A SINGLE-VEHICLE crash that closed part of the Mitchell Highway last Thursday was the seventh major incident on the road between Orange and Bathurst in the past three months.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
As the NSW Government continues its $50 million, multi-year program of safety improvements on the 50-kilometre stretch of highway, Live Traffic data shows the road's unfortunate end to the year.
From mid-October to the end of December, there were crashes at Dunkeld (two vehicles), The Rocks (two vehicles), Vittoria (a single vehicle), Guyong (a single vehicle) and Glenroi on the Orange outskirts (three vehicles), as well as a truck breakdown at Vittoria.
They were followed by a crash at Shadforth on January 11 in which, police said, a vehicle left the road before hitting a tree.
The high incidence of crashes between Orange and Bathurst has been cited as the reason for the NSW Government's $50m worth of safety upgrades to the road.
The latest two stages - at East Guyong and Vittoria East - were completed in December, while work is continuing at the Vittoria Curve section.
At East Guyong, the highway was widened, flexible safety barriers were installed in the centre median and on both sides of the road and a turnaround bay big enough to accommodate 26m B-doubles was added.
The two-and-a-half-year work at Vittoria East, meanwhile, included widening the road, installing safety barriers and building a B-double turnaround bay near The Rocks.
Work at the 1.7-kilometre Vittoria Curve section began in March last year and is expected to be completed in November this year.
The work on this section will include widening the road, installing flexible temporary safety barriers and rumble strips.
In the final stages of development, meanwhile, is the Vittoria West project, which Transport for NSW says will run from just near the Beekeeper's Inn to 1.8 kilometres west of the inn and which will involve installing rumble strips and safety barriers.
Transport for NSW regional director west Alistair Lunn talked to the ACM about the Mitchell Highway work when he was in Bathurst in the lead-up to Christmas for the opening of new lanes of the Great Western Highway from Kelso to Raglan.
"We had a huge road safety issue with that section of road, particularly with off-road and head-on crashes, so we are looking at putting more and more wire rope in," he said.
He said Transport for NSW was focusing on safety works on the overall section from Orange to Lithgow, including safety barriers and "more overtaking opportunities to give people an opportunity to move through the traffic at an efficient speed".
