith Drive. So when we did the modelling we found that we really did need to do this project for the future - Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk
In short, a $650 million project.
The Kingsford Smith Drive upgrade will reduce traffic congestion and improve safety by widening Kingsford Smith Drive from four to six lanes from Harvey Street to Breakfast Creek Road to allow the transport corridor to cope with the future growth of our city.
We will increase the capacity of intersections, specifically the Nudgee and Remora roads intersection, with additional turning lanes and centre medians. Public and active transport will be a focus of the upgrades with on and off-road cycling facilities, a separate pedestrian footpath and indented bus bays - Cr Quirk said.
Stage one of the upgrade, between Harvey Street and Theodore Street, is complete.
Stage two (Theodore Street to Riverview Terrace) and Stage three (Riverview Terrace to the Breakfast Creek Hotel at the Inner City Bypass) will widen Kingsford Smith Drive into the river, creating 3 lanes in each direction.
The Brisbane City Council is funding the project from the savings it has made from leasing the tolling right operation of Legacy Way tunnel to Queensland Motorways. In 2013, the Brisbane City Council claimed this deal would receive "a minimum of $428 million in payments, plus savings of $650 million by 2020 under the lowest-case scenario."
A short-list of four tenderers will compete for the bid to design and construct the upgrade. These recently announced teams consist of:
The contract is to be awarded in late November 2015 and construction set to begin in early-mid 2016.
The project is expected to take approximately three years to complete.
The council is now focusing on the procurement process for the design and construct contract.
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