F3 CLOSED

[Pete]

Apparently the RTA will take 18 months to develop the plans to use the alternate side of the freeway if there is another closure.

18 months FFS - man, truck, witches hats.

Not too hard even for them surely.

There are issues with the use of the emergency cross over lanes for heavy vehicles.

Some have quite a deep dish gutter which is no good for a long rigid chassis or a B-Double heavy vehicle (bottom out). They'd also need some reinforcing for the heavy loads, and the shoulders concreted.

Also the hard turn into such a lane would have to be done from quite wide out by these vehicles and then you have to swing wide out onto the other side.

For safety's sake too, you'd have about 1 klm of witches hats, and I'd suspect they'd cut down the 3 lanes on the other carriageway to 1 each way and leave a blank lane in the middle for safety. Plus lighted arrows in and out of the diversion, signage etc.

Last thing you'd want would be to announce the use of the emergency lanes to get traffic onto the other carriageway, only to have the emergency lane blocked by a heavy vehicle that can't manoeuvre into it or out of it properly.