Work set to start on Hobart Southern Projects this summer

Michael Ferguson, Minister for Infrastructure and Transport

The Rockliff Liberal Government is working hard to make our roads safer and more efficient around Tasmania, as it continues to deliver on things that matter to the Tasmanian people.

The next stage in the Southern Projects program will begin this summer construction season, with tenders for the Macquarie/Davey Streets Bus Improvement project to be advertised on Saturday, 7 October and construction work to start by the end of the year.

Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Michael Ferguson, said this project is part of the carefully planned Southern Projects program. The program includes the construction of the Southern Outlet Transit Lane all the way through to Macquarie Street, and has a deliberate aim to make bus travel more attractive and improve traffic flow from the southern suburbs to Hobart’s CBD.

“My Department has been working on ways to minimise traffic impacts from construction. To do that, we have developed a staging of work, starting from where the traffic is the heaviest in the city and working our way back. Advice is that this will maximise the flow on the Macquarie and Davey Street couplet in the first instance with continued congestion improvement as we work our way back to Olinda Grove,” he said.

“The work will be done in smaller stages, so we aren’t working on too many sections at the same time.

“This summer, we will focus on initial preparation works for the transit lane, construction of the Macquarie and Davey Streets Bus Improvements project and the first element of the Southern Outlet Transit Lane, the Transit Lane Connector between Davey and Macquarie Streets.

“These projects will add new lane capacity and improve peak hour traffic flow through Hobart’s CBD, and improve the bottleneck between Davey and Macquarie Streets.

“We are doing this work first to minimise traffic impacts when the major construction on the additional Transit Lane starts.

“In the coming weeks, teams will remove the three vacant Dynnyrne properties that were acquired for the project. This work will include some night-time lane closures and should not impact traffic during the day.

/Public Release. View in full here.