What the Pacific Highway upgrade did to the towns it went around

The scale of it

The programme describes itself plainly: The Pacific Highway upgrade is the largest road infrastructure project in Australia, and It connects Sydney and Brisbane, and is a major contributor to the country's economic activity.

The northern end gives a sense of what that means in construction terms. The Woolgoolga to Ballina section alone involved upgrading the highway to motorway (Class M) or arterial (Class A) standard over its 155 kilometre length, nine interchanges, more than 170 bridges and more than 350 connectivity structures, and it was the final link in the Pacific Highway, between Hexham and the Queensland border, to be upgraded to four lanes. That is one section.

Why a town gets bypassed, in the programme's own words

This is the part worth having straight, because it is argued about in every town it happens to. The stated logic is not about the town at all: Bypassing towns reduces travelling pinch points by diverting the major highway around a town, and takes the flow of 'through' traffic away from the town.

The benefits the programme claims for a bypassed town are removing traffic congestion, reducing noise and vibration, improving road safety, and making the town centre more attractive to visitors. Note the last one: the case put to a town is that losing the passing traffic makes the centre better to visit, not merely quieter. Whether that has held is a fair local question and not one this page settles.

The Mid North Coast towns on that list

On the Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour section, the programme says Some of the town bypasses for this highway upgrade include Kempsey, Macksville and Urunga. Further north, the Woolgoolga to Ballina works bypassed South Grafton, Ulmarra, Woodburn, Broadwater and Wardell.

For anyone who remembers driving through the middle of Kempsey or Macksville, that list is the whole story of the last two decades of this coast in one line.

What it reports having delivered

Locally the figure that matters most is the travel one: reduced travel times between Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour estimated to be saving more than 30 minutes. And on safety the programme is unambiguous about what it considers the main result: The greatest benefit has been the significant reduction in serious and fatal road crashes.

These are the programme's own numbers, published by the people who built it, and we have not independently verified any of them. That does not make them wrong. It does mean a 70 per cent figure deserves the words on their own figures attached to it, which is how we have written it.

The last piece

The Coffs Harbour bypass closes the programme out. The site says the 14km Coffs Harbour bypass will take vehicles west of the urban area, from Englands Road in the south to Sapphire in the north, and that This is the final stage of the Pacific Highway upgrade and is currently under construction.

We cover the build itself, including its cost, its tunnels and its timetable, in the bypass enters its final year. What this page adds is the thing that story assumes: the programme it completes.