Project Description

The M1 Pacific Motorway is one of Australia’s busiest transport routes carrying and is an important link in the Sydney to Brisbane Route. The intersection upgrade at Weakleys Drive and John Renshaw Drive addressed an underperforming intersection at a critical connection point. This intersection connects the M1 Pacific Motorway, the New England Highway and the Pacific Highway as well as servicing local industrial and business areas. Its existing two lane roundabout had insufficient capacity to service current volumes of up to 4000 vehicles per hour in peak.

The intersection was one of three projects that formed the $391 million dollar M1 Productivity Package jointly funded by the Australian and NSW State governments to improve traffic efficiency and safety on the M1 Pacific Motorway.

Services Provided

Hillard Civil (CCHD) was engaged to carry out desktop constraints mapping, preliminary options investigation and strategic road design/documentation and cost estimation.

Both Adam (CCHD) and Justin (RMS) were engaged to developed strategic options with Adam focusing on grade separated options and Justin focusing on at grade options. Each option was developed closely with the traffic modellers and the client in an iterative process that allowed the design to evolve improving traffic efficiency, safety in design and ease of construction with each consecutive option. Each of these options were then estimated.

Constraints mapping was also developed so that each option minimised impacts on adjacent environmentally sensitive areas and existing utilities. Adam and Justin also engaged with the client and project manager for the M1 Pacific Motorway to Raymond Terrace project to ensure that proposed options worked with this future major project.

The detailed investigation and development of robust strategic options allowed the client to clearly determine the best value option for the project which was carried through to the concept design.

CCHD later provided technical support to Aurecon during the early stages of concept design.