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.