Truckies pleased to see Gympie Bypass open ahead of schedule

The eagerly-anticipated Gympie Bypass is open for business.

Queensland Police confirmed that the $1.162 billion section of road opened between 11.30pm and midnight last night, and early reports on social media sites suggest it’s been worth the long wait for truckies.

The 26km bypass removes 53 intersections through Gympie and 106 property accesses, and one early user said the new route saved him around 13 minutes compared with the old run through the city.

Chris Stanley from Brisbane told Big Rigs before the opening that was looking forward to no long having to negotiate all the cars pulling out in front of him through the bustling business district.

“I’ve been going through there for 10 years and nearly every trip someone pulls out in front of you or cuts you off, or won’t let you back in when you have the merging lanes coming down to a single lane again,” Stanley said.

“It could save at least a half an hour.

“That means you can get down and find somewhere decent to pull up for the night.”

The bypass is the final section of a 62-kilometre, $2.549 billion program of works to upgrade the Bruce Highway between Cooroy and Curra that began in 2009.

Queensland Trucking Association CEO Gary Mahon told Big Rigs he has no complaints about having his members running on it day and night, but wonders why that 62km section of the Bruce has taken 15 years to finish.

“We’re delighted to see it open, but if we keep on investing at that rate, it’ll be more than 300 years before we reach Cairns with that standard of road,” Mahon said.

Athol Carter, the central Queensland manager at Frasers Livestock in Rockhampton and vice president of the Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association, told Big Rigs earlier this year that while he welcomed the Bypass, he did have safety concerns about the traffic flow.

“The minute we get to Curra from what I can see we are back on to one of the worst bits of the Bruce Highway known to man,” Carter said.

“We’ve got this first and last mile that connects with this beautiful four-lane highway through to Brisbane, which is going to be another bloody death trap.

“People are now going to come off a 110km/h four-lane roadway back to a narrow, rough two-lane highway.

“I can almost guarantee that there will be an accident there.”

In a media release yesterday, the Gympie Regional Council said work had already been completed on one potential trouble spot.

An almost-1km stretch of Flood Rd, one of the main interchange points on the Bypass at the southern end of the 26km stretch, has been upgraded from single to dual lane at a cost of $1.65 million.