Problem

The volume of passenger and heavy vehicles on Picton Road, combined with difficult topography, is causing significant delays and safety issues on the route. This is resulting in longer travel times and high crash rates.

Picton Road connects the M1 Princes Motorway near Mount Ousley and the M31 Hume Motorway at Wilton and beyond to Picton. The road carries around 20,000 vehicles a day, of which approximately 22% are heavy vehicles. Traffic volumes are expected to grow along the corridor with population growth, development in Western Sydney and growth at Port Kembla.

Between October 2012 and September 2017, there were six fatal crashes and 30 serious injury crashes (which resulted in eight fatalities and 41 serious injuries). This is close to 2.5 times the New South Wales average for the number of fatal and serious crashes per kilometre for similar type roads.

Proposed initiative

Options to address capacity and safety issues on Picton Road include:

• minor road upgrades such as providing central barriers
• upgrading intersections or adding signals
• additional overtaking opportunities.

Next steps

Proponent to identify initiatives and develop options (Stage 2 of Infrastructure Australia’s Assessment Framework)