No “official” detour

RMS Project manager Peter Hamilton told Forbes Shire Council last week that while a detour will be in place along Wirrinya Road and Red Bend Silo for heavy vehicles there wouldn’t be an official light vehicle detour in town.

“Anything over 22.5 tonnes and 12.5 metre length will have to take the heavy vehicle detour,” Mtr Hamilton said.

“Anything under that size can use the town roads with most expected to use Oxford Street or Sherrif Street.

“We’ve done a lot of traffic modelling and it indicates all the intersections are going to operate fine.

“We don’t want to have an official light vehicle detour in town because we want the locals to be able to use their own initiative.

“So what we’ll do is provide information signage in town for out of towners but the local get is they’ll know which routes to use,” Mr Hamilton said.

Mr Hamilton told council he was “virtually full time working on the bridge” at the moment and had been undertaking substantial consultation with key stakeholders in the project which is expected to span 43 weeks.

In reply to a question from councillors Mr Hamilton said a four week contingency for wet weather had been allowed for but added “if we end up with a lot of wet weather there is not much we can do”.

For construction to take place, which is expected to commence in August 2019 and finish in July 2020, Mr Hamilton said Lake Forbes needed to be at its current level.

He explained that the lake needed to be at a level of 700 to 800mm so work could be carried out on the rock platform.

“Lowering the lake is really really important and means we can build the job faster,” Mr Hamilton said.

As part of the project a traffic light design for Iron Bridge is underway as the bridge will become single lane with permanent traffic lights.

“We’re actually looking at the future of the Iron Bridge, I’m expecting to be briefed on a project there,” Mr Hamilton told council.