PRO: Marion Road Level Crossing Removal Project | $200m

[NTRabbit]

This project won't really benefit tram users in the short or long-term.

It's not meant to, it's entirely about benefitting car drivers, same as every Liberal intersection,level crossing, or "public transport" upgrade. Any benefit to public transport is accidental.

It's not going to matter anyway, because this budget isn't going to go to a vote before the election, and in the event the Liberals win, an entirely different one will be submitted after the election.

[A-Town]

Waste of money, and obvious pork-barrelling by the Fed Gov at the expense, once again, of the legitimate needs of our state. Would rather see $200m put into projects that would actually help ease congestion, like public transport and cycling. This project won't really benefit tram users in the short or long-term.

There's already excellent public transport and cycling routes to the city in this area, and a tram overpass will only improve the cycling route as a cycling path will run alongside the tram overpass like it does over South Rd. Trams run every 5 minutes to and from the city in peak hour, and these intersections become extremely congested. It remains to be seen how bad things will get when the South Rd upgrade gets underway and more people opt for alternative routes such as Marion Rd.

Removing these level crossings should have been done a decade ago. Calling it 'pork barrelling' is just dumb.

By definition, it is pork barreling.

By definition, all election commitments in marginal seats is pork barrelling. It's become an overused term, especially in instances such as this where there's a clear need for an upgrade to bottleneck intersections.

Federal Labor promised to remove the Unley Park railway crossing before the last election which is on the edge of Boothby. Pork barrelling too?

[A-Town]

This project won't really benefit tram users in the short or long-term.

It's not meant to, it's entirely about benefitting car drivers, same as every Liberal intersection,level crossing, or "public transport" upgrade. Any benefit to public transport is accidental.

This section of Marion Rd, like many of our arterial roads, has been neglected for years by both Labor and the Liberals. The old South Rd tram crossing was awful and Marion Road's is nearly as bad because you have Anzac Highway to the north, and Cross Rd to the south. It's a disgrace that it's taken this long for a party to commit to removing it.

[gnrc_louis]

There's already excellent public transport and cycling routes to the city in this area, and a tram overpass will only improve the cycling route as a cycling path will run alongside the tram overpass like it does over South Rd. Trams run every 5 minutes to and from the city in peak hour, and these intersections become extremely congested. It remains to be seen how bad things will get when the South Rd upgrade gets underway and more people opt for alternative routes such as Marion Rd.

Removing these level crossings should have been done a decade ago. Calling it 'pork barrelling' is just dumb.

By definition, it is pork barreling.

By definition, all election commitments in marginal seats is pork barrelling. It's become an overused term, especially in instances such as this where there's a clear need for an upgrade to bottleneck intersections.

Federal Labor promised to remove the Unley Park railway crossing before the last election which is on the edge of Boothby. Pork barrelling too?

It absolutely is not an "overused" term. The amount of pork barrelling by the Federal Government, whether in the form of infrastructure such as this, grants etc., is the complete opposite of good policy and a major stain on our democracy. This report is worth a read: https://grattan.edu.au/report/roundabou ... -projects/

On that note, I'd like to see if Infrastructure Australia has approved the business case for this project and if they haven't, then guess what? It's the textbook definition of pork barrelling.

[A-Town]

By definition, it is pork barreling.

By definition, all election commitments in marginal seats is pork barrelling. It's become an overused term, especially in instances such as this where there's a clear need for an upgrade to bottleneck intersections.

Federal Labor promised to remove the Unley Park railway crossing before the last election which is on the edge of Boothby. Pork barrelling too?

It absolutely is not an "overused" term. The amount of pork barrelling by the Federal Government, whether in the form of infrastructure such as this, grants etc., is the complete opposite of good policy and a major stain on our democracy. This report is worth a read: https://grattan.edu.au/report/roundabou ... -projects/

On that note, I'd like to see if Infrastructure Australia has approved the business case for this project and if they haven't, then guess what? It's the textbook definition of pork barrelling.

And if Infrastructure Australia approve the business case, is it no longer 'pork barrelling'? I'd be very surprised if they didn't approve the business case considering how beneficial the project will be to the thousands of motorists who use the intersection daily, and also cyclists using the Mike Turtor Bikeway.

[[Shuz]]

As a former resident of this area, trust me, Liberal or Labor, this is way overdue, more urgent than the Hove/Brighton proposal that got scrapped. This is not pork barrelling, this is way overdue, and I can only hope Labor matches it in their budget reply.

[rev]

Just another ill thought out pledge.
Ok they'll fix this small section. What about other intersections and bottlenecks?
How about an actual overall plan? Or do we have to keep waiting for election cycles to get anything done in this state every time?

I agree with Crawf, Grand Junction/Port Wakefield/Main North is a way bigger issue then this suburban intersection, there's 24 lanes at that cluster fuck..I mean intersection. But having said that, why can't they commit funding to fix both simultaneously?
Where's the actual plan for our road network? is there any? of course not that would be logical.

[whatstheirnamesmom]

Got to agree with Rev on this one. This fix is addressing congestion in one tiny area, and will only shift a bottleneck. Again, we are taking an isolated approach to planning by treating the symptom of the issue rather than taking a holistic and planned approach and addressing the root cause of congestion.

We already know projects where the main beneficiaries are motorists only encourages the presence of more motorists. And you can't ease congestion by continuing to so overtly encourage private motor vehicle use.

[Nort]

As was already discussed, it's likely that a big reason for doing this is the extra traffic Marion Road will see as part of the South Road works.

[mattwinter]

Got to agree with Rev on this one. This fix is addressing congestion in one tiny area, and will only shift a bottleneck. Again, we are taking an isolated approach to planning by treating the symptom of the issue rather than taking a holistic and planned approach and addressing the root cause of congestion.

We already know projects where the main beneficiaries are motorists only encourages the presence of more motorists. And you can't ease congestion by continuing to so overtly encourage private motor vehicle use.

Definitely agree on the lack of overall and holistic planning. But I do think this particular project is sensible... Marion Road runs fairly well other than this one section. Getting rid of level crossings is often something people on this forum have talked about as a priority, and this is the removal of two level crossings that can be done together, both on major roads. It's not an out of the blue annoucement, a planning study was done some years ago, and they haven't gone for the over-the-top solution of grade seperating two of the road intersections, but removing the level crossings is well needed. To me it stacks up. It's value for money, it supplements the N-S Corridor well...

The real question should be why did we have so much debate about the Brighton Road level crossing, when these two should have been the priority? The other two Cross Road level crossings should be the next ones in focus.

You can argue about 'pork barelling'. Obviously the Boothby factor plays into it. But you could also say that the North already has a freeway that runs into the central part of the city, whereas the South hasn't got so much love. The North South tunnels are obviously the focus, but Marion Road is a sensible project too. The Grand Junction / Main North intersection would be a sensible one to look at too of course, but surely starting with a planning study would be the way to go.

[Spotto]

Ideally, the grade separation should form one part of an overall Marion Road strategy that will help improve the entire corridor when T2D works ramp up and more cars use it as an alternative to South Road.

i.e. realigning A14 Marion Rd/Holbrooks Rd /East Ave intersections into one road (maybe Kilkenny Rd too as it feeds into Regency Rd?), fixing other dog leg intersections, resurfacing and other traffic flow improvements

[rev]

Ideally, the grade separation should form one part of an overall Marion Road strategy that will help improve the entire corridor when T2D works ramp up and more cars use it as an alternative to South Road.

i.e. realigning A14 Marion Rd/Holbrooks Rd /East Ave intersections into one road (maybe Kilkenny Rd too as it feeds into Regency Rd?), fixing other dog leg intersections, resurfacing and other traffic flow improvements

Well that's the issue some of us are pointing out, is there an overall strategy and not just with Marion Road?
There doesn't seem to be.

[A-Town]

This came in the mail today

[TrebleSketch]

This came in the mail today

What did the images show?
It seems to have expired and I'm not seeing anything.

[PD2/20]

This came in the mail today

What did the images show?
It seems to have expired and I'm not seeing anything.

From what I recall, the images were of a notification of site investigations in October around the Marion and Cross Rd tram crossings. There are some details on the DIT website under Tram Grade Separation Project.