Qld Highways!

Hi axle,

The Barkly "HWY" gave us that rocking horse ride a couple of years ago crossing from the Territory to Cloncurry. There were many sections under repair and it appeared it was a never ending job.
Maybe something to do with the Black Soil Plains and heavy transport.

Cheers
Pop

I'd have to say that the Flinders Hwy between Cloncurry and Hughenden back in 2014 was easily the worst sealed road I've been on in my travels. The lumps/surf/swell in the road saw our front wheels almost airborne on one section, doing 80. I would confidently say that we've done the Gibb River Road a number of times and large sections of it (western end) are smoother and more comfortable than the Flinders Highway.

We frequently find it's a more comfortable ride on the unsealed outback roads than the sealed ones - tracks like the Birdsville and the Gibb can be as good as a highway if you strike it lucky with the grader timing !!

The rock 'n' roll Central Queensland Roads were terrible with our long wheel base and caravan. Slower and harder driving on than the unsealed and very corrugated inland roads. We found them mostly in the clay soil areas, particularly the former Eromanga Sea.

No! They are not suffering from heavy traffic or lack of anything. They are suffering from black soil and unless you have a lot of money to throw at thats the way it is.
I can tell some stories about the same bit of road in the late 60's, some good and some bad. Good! Potato shed at the Moonie motel with many a drink with the locals. Bad! Down to the axles again all 7 of them when wet.

If you want a good ride, go the Mundubbera/ durong rd for a great back bracing run.
Guess many get used to what they get for their tax dollar in populated areas.

I often travel the Capricorn Highway from Barcaldine to Rocky and back. The east bound lane has always been worse than the westbound and it is all to do with the weight of heavy vehicles according to a mate who has been working on the highway for the past 30 years. Trucks heading east are usually fully loaded and come back empty with the most noticeable being stock transport into Gracemere saleyards and quarry trucks from the Anakie area carting gravel to Emerald and beyond.

My mate would never admit that they didn't know how to build a good road to start with. Poor foundations without the right amount of compaction plus heavy transport will always result in a bad road.

Dusty

The problem in Qld is simple. The engineering standards are lower in Qld than any other state. There is simply not enough depth or width of road base in Qld road standards. The soil type doses not t help but it does not change at the NSW and NT boarder.
I kept breaking torsion bar bolts in Qld so slowed down 20k/h.

I am not an engineer but have worked closely with an ex Qld engineer for a while in another life.

Neil

Come on guys, how boring would it be if every bitumen road was built like a Freeway.

I find these types of roads have character, adds awareness to your driving skills, keeps you more alert and one should be travelling at a reduced speed, which in its self has it's own built in safety aspects.

Most of us if not all, have 4x4's with lift kits, GVM upgrades, all the good bits and gadgets for driving on the roughest of Outback roads, but are troubled by a bit of screwed up bouncy bitumen, that is not up to the "M1" status.

I say some of the above tongue in cheek, :-)

Yes some of our bitumen roads, especially where there is a concentrated flow of heavy vehicles involved, do leave a bit to be desired, .

Cheers

Just back from Vic which in places some roads felt like we were in Qld. The "Rough Surface" sign got quite a workout until with a change of Shires it became "Uneven Surface". Sometimes there was an 80kmh advisory, sometimes the rough bit was smoother than the preceding 300m and sometimes it actually was rougher.
Perhaps a big spend on maintenance is in order. $50 million on Great Ocean Rd from Anglesea to Geelong by 2018 is not being spent in the area between the Prom and Melbourne..... W

Just a fact no opinion here;
In a course I did at work, we had an RTA/RMS person give a talk about oversize/mass heavy vehicles.
According to this guy, a single 40t truck trailer combo does the same in terms of wear and tear on a road that 1000 car movements do.
Tim

Yeh last year I was doing some service runs in the south west .... Miles, Stanthorpe, Goondoowindi, Toowoomba, Warwick, in between and surrounds.

Yeh some of the road leaves a bit to be desired ...... doing costal work, I'll take my 2wd it's faster smoother and quieter..... but heading west I'll take the 4wd ..... the bigger wheels, the extra ride height and the extra weigh make the trip a lot more comfortable and safer.

That section going into Miles, realy needs some work.

I would not want to be traveling a lot of those roads in a modern passenger car with its low clearance and low profile tyres.

A lot of it is to do with the black soil, and I don't think all of the roads have been repared since the last lot of floods.

There is also a problem now ...... we have higher road standards in QLD than we have had in the past ..... so when they rebuild roads, they have to meet the new standards ...... this includes things like wider verges, guard rails and better markings ...... this makes road rebuilds a lot more expensive so they tend not to get done as quickly.

If you travel the Bruce north from Brisbane, you can see sections of the new standard of road, where it has been rebuilt, with the old standard either side ...... like a 200meter section of road with wide verges improved road markings and guard rails.

Many of our roads simply are not compliant with current standards ..... nothing is more obvious than the section from Caboolture to Caloundra turn off.

The problem is the squeaky wheel gets the most oil ...... so if there is not "a problem" like road deaths & injuries, an economic impact ore some sort of ploitical leverage ..... nothing gets done.

cheers

You can say what you like about the lack of funds and the engineering standards. The underlying thing is that if the ground under the road keeps moving then you will end up with the roller-coaster surface on a lot of Qld roads. The soils in Oz are not the same all over the countryside. Qld has more black soils than other states. There are roads in northern NSW like that, particularly the older sections of the Walgett Lightening Ridge road. There was mention above of roads where the road goes to pieces on one lane where there is heavier loads in one direction, the heavier loads just means the subsoil in a shorter time.

There are two ways you can fix that. One is to dig out the black soil until you get down to a more stable base (and how deep will that be) and back fill it with good road base. The other way would be a continuous viaduct with deep piles.