1968 Shell Queensland road map

[Brad Torr]

Hi, For the purposes of research and study of Queensland's transport history, I would like to share with you some excerpts from the Shell 1968 Queensland road map. Some things to note ... * The Western Freeway isn't shown, but the Centenary Highway is? So the Centenary Hwy opened much earlier than I thought - was it a freeway in 1968? Or was it just an ordinary road that was upgraded to freeway status later on? * An error - Queensland Railways' Killarney Line is shown as extending to Legume, NSW. Fail. * The Leichhardt Highway north of Goondiwindi is shown as unnumbered "Weir Hwy". NR39 is, however, shown along the "Leichhardt Hwy" between Miles and Banana. There's also the "N.W. Hwy" between Winton and Cloncurry; the "Northern Inland Hwy" from Charters Towers to Emerald; and the "Condamine Highway" west from Dalby to a point on NR55 between Roma and Surat. * National Route 48 is shown along what is now State Route 49. Could this mean that there were two NR48s - the other being the Illawarra Hwy in NSW? There are also many other changes to route numbering and naming and alignments and it's too late for me to point them all out. I'm sure you'll all find some of them on the attached scans :-) --Brad

 

[Paul Rands]

Hey Brad, nice scans. Interesting to see NR7...

Nice to also see NR66 :)

--
Paul Rands
paul...@gmail.com

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<shellqld01.jpg><shellqld02.jpg><shellqld03.jpg><shellqld04.jpg><shellqld05.jpg>

[Michael Greenslade]

Hi Brad,

Awww, what about the rest of the map??? :-)

Very good - thanks for posting. NR80 in north Queensland too! I like
the nice straight road between Boonah and Beaudesert. If only it was
like that!

Cheers,
Michael

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[Laurier Williams]

The current list of road closures in QLD at http://highload.131940.qld.gov.au/ must be some sort of record and gives some indication of the scope of the flooding. Note that the DMR has had to go to a simpler presentation to cope with demand. With heavy rain forecast in SE QLD and NE NSW over the next 48 hours or so, the flooding is likely to spread.

 

Laurier

[Paul Rands]

Damn! That list is unreal. I think this would be the biggest flooding the state  has had.

--
Paul Rands
paul...@gmail.com

On 06/01/2011, at 1:25 AM, Laurier Williams wrote:

The current list of road closures in QLD at http://highload.131940.qld.gov.au/ must be some sort of record and gives some indication of the scope of the flooding. Note that the DMR has had to go to a simpler presentation to cope with demand. With heavy rain forecast in SE QLD and NE NSW over the next 48 hours or so, the flooding is likely to spread.

 

Laurier

[Trent Thomson]

Brad

Re Centenary Highway/Western Freeway situation, I started writing an
article on Wilbur Smith's plans for western Brisbane a few years ago
but never finished it. While incomplete (and there may still be some
inaccuracies), you might find it interesting:

----

In 1959, the year of Queensland’s centenary, work commenced on a
series of new suburbs west of Brisbane. In typical Queensland style,
residents of these new ‘Centenary Suburbs’ were provided with limited
access to the surrounding districts. There was no public transport and
vehicular access was limited to just one road and one river crossing
-- the Centenary Highway and Centenary Bridge. The Centenary Highway
was constructed by Hooker Corporation (the estate developer) in 1964,
providing access to both Moggill Rd at Indooroopilly (via the
Centenary Bridge) and Ipswich Rd at Darra. The highway was a simple
two-way, two lane operation with at-grade intersections at key
locations.

Rapid growth occurred over the ensuing years, placing pressure on the
area’s finely tuned transport network. Brisbane City Council responded
by proposing the construction of an expressway system in its 1961 town
plan. Converging on a Ring Road in the CBD, three radial expressways
were planned to serve key growth centres in the northern, southeastern
and southwestern suburbs. The Southwestern Expressway was to commence
at the Ring Road near Caxton Street in Paddington and terminate at
Moggill, approximately 10 km north-east of Ipswich on the northern
side of the Brisbane River.

Subsequent modelling and testing of the plan by Wilbur Smith &
Associates, an American engineering consultancy, showed that projected
traffic levels on the Southwestern Expressway and 2-lane Centenary
Bridge justified the construction of a much larger freeway network in
the western suburbs. In the recommendations of its 1965 Brisbane
Transportation Study, the firm included the construction of two
freeways and one expressway serving the western suburbs: the Western
Freeway, Centenary Freeway and Southwest Expressway.

[insert graphic of Wilbur Smith plan, western suburbs section]

Western Freeway
Under the Wilbur Smith Plan, all freeways radiating from the CBD were
to meet at a large ring road around the Brisbane CBD called the
Central Freeway. Similar in routing to Council’s Southwestern
Expressway, the Western Freeway was to commence at the Central Freeway
near Caxton Street and project westerly through the suburbs of
Auchenflower, Toowong, Indooroopilly, Kenmore, Moggill and Pullenvale,
terminating on the southern side of the Brisbane River at Redbank.
Between Indooroopilly and Kenmore, the Western Freeway was to replace
the Centenary Highway. Once completed, the entire facility was to be 8
lanes wide.

Centenary Freeway
The remaining portion of Centenary Highway south of Kenmore was to be
upgraded to a six lane freeway called the Centenary Freeway. The
purpose of this freeway was to provide citybound commuters in the
Centenary Suburbs easy connections to two radial freeways – the
Western Freeway (at Kenmore) and Southwest Expressway (at Darra).
Better links to nearby areas were also included via an upgraded
surface street network.

Southwest Expressway
[Insert history of Ipswich Road and Ipswich Motorway]

Construction begins on the Western Freeway
In 1969, a short section of the Western Freeway opened between Milton
Road and Taringa Parade, a narrow residential street that runs
parallel to the freeway near Chapel Hill. This section of freeway,
built by Brisbane City Council in 1968, simply shifted traffic
problems from Taringa’s town centre to Chapel Hill.

Things stayed this way until the late 1970s when construction of an
extension to Moggill Road commenced. It was decided to construct only
the eastbound carriageway of the freeway, providing two eastbound
lanes and one westbound lane on the single carriageway. The idea was
to duplicate the road when demand increased. All bridge structures
were designed with this in mind. Even today, the Waverley Road
overpass in Taringa still carries traffic over vacant land and there
is space at the Moggill Road interchange for an additional
carriageway. The present-day four lane operation was achieved by
widening the super-2 expressway and installing a concrete divider
between the opposing streams of traffic.

Much to the relief of residents on Taringa Parade, the extension to
Moggill Road was completed by 1980. However despite this, there
remained an inconvenient gap between the end of the Western Freeway
and the start of the Centenary Highway. Motorists bound for the
Centenary Suburbs had to pass through a series of intersections on
Moggill Road to reach the Centenary Highway.

Also during this time planning continued for the Toowong-City section
of the Western Freeway. A review of the inner city freeway system was
also conducted resulting in changes to the Western Freeway and the
addition of a second ring route called the Paddington Freeway.
Paddington Freeway was to run from the Western Freeway at Milton to
the Northwest Freeway at Everton Park, allowing traffic to bypass the
Central Freeway and Brisbane’s CBD altogether.

The addition of the Paddington Freeway and the extensive changes to
the central City freeways meant that a four-way interchange connecting
the Central, Western and Paddington Freeways had to be provided near
Park Road in Milton. Several designs were considered including a stack
interchange that was four levels high. In the end, Main Roads
engineers decided on a three-level variant that still would have
provided an impressive gateway to the Brisbane CBD. An advantage of
this new design was that impacts on the historic neighbourhoods of
Petrie Terrace and Normanby would be minimised.

----

and that's all... for now!

The article doesn't say it yet, but the Centenary Highway was
progressively duplicated and grade separated in the 1980s, with the
gap between the Centenary Highway and Western Freeway being closed in
the late 1980s.

The Kenmore Bypass everyone wants is just the old Western Freeway idea
lifted straight from the Wilbur Smith Plan. Amazing how far we've come
in 50 years... not very far!!!

Trent

On Jan 5, 12:57 am, Brad Torr <humehw...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[Mark]

From the Brisbane Times

 

 

Road damage bill could double 1974 floods

January 10, 2011 - 8:09AM

 

Flood disaster surges on, The flooded Mary River on Exhibition Road, Gympie, showing where two bridges were submerged by water on January 10. Photo: Jenny Nancarrow

 

                                                        

 

The damage bill to Queensland's road network from the state's flood emergency could double that of the benchmark 1974 floods.

Queensland Main Roads Minister Craig Wallace said the bill stood at $1.5 billion today, but the full extent of the damage was not yet known because so many roads were still under water.

"We've got 33,000 kilometres of state roads and the full extent of the damage can't be determined right now," he said.

"It might not be known for many months, but we know it will be an unprecedented long term repair job.

"Very few stretches of road have been left untouched by weakened surfaces, potholes, verges and road base washed away or more serious structural damage."

Some of the worst effected roads include the major highways, including the Capricorn, Leichhardt, Warrego, Dawson and parts of the Bruce north of Gympie and south of Rockhampton.

Crews were working around the clock to inspect and fix roads where possible, Mr Wallace said.

All levels of government, the private sector and emergency services would be called on to get infrastructure up and running as soon as possible.

======================

Mark.

[Paul Rands]

QMR should see this as a chance to do a first class job on signage upgrades / replacements and a look at long term route improvements. But the cynic in me would guess that it's going to end up a bit of a slap up job as usual.

--
Paul Rands
paul...@gmail.com

--

[Sam Laybutt]

Thanks for posting that Trent, very interesting.
 
I know all about half-finished articles and research...
 
> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2011 22:34:22 -0800
> Subject: [Aussie Highways] Re: 1968 Shell Queensland road map
> From: trent....@gmail.com
> To: aussie-...@googlegroups.com

[Sam Laybutt]

Thanks for scanning this map, Brad. There's a number of Queensland maps from this era which some bizarre route marking allocations - somebody in the chain of information did a big boo-boo back then. 


As far as I can tell, this was most likely only a preliminary or suggested route scheme which originated within the DMR - no NAASRA map that I have seen shows all these routes allocated (although some are shown) and certainly none were ever signed to my knowledge. From what I remember, the extension of NR71 to Mackay via Clermont and the NR80 across the Gulf Dev Rd were NAASRA proposals later abandoned.



The map is strange in that it shows a mixture of old and new highway names. In 1963 the 'Road Plan of Queensland' was formalised and contained a complete review of the classification and naming of classified roads in Queensland - prior to this there were some seemingly wacky highway designations and naming. As an example, the Bruce Highway as a continuous entity was only established as part of this Plan. Some highway names which were decommissioned in 1963, such as Mulligan Highway and Gore Highway, have since made a comeback.


One interesting thing I noticed in the 5th scan is what appears to be a significant deviation on the Flinders Highway west of Charters Towers. Might be worth investigation more...


With regard to your NR48 comment - it is interesting to note that NR48, NR41 and NR52 in NSW were not part of the original scheme and did not have numbers allocated - hence why they are somewhat out of order. This might also apply to the Bruxner Highway which is located between 38 and 42, not north of 42.

---

Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 06:57:13 -0800
From: hume...@yahoo.com
Subject: [Aussie Highways] 1968 Shell Queensland road map
To: aussie-...@googlegroups.com