{"id":680020,"date":"2026-03-25T05:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T05:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/680020\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T05:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T05:30:16","slug":"50-million-to-upgrade-detour-roads-during-great-western-highways-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/680020\/","title":{"rendered":"$50 million to upgrade detour roads during Great Western Highway’s closure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New South Wales government has announced it will spend $50 million upgrading three key detour roads being used while the Great Western Highway is partially closed.<\/p>\n

The work will be carried out on the Darling Causeway, which links the highway with the Bells Line of Road, Chifley Road which runs from Lithgow to the start of Bells Line of Road at Bell, and Main Street in Lithgow.<\/p>\n

The money will pay to lay asphalt, widen road shoulders and carry out other improvements along these stretches of road.<\/p>\n

Work has already started, with patching being carried out on Chifley Road and extra asphalt laid on Darling Causeway.<\/p>\n

The detours have been in place since the Great Western Highway was shut at Victoria Pass on March 9 <\/a>after cracking and movement were discovered at Mitchell’s Causeway, which is also known as The Convict Bridge.<\/p>\n

\"Cracks<\/p>\n

The damage to the road at Mitchell’s Causeway on Victoria Pass was discovered in early March.\u00a0 (Supplied: Transport for NSW)<\/p>\n

During question time in state parliament on Wednesday, NSW Roads Minister Jenny Aitchison said the funding was necessary to maintain safety and keep traffic moving.<\/p>\n

“There’s a $50 million detour package which will go into strengthening the safety, resilience and reliability of the alternate routes that are now carrying those increased traffic volumes,” Ms Aitchison said.<\/p>\n

Local impacts<\/p>\n

The Lithgow District Chamber of Commerce has described the upgrades as a “positive first step” by the state government to address safety risks.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had a number of trucks running ‘rat runs’ that’s caused problems, so there needs to be more work to ensure trucks aren’t using Lithgow’s local roads,” chamber president and local councillor, Steve Ring said.<\/p>\n

“I’ve requested that the [City of Lithgow] council talk with Transport for NSW to see if they can stagger truck movements through Lithgow to avoid unnecessary delays up Scenic Hill [on Chifley Road].”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr Ring said he was confident that the safety works would not exacerbate the traffic congestion.<\/p>\n

“The timing is unfortunate but they have to deal with it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“[Transport for NSW has] put up a solution, I imagine a lot of the work will be done at night.”<\/p>\n

\"Picture<\/p>\n

Motorists are being diverted at Lithgow, via Chifley Road to the Bells Line of Road and Darling Causeway. (Supplied: Ben Doyle\u00a0)<\/p>\n

Test results<\/p>\n

The state government said geotechnical assessments and monitoring of the site showed the road was still unstable and unsafe for traffic.<\/p>\n

Ms Aitchison told state parliament engineers were still testing and using 3D imaging to get a clearer idea of what movements were occurring in the road.<\/p>\n

“That’s had to be done with no absolutely no traffic on the road so we could get exactly what the movements were there,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We have got that geotechnical assessment that we’re all hanging on because we really need to understand the scale of disruption.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New South Wales government has announced it will spend $50 million upgrading three key detour roads being…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":680021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,286055,87708,286058,286056,74938,286053,286054,286057,50],"class_list":["post-680020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-australia","tag-bells-line-of-road","tag-blue-mountains","tag-convict-bridge","tag-darling-causeway","tag-detours","tag-great-western-highway","tag-lithgow","tag-mitchells-causeway","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116288174709491570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}