The South Australian High Productivity Vehicle Network Program (the program) has been developed to address constraints for the movement of high productivity vehicles and improve productivity, safety, resilience, and liveability for all road users.
The program objectives align with the strategic themes of the Australian Government’s Infrastructure Policy Statement.
Overall, the approach to the options analysis appears rigorous. A long list of options was developed by identifying individual upgrades across sections of the network that respond to the defined problems.
Societal Impact
Social impacts of the program have been appropriately assessed and integrated in the options analysis. Forecast benefits are travel time savings for freight vehicles and other road users, reduced vehicle operating costs and safety benefits. Regional townships and road users are expected to experience larger but fewer freight vehicles, which is expected to deliver liveability benefits.
Overall, the preferred option (package of projects) for the program has merit and supports the program objectives of productivity, resilience, safety and liveability. Based on current analysis and cost estimates, the preferred option scope, including Truro Bypass, is expected to deliver net benefits to the South Australian community.
Deliverability
Factors related to deliverability of the program were used to inform the options short-listing process. This included a qualitative assessment of the ease of construction for program options, and the level of disruption expected.
Potential approaches for packaging, contracting and sequencing delivery were identified. While more detailed consideration of delivery will be prepared at a later stage, this level of analysis is considered appropriate for this stage of planning.
The South Australian Government intends to progress individual project business cases for upgrades included in the program, with Truro Bypass, Swanport Bridge Upgrade and the Greater Adelaide Freight Bypass projects identified as priorities.
We recommend the South Australian Government continues to engage with Infrastructure Australia in developing the business cases for individual projects, and that the costs of greenhouse gas emissions are considered in the analysis.
