Five sections of the Bruce Highway have been ranked among the top 15 most dangerous national highway links Australia-wide in a new report.
Following the first meeting of Queensland’s Bruce Highway Crisis Management Group this morning, RACQ Executive Manager Public Policy Michael Roth said the dominance of the Bruce Highway on the Australian Road Assessment Program’s (AusRAP) updated list of “Persistently High Risk Roads” across Australia came as no surprise.
“Earlier findings by AusRAP identified the Bruce Highway as the riskiest in Queensland and now our suspicions have been confirmed – it is also one of the riskiest in Australia,” Mr Roth said.
“These latest findings support our case to the Federal Government to bolster funding for infrastructure improvements to address safety deficiencies and cater for increasing traffic on the Bruce.”
The Bruce Highway links identified among the nation’s 15 riskiest stretches of national highway were Childers to Miriam Vale, Miriam Vale to Rockhampton, Sarina to Mackay, Proserpine to Ayr, and Innisfail to Cairns.
“There have also been many crashes on the Cooroy to Curra link of the Bruce Highway, so RACQ welcomes the opening of the 12km duplicated section B by the end of this year,” Mr Roth said.
“We look forward to news of when sections A, C and D will be progressed by the Federal and Queensland governments.”
RACQ President Mr Geoffrey Leddy represented the RACQ’s 1.2 million members at today’s meeting of the Bruce Highway Crisis Management Group.
Mr Leddy said the latest findings added to the mix of research results that supported the push for more government funding for priority projects on the Bruce Highway.
“The Bruce Highway’s unacceptable road toll, which accounted for one in six deaths on national highways in Australia, would be significantly reduced if the Federal Government channelled more funding into the upgrade and maintenance of our roads over the next 10 years,” Mr Roth said.
The AusRAP report assesses the risk ratings of national highways, based on crash statistics. The analysis covered casualty crashes between 2005 and 2009 on rural sections of the National Land Transport Network.
