Peter Freeman has put together some good maps of motorways/quasi-motorways for Australian cities in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=40170Enceladus wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 02:25 Looks like a superb section of new motorway. I presume it will take a lot of traffic pressure off Toowoomba and the existing route.
Just out of interest, is there a major programme of motorway construction in Australia currently? I was under the impression, given its huge area and the sparse population outside the major cities, that motorways were largely confined to areas in and around these cities. Are any major cities, like Sydney and Melbourne, actually fully connected by motorway at this stage?
What are the long-term plans and goals? What is the total length of motorway and D2 in Australia now. Are any maps available online that shows the location and lengths of these routes?
Sydney and Melbourne are connected by a continuous dual carriageway but it's not completely motorway. In the Victorian section it is a 'Freeway' (which has specific legal restrictions ala UK motorways) but there are many at-grade intersections. In the NSW section the first ~130km south from Sydney is a proper freeway, then after that it is an ordinary dual carriageway but with hard shoulders and occasional grade separations.
Sydney to Brisbane is the main project at the moment - again a mixture of motorway and ordinary dual carriageway. Most sections built within the last 10 years are proper motorways on new alignments or with LARs, but older duplication projects were generally built as on-line upgrades with direct property access and at-grade intersections. All our dual carriageways get built with hard shoulders. The Pacific Highway Upgrade website has the current progress at 82% complete - that's for continuous dual carriageway, and includes a few sets of traffic lights on the outskirts of Newcastle and through Coffs Harbour.