Bruce Highway funding secured
In 2024, we asked you to tell us your top transport priority. You told us it was fixing the Bruce Highway.
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In fact, fixing the Bruce topped our members’ priority list for transport projects with 85% voting it as an important or extremely important 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games Legacy.
Off the back of our research, we launched a major campaign to ‘Fix the Bruce’, supported by leading organisations including the Qld Farmers Federation, Qld Trucking Association, Local Government Association of Qld, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Qld and Qld Tourism Industry Council.
RACQ Managing Director and Group CEO David Carter said the Club advocated relentlessly, calling on the Federal Government to commit to a long-term funding plan and pay for 80% of future upgrades on the Bruce, with the State Government funding the rest of the bill.
“The Federal Government has answered those calls to ‘Fix the Bruce’, committing to fund 80% of future upgrades to ensure all sections of the Bruce achieve a minimum of 3-stars for safety. It’s a funding package worth a total of $9 billion,” Mr Carter said.
“It’s through your membership that we are able to advocate on issues that are important to Queenslanders, and this is a great example of that work.
“We also acknowledge the former and current State Governments’ commitment and efforts to fight for increased funding for the Bruce and detailed project planning done to date.”
RACQ will now continue its work on the Bruce Highway Advisory Council to ensure upgrades are prioritised along the highest-risk areas.
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What does upgrading the Bruce Highway to a minimum of 3-stars look like?
The safety of a road’s design can be measured using the AusRAP Star Rating system.
This system produces a star rating for each road section by assessing more than 60 different road attributes, including lane and shoulder widths, road surface, sign and line-marking condition and quality, speed limits, traffic volumes, overtaking lanes and the safety of roadsides and intersections.
RACQ’s Traffic and Safety Engineering Manager Gregory Miszkowycz said depending on the design and quality, these attributes can increase or decrease the chances of a crash occurring on a road, and its severity.
“Under the AusRAP, significant lengths of the Bruce Highway are rated at just 2 out of 5-stars for road infrastructure safety,” Mr Miszkowycz said.
“Many of these sections feature narrow lanes and bridges, high speed limits, poor road surfaces, dangerous roadsides and little to no overtaking lanes, increasing the chances of a crash and its severity.
“Upgrading these roads to 3-stars or above could mean the widening of lanes and shoulders, removing roadside hazards, installing safety barriers or widening centre lines to separate oncoming traffic, and adding overtaking lanes.
“As a general rule of thumb, for every increase in star rating it is estimated that the cost of fatal and serious injury crashes will be reduced by approximately 50%.”
Below is a diagram showing examples of typical design features on different star-rated sections of the Bruce Highway.
As you can see both divided and undivided roads can be rated as 3-stars depending on what other safety features they have. Roads with 4 and 5-star ratings are typically multi-lane, divided motorways with a full range of safety treatments such as barriers, wide lanes and shoulders and interchanges rather than intersections.
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Thank you for your support to help us advocate to ‘Fix the Bruce’. We could not have done it without your membership.
For more information about RACQ’s advocacy campaign visit FixTheBruce.com.
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