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Bindoon bypass gets go-ahead

Rueben HaleCountryman
Chittering shire deputy president Peter Osborn and chief executive Alan Sheridan, Nationals MLA Shane Love, shire president Gordon Houston, with Jim Chown on the Great Northern Highway near Bindoon.
Camera IconChittering shire deputy president Peter Osborn and chief executive Alan Sheridan, Nationals MLA Shane Love, shire president Gordon Houston, with Jim Chown on the Great Northern Highway near Bindoon. Credit: Rueben Hale

The State Government has announced a new road bypass at Bindoon to ease the town’s trucking hell.

The bypass corridor is expected to divert about 1000 trucks each day from roaring through Bindoon at a rate of one every 1.5 minutes.

The road, to be known as Western Bypass Corridor A, was selected over two other alternative routes and will be constructed on the western side of the Great Northern Highway.

The project is expected to generate 250 local jobs when construction of 48km of new highway between Chittering Roadhouse and Calingiri West Road begins later this year.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport Jim Chown said the corridor would achieve the best balance of cost, freight efficiency and social impacts.

“This route will mean farmers and other freight movers will have a time, maintenance and driver fatigue-saving option and this bypass will also be the last link in the chain in regards to efficiency of the northern road network,” he said.

“Farmers have the grain-to-port option from this area already and because CBH have put in the incentive to cart locally so people are increasingly choosing to move their grain by road. This means the bypass road will help everyone.”

Shire of Chittering president Gordon Houston said he felt people in Bindoon were relieved a decision had been made that would see the removal trucks from the town in the near future.

“A version of the route has been talked about by various governments for more than 20-odd years, but over the last six months we have been trialling triple road trains were trialled on the eastern side of town because of that trial it was determined the alternative western side route was a better option,” he said.

Bindoon cattle farmer Philip Schubert said the decision to build the bypass on the western side of the highway would bring to an end 17 years of worry over the future of his 40ha property.

“In 1999, a proposal was made to build the bypass on the eastern side of the highway, which would have meant my house would have been torn down to make way for it,” he said.

“A road on the eastern side would have also destroyed the farming heartland of the area.

“With the situation left in limbo for such a long time , it meant that land values remained much lower than they would have otherwise been with the area being under so much uncertainty.”

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