Brendan Simpkins

AN INCREASE of the Gawler East Link Road’s speed limit has not been ruled out, despite investigations labelling it unfeasible.

Gawler Council members were finally given the chance to vote on an officer’s recommendation at a special council meeting last Tuesday, after not reaching the item at last month’s ordinary council meeting.

As reported by The Bunyipon April 8, two independent studies conducted on behalf of council found that increasing the speed limit from 50km/h to 60km/h or as high as 80km/h would not be possible
without significant alterations to the road.

That road was built to a maximum of 60km/h an hour and signposted at 50km/h as is standard design practice.

Construction of the road began in 2018 and was completed last year at a cost of $68 million.

Design work was undertaken by the Department of Infrastructure and Transport, and was a State Government project before council took over ownership upon completion.

Council would need to spend significant money to bring it up to a complying standard if it was to alter the speed limit.

Council’s infrastructure manager Sam Dilena told members there was no way a road authority would endorse a speed limit change based on the evidence presented in the two reports.

Speaking at the special meeting last week, councillors expressed their disappointment that nothing could be done.

However, the original motion, which included a recommendation not to pursue any change to the speed limit, was lost on a 4-3 vote.

Councillor Cody Davies moved an alternative motion, which did not include the point advocating for council not to further pursue a change, and was seconded by Cr Jim Vallelonga.

This was unanimously carried by elected members, despite reservations by Cr Paul Koch. Cr Koch said elected members needed to “accept the fact” that re-engineering the road to make it complying
would be too great a blow to council’s hip pocket.

“We have got independent reports that says that the road is designed for that speed and anything above that you are putting lives at risk,” he said.

“To actually change it is going to cost millions and millions of dollars; let’s just accept the facts.”

Work that would need to be undertaken to make the road compliant for a speed increase included changes to sight distances, horizontal alignment and cut and fill to change the road’s vertical geometry.

Cr Nathan Shanks said that by dropping point four of the officer’s recommendations, council was not “putting the nail in that coffin”.

“It might be a pipe dream, it might be a bit optimistic, (but) I think leaving it open in the current climate is a better optics move for this council,” he said.