A MAJOR industry lobby group has reiterated its call for upgrades to the Augusta Highway, which has had 542 crashes in the past five years, including one fatality last week.
Civil Contractors Federation SA chief executive Phil Sutherland says in the past five year, that "notoriously treacherous stretch of road" has had 39 fatalities, 97 serious injuries and 284 minor injuries, and calls on the state and federal governments to act and fast-track plans to make the road dual laned.
"Given the very high casualty rate and the importance of the Highway between Port Wakefield and Port Augusta as a strategic freight and road transport corridor, its remediation should be an absolute priority - an appeal made for years to governments by the Federation," he said.
"How many more people have to die on this terrible stretch of road before our political leaders act?
"It beggars belief that this section of National Highway A1 remains in such a dilapidated state given its crucial link to the national road system.
"South Australians deserve much better roads than the Augusta Highway."
Mr Sutherland said there seemed to be a case of SA being viewed as the "poor relation" for funding when it came to the state's roads.
"Look over the border and see the much higher quality of road infrastructure," Mr Sutherland said.
"Pleasingly at last, the bridge at Port Augusta and the road through Port Wakefield are being upgraded.
"It would make an enormous amount of sense to duplicate the road between these two points at the same time. This would simply amount to an extension of the duplicated road from Gepps Cross to Port Wakefield."
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The CCF (SA) noted that National Highway A1, a network of highways that circumnavigates Australia joining all mainland state capitals, is recognised because of its total length of 14,500km as among the longest national highways in the world.
"Yet despite this, the section of highway between Port Wakefield and Port Augusta is a meagre two-lane road that has to exist as a major strategic transport and freight corridor connecting Adelaide to the north of SA and the rest of Australia," Mr Sutherland said.
"The road carries between 8000 and 10,000 vehicle movements each day comprising a toxic mix of cars, caravans, and heavy transports, including military traffic, oversize combinations and mass vehicles in the B-Doubles, B-Triples and road train categories.
"The highway north of Port Wakefield is comprised of narrow bridges and a railway level crossing.
"The road surface condition features degraded road shoulders and verges, roughness and rutting of the road surface, and is generally a patchwork of bitumen showing regular repair and maintenance works."
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