Travelling north through Tenterfield, NSW, a few days ago I was struck by the waste of time and the inconvenience of the New England Highway being reduced to a narrow main street through a town and with a section of it reduced to a speed limit of 40 kph.

Some years ago a by-pass was constructed around Armidale, NSW, and what used to be a sometimes twenty minute trip was reduced to five minutes.

A cursory look at Google Earth shews that Tenterfield could easily be passed by an almost straight road.

There must be hundreds of towns in NSW alone that are on highways and that could be by-passed with benefit to motorists and the to the towns.

I can see your point Is Mise, but can't necessarily agree with you.

I lived near Howard/Torbanlea some years back, when the towns were bypassed. 2 service stations, a convenience store with a couple of fuel pumps, & a takeaway/convenience store all closed with in 9 months.

All were replaced by an oil company owned roadhouse, managed by an out of town fellow, which employed only 2 locals. I think it is fair to say the bypass did stuff all for the towns, & not all that much for traffic flow.

Granted bypassing Tenterfield would have much more effect in reducing travel times, but this is obviously of no interest to governments.

If they wanted to make some improvement in travel timers it would make more sense to increase the speed limit by 10 or 15 Km/H. This is particularly so on the New England, where easy roads & little traffic make boredom, leading to fatigue & falling asleep is more dangerous than driving a bit faster, which might help.

In fact, it might be waking up a bit to traverse Tenterfield, might be a good thing for many.

Bypasses are enormously expensive. And as Hazza says; they can be critically disruptive if not fatal to many businesses.

If the main reason for wanting a bypass is to take a few minutes off of travelling times, then I say; no way. But if there are other motivations, such as improving safety and getting the continuous stream of big trucks out of the CBD of some towns, then yes possibly.

And yes, I agree again with Hazza (doesn’t happen very often, let alone twice in one post !!) – there is plenty of scope for looking at speed limits and increasing them to some extent all over the place, not least on the highways outbound from small towns where you have to stay at 60 or 80.. or 50…. until you get right out of town and fully onto the open road.

By the way: this is one of the prime situations where the law-abiding, or law-approximating, driver gets tailgated and bullied by those, including many truckies, who just completely ignore the speed limits and want to return to open-road speed well before they get to the 80 or 100 kmh sign.

Too late, like the Westconnex & the Northconnex by the time they are
finished they won't be needed.

History shows that bypasses decimate many local towns. It's always a sensitive balance between local economies and traffic.

As Hasbeen says, going back 30 plus years, and i use the Bruce highway between Caboolture and Caloundra as an example, used to pass through Beerburrum, Glasshouse, Beerwah and to a lessor extent Landsbrough. Each of these towns usually had thriving businesses from fruit stalls to garages, all run by local families, many generational.

In today's world of multi nationals, finding a family owned gararge is a challenge so I'm not in favour of bypasses, or, if there is one perhaps it should have a small toll, with the revenue going to the local community that has been bypassed, as even a toll of just a few cents, say on the Bruce highway would amount to a pretty handsom sum each year and not break the bank of motorists. It would also be viable with the likes of the tag system we now have.

Of cause the toll could be avoided by driving through the town. Who knows, drivers may even stop for a coffee/look.

Bypasses are fortunately coming, unfortunately they seem to be radiating out from Sydney and not being done where they could do the most good.

The latest is from the Sydney-Newcastle Expressway from near its northern end to just north of Branxton, bypassing several towns and speeding the journey considerably.

The Expressway itself bypasses dozens of towns as does the Hume Highway (or whatever it's called). It is now dual carriageway for its entire 807 km length and with the construction of the last bypass does not pass down the main street of any town.

Bypassing all the towns on our highways should be a job creating priority.

Interesting Is Mise, & I can see the point. That should save a lot of travel time, although perhaps causing an increase in anxiety, that boredom may allow your speed to climb unintentionally, making you likely to be photographed for revenue collection.

I wonder if all this progress would allow me to do the run from Bankstown to Sandown in the 8 hours it took in the mid 60s, with 1.4 ton of trailer on the back of the old Chrysler Royal.

All these great new roads, & we crawl along them like so many ants.

I wonder how long it will be before we are back to following a man with a red flag.

.....Bypassing all the towns on our highways should be a job creating priority.

Yes Is Mise, only the jobs you refer to would most likely only be FIFO workers, or 457 holders, if the past few years is anything to go by and, once the bypass is completed, nothing will replace the local jobs lost in the process.

So, like most things, there needs to be balance, that's why I suggest a small toll, with the proceeds going to the effected communities.

A toll of just 10 cents, collected on say 300,000 traffic movements per day on a busy highway would raise in excess of ten million for shires.

Your small toll would be the thin edge of the wedge as successive Governments increased it to raise just a little more revenue.

We don't need or want toll roads, we have enough already.

Sorry, but in this case I disagree Is Mise, because unlike other tolls, this is not in lue of paying for the infrastructure, rather, it's more of a levy to support local bypassed towns and, there's no need for increases as such, as increased traffic movements will take care of that.

We must also remember that my suggestion of the small toll is one of compromise.

I notice that the NSW government is showing some concern that drivers
may tend to avoid the yet to be built Westconnectx.
I recently worked out that a commuter driving from Seven Hills to Mascot
in a smallish car, taking service into account would spend $325 a week
in after tax money, if he used motorways all the way.

That is a big incentive to get out of bed 15 minutes earlier.
Did you hear Dick Smith and another on National Press club on growth today.
Hmmm I am not on my own.

rehctub,

How much would a small toll add up to for tho Hume between Sydney and Melbourne, a toll that would satisfy all the towns passed in the 800+ kilometre length?

If businesses depend on the highway traffic then they will need to diversify, there is no reason why others should pay for their future well being.
Times have changed and there is no real reason why our towns still need to be the distance apart that a horse could reasonably travel in one day; that's one of the reasons that some towns are shrinking and that others have disappeared and are now but locality names.

There's perfectly sane and justifiable reasons for taking Hwys out of small towns, safety not least amongst them. Unfortunately, the immediate effect is usually the virtual death of that town, few anywhere have survived a bypass.
It sends yet more people into cities, becoming yet another vector in the de-ruralisation of our population, the emptying of the countryside.
When you stop to think about it, that process began a hundred years ago, it's only now when the final remnants are fading away that we've really noticed, or cared really.
Yes, it's sad for any individual town and it's people, but there really isn't any answer to the march of so-called " progress".
Che sera etc.

Is Mis, that would depend on how many shires are passed through, not towns.