Timely upgrades

It’s welcome news that the upgrades to the Verdun and Mt Barker interchanges are going ahead with $120m allocated for the projects in the 2024 Federal Budget.

Stakeholders have been particularly advocating for the Verdun interchange upgrade for years and it seems sensible to allow access into the town from both directions of the freeway.

While there are varying opinions about how much traffic it will take off the main street, opening up new routes into Hahndorf and surrounds will surely reduce congestion to some degree.

However, it is frustrating that the Federal Government caused delays to the project by stripping $200m from it following an infrastructure review last year.

The Federal Government said at the time that it didn’t stack up, only to re-announce funding in the budget a year later.

While the backflip is very welcome, work on the project could have started months ago had the funding not been removed in the first place, and it is hard to say what has changed between then and now.

Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King said that funding for projects could be re-instated if there was sufficient demand from the relative state government.

But the State Government was already advocating for the project to be delivered last year.

Parts of Australia, including Mt Barker, are desperately in need of key transport infrastructure and, if the Federal Government is going to support a project, it needs to deliver it in a timely manner.

Residents will now need to wait for the upgrades to get underway, and as some have pointed out, the longer that it takes for them to be completed, the more traffic through Hahndorf will have grown.

The town is under significant traffic pressures and, while the State Government has taken short-term measures to address congestion, namely diverting large trucks down River Road, more needs to be done.

There are some who feel that even with the interchange upgrades going ahead, the town still desperately needs a bypass or link road to address the issue.

It will be important for the State Government to keep in mind that further improvements may be needed to ultimately fix the congestion on Hahndorf’s main street.