Upper Lachlan Council will try to have deleted a move to extend the upgrading of the Nerriga – Tarago Road (MR 92) towards Braidwood, rather than to the Hume Highway near Gunning.

Currently the $95 million upgrade of the Nowra – Nerriga Road is becoming referred to as “the road to nowhere” because it does not proceed to link with the Hume Highway or any other connection to the State hinterland.

Shoalhaven and Palerang (formerly Tallaganda) Councils have been working for many years on providing a sealed freight link from Nowra to the Hume Highway.

This was seen as a simple route for trucks as large as B-Doubles.

The State Government and Shoalhaven Council embarked on providing Stage 1 of the project from Nowra and Nerriga.

This was completed in 2010 – and there the project has stalled, hence the “road to nowhere” tag.

But the original plan has been thrown into doubt by a decision by the South East Australian Transport Strategy Inc (SEATS) to recommend the road from Tarago extend south to Braidwood, rather than north to the Hume Highway.

The Councils most closely involved in the project, all members of SEATS, are Shoalhaven, Palerang, Upper Lachlan, Yass Valley and Goulburn Mulwaree.

They banded together to have a study made on the best route for extending the Nowra – Nerriga – Tarago road north to Gunning or south to Braidwood.

Upper Lachlan’s representative on SEATS Cr. James Wheelwright voted against the recommendation, as did the Eurobodalla representative.

In a report to Upper Lachlan’s December meeting Director of Works Mr. Phil Newham said documents provided by Shoalhaven showed that the route to the Hume Highway to Gunning, via Collector, offered significant fuel and time savings for traffic.

This proposal also provided for the possibility of constructing the project in several stages, as the Hume Highway could be accessed via Goulburn once the Nerriga – Tarago section was completed.

But Palerang Shire asked that alternative routes be considered, as they feared the additional traffic created by the link to Tarago would unrealistically increase maintenance costs on the Nerriga – Braidwood road, currently unsealed.

Because of the lack of information to form a view on the possible use by haulage operators on the new road, consultants could only rely on projected population growth figures to predict what the growth of freight demand might be on the different routes.

“As most of the area surrounding the route is sparsely populated growth figures failed to demonstrate that the road was likely to be used by large volumes of traffic – particularly on the northern route,” Mr. Newham said.

And Governments would not provide funding unless there was a high Benefit Cost Ratio.

He reported that the SEATS recommendation to extend the road from Tarago to Braidwood was moved by Goulburn Mulwaree representative Cr. Kirk and jointly seconded by Yass Valley and Queanbeyan City representatives.

Mr. Newham said that the cost to extend the improvements from Nerriga to Tarago would be around $300 million.

There was currently no heavy traffic use of the road to Nowra.