Upgrade the Bruce Highway

Please join our voice in upgrading the bruce highway, so many lives have been lost because of simple neglect in fixing, upgrading and maintaining the Bruce Highway.

The Notorious Gympie Road overpass is the main exit of the Bruce Highway for both Maryborough and Hervey Bay, locals refer to it as "Designed by an undertaker". On the 30th of June it claimed 2 more innocent victim's on it's bridge, our brother Darren Lucas and his best friend Robert Cook. This so called exit has to be the mostly oddly and poorly design exit on the Bruce Highway.

The Bruce accounts for 32 per cent of Queensland’s highway network. Yet, 51 per cent of casualty crashes and 59 per cent of road deaths in Queensland occur on the highway.Despite these alarming statistics, the Bruce Highway has attracted little government funding and the RACQ estimates $1?billion is needed just to make the road safe.

Unless our politicians travel the Bruce Highway by car and experience it first hand, it will continue to be dangerous, underfunded and claim more lives. In fact the scene of my brother's accident claimed the life of a truck driver last year, when is it going to end??

The fact that there will be no funding until 2015 is a disgrace, how many more lives will be lost before then?
Robert Cook's mother went to put flowers at the scene of this horrific accident and nearly got hit twice by unsuspecting motorists.

You can help make a difference please sign up and support this cause, help keep our aussie driver's safe. Our family's will not rest until this exit is safe and the entire Bruce Highway is safe for everyone who travel's it.

Here are some links of our loved ones that died tragically under such horrific circumstances...

http://www.thechronicle.com.au/story/2011/07/05/daughter-grieves-after-her-dads-death/

http://www.thechronicle.com.au/story/2011/07/04/family-mourns-a-gentle-giant/

http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2011/08/09/177561_local-news.html

http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/story/2011/08/06/spirit-of-truckies-to-join-safe-road-fight/

http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2011/09/16/182525_local-news.html

Here is the new strategy for the upgrade of the bruce highway the goverment released on September 1st.

http://www.dlgp.qld.gov.au/resources/plan/bruce-highway/bhus-strategy.pdf

Our state's major disgrace

THE Bruce Highway provides the major link between Queensland’s north and south – but any motorist who uses it knows it’s nothing short of a major disgrace.

In New South Wales, motorists regard the Pacific Highway as their state’s most disgraceful road, but its a driving paradise compared to the Bruce Highway.

The Pacific is undergoing a $3.6?billion upgrade and when completed 401kms of the 664km highway will be four lanes.

The Bruce is the only road connecting Brisbane to Cairns, yet most of the 1728km stretch is two lanes – and there are too few emergency stopping lanes.

The Bruce is Queensland’s freight corridor, yet parts of it regularly flood, making it impossible to transport food and other goods to some towns, resulting in bare supermarket shelves.

In terms of length, the Bruce dwarfs other national highways. It is more than 1000km longer than the Pacific Highway in New South Wales, which has just topped the state’s worst roads in a NRMA survey.

However, relief for motorists who use the Pacific is just around the corner. The highway is undergoing a $3.6?billion upgrade, funded by the Federal and New South Wales governments.

Meanwhile, the often narrow and bumpy Bruce is in urgent need of funding.

RACQ senior traffic and safety engineer Greg Miszkowycz said $100?million was needed each year for the next 10 to make it safe.

“We’ve got the longest length of national network road in Australia. We feel it’s attracted very little capital for infrastructure upgrades,” he said.

“The Bruce Highway is a major north-south freight corridor and there’s a lot of work to be done to bring it up to a safe standard.”

Mr Miszkowycz said regular flooding of parts of the Bruce Highway was also concerning.

According to Main Roads data from the last two months, the Bruce was closed at Gladstone Road in Rockhampton for 15 days due to floods. The situation made it near impossible to truck supplies from the south to the north, leaving many supermarket shelves bare of fresh produce.

The Bruce was closed in 16 other places for more than a day, with some cut off for up to 13 days.

“In this day and age, to have roads that regularly flood isn’t good enough,” Mr Miszkowycz said.

“You don’t want to see towns cut off from supplies on a regular basis.”

The RACQ yesterday launched its unroadworthy roads survey and Mr Miszkowycz expects the Bruce to feature prominently in the results.

“People see it as a road that is not fit for purpose,” he said. “The case is very solid for the Bruce Highway to receive significant funds for upgrades.”