Waiting for Road-O: the big circle

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Follow link to The Yass Tribune.
http://www.yasstribune.com.au/news/loca ... 92886.aspx
LEE MILLS

You don’t have to live in Yass long before you know that a big issue that weighs on many locals’ minds is the ever promised dual highway. Depending on who you talk with, the dual highway has been promised for up to 30 years.

And you don’t have to be with the Yass Tribune long to find out that when you go down to the main street to get local opinion there are almost as many passers through on the street as there are locals. And they come from all over – I have spoken to Canberrans, Sydney-siders, Queenslanders and South Australians.

On one of our many drives to Canberra - which takes us about 30 minutes to the outskirts- we counted 407 cars coming from the other direction. On a trip at a non-busy time it is more like 200. It is a very busy, very well-used road.

With the awareness that the Barton Highway duplication had been envisioned and promised for a long time, I set about finding out what was going on and what has caused the delay.

And not surprisingly, I found everyone blamed everyone else. The state government Member, Katrina Hodgkinson, felt that the federal member hadn’t been keeping the federal Minister on side. The federal Member, Alby Schultz, felt that things had gone down hill since Labor took power, but progress had been made under the Coalition. And the Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Maxine McKew, pointed the finger back to the NSW government saying that planning and environmental evaluation processes needed to be completed before federal funding could be organised, because it had to be based on the planned route’s costs. She did though point out recent work had been undertaken on improving safety on the highway.

It seems all our political gods agree that the duplication of the Barton Highway is a high priority matter, but while they get their act together Yass residents and the 10,000 annual users of the road can only wait and hope, as the numbers dying and injured on the road continue to climb.