Michael Ferguson,Minister for Infrastructure and Transport
The Australian and Tasmanian Governments have committed $20.7 million to build a link road between the Huon Highway and Flood Road.
The link road will divert traffic travelling to and from Cygnet from Main Street Huonville. It will reduce congestion and improve safety through Huonville town centre.
In early 2022, the community and key stakeholders provided valuable feedback on two options for the Link Road - a Northern Route and a Southern Route.
Following expert engineering and environmental assessments and the feedback from the community we have chosen the Northern Route as the preferred alignment for this important infrastructure upgrade.
More than 60 per cent of the responses favoured the Northern Route, which would run from Main Street, opposite Orchard Avenue, southeast to the top of Flood Road. The Northern Route is also the Huon Valley Council's preferred option.
We will use the feedback in developing a detailed design to present to the public. The project is expected to be advertised for tender in mid-2022.
The Tasmanian Liberal Government has released the summary report of the consultation process on its website at www.transport.tas.gov.au/projectsplanning
We have also released a summary report of the feedback from community consultation on proposed improvements on the Huon Highway between Kingston and Southport, which took place in August 2021.
The feedback summary report is the culmination of extensive consultation with industry, local government and transporters, and the people of the Huon Valley.
The feedback will inform the development of the Huon Highway Corridor Strategy – Kingston to Southport, which identifies opportunities for improvement to meet the future transport demand along the corridor for the next 30 years.
The study will also feed into the Government's overarching 10-Year Strategic Action Plan for the highway.
Key themes raised during the consultation included pedestrian and bus stop safety, traffic volumes, heavy vehicle traffic, parking, speed limits, visibility, turning lanes and road width.
The next step will be to develop a prioritised list of road improvement projects that will improve safety and travel time reliability in the short term and plan for expected future needs.
The feedback summary report can be viewed on the Transport website: www.transport.tas.gov.au/kingstontosouthport
