12 hour traffic gridlock on F3 to Newcastle

By Alborz Fallah | April 13th, 2010

If you thought traffic was really bad for you yesterday, spare a thought for the poor motorists that got caught up in a record-breaking traffic jam on a Sydney freeway.

The issue started following an accident between a B-double fuel tanker and a small truck on the F3 at Mount White, north of Sydney at around midday.

The accident caused traffic jams stretching back an incredible 10 kilometres+ throughout the entire day before a contra-flow system was finally put into place 9 hours later.

The enormous delay by the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) to fix the issue highlighted the incompetence of authorities with NSW Transport Minister David Campbell saying “fur will fly” following the event.

The drive which is meant to take only two hours took as long as 12 according to some motorists. “You would think that on a highway like this where you only have one exit from Sydney to Newcastle that they would do something about it, why didn’t they shut off one lane over there and have all the traffic up one lane?” one driver told Nine News.

Mr Campbell was quick to pass on the blame, saying RTA workers had informed him that clearing the accident was the quicker option than implementing the contra-flow.

“To me, the commonsense test was not met in the decision-making around when to put in place that contra-flow and there will be some fur flying this morning, it will be that I’ll be in a cat fight with some public servants and (I’ll) demand from them to understand why, what in my view was the common sense approach, was not taken.” Mr Campbell told Fairfax Radio Network.

Sydney residents would be used to long traffic delays but 12 hours is by all means a new record!

Valet Dabess

that wouuld suck
John S

Hate to say it, but Sydneys roads are the worst! I live in Melbourne and sometimes think we have bad jams, but to be stuck for up to 12 hours…thats worse than the worst traffic jams in south east asia! And I’ve seen traffic in KL and Manila!
Nick

I even heard that some truck drivers were fined by the RTA at mount white when the drove through because that had been driving too long and not taken their break… If this is true then the morons at the RTA should be fired. The driver cannot jump in the back for a snooze when they are sitting in traffic. Just another typical money grab. They will also fine you for things like brakes out of adjustment or incorrect weight distribution on the float. The funny thing is they give you the fine and send you on your way……. It is obviously not a safety issue as they let you leave the station. The fines they hand out are somewhat larger than that of the normal drivers.

Wayne Kerr

I’m surprised the RTA big wigs have not been run over given the number of people they’ve ticked off.

tommo617

This really shows the need for a second corridor north out of Sydney. Perhaps through Wiseman’s Ferry or further west through Windsor and the Putty Road area then up through the NAtional Parks? Sure the greenies would complain, but having only one viable freeway between Australia’s most populous city and the Central coast is ludicrous.

A simple look at the Motorway system (M5/7 etc) clearly shows that there are links missing (M7 doesn’t link to the F3, still have to use Pennant Hills Road!)

How about we actually PLAN our infrastructure and not just patch up what we have?

toxic_horse

Takes longer than the 4 year election cycle to build anything.

Rodders

Yes i was Stuck, but consider myself one of the lucky ones..
I left Chatswood on Sydney’s North Shore at 830pm, got home around 1130pm near Gosford on the Central Coast..(a 3 hour journey normally done in 1 hour!!) I feel extremely Sorry for the Many thousands of motorists that were held up for more than 8 hours in some instances..
The RTA & Roads Transport Minister should be very ashamed the way the whole situation was handled..
Shak

I for one fully lay blame on the RTA. It aint fully Minister Campbell’s fault, although he should have checked. But when a Minister gets advice from the States traffic authority they generally take their advice. However there is no one else to blame for our poorly planned infrastructure. Why not spend some money on the Northern Rail Link. Why not Fix the F3. Why not improve train services to the west.
Reason, he cant be bothered.

Nick

True true.

This again proves that the gummnit is reactive instead of proactive.

Flying High

Another fine example of the incompetent mor0ns running the show in NSW. The RTA is an arm of the NSW govt and the NSW govt cannot shift the blame for this! The saddest thing is that New South Welsh men and women voted these clowns back into the office last time and more than likely will do so again. How many times do the people of NSW have to be kicked before they realise there is an alternative. It is impossible for things to be handled any worse…

Shak

Technically we didnt vote in the current Government, but if they keep it going the way they are, no one will be voting them into anywhere.

Davie

Yes you did. Take some responsibility for your vote.

NSW voted in a Labor govt despite almost a decade of neglect.

Its known as Stockholm syndrome.

908

try driving round madrid at the end of easter. I was returning to madrid and the traffic jam started almost 40km out from the city.
http://www.caradvice.com.au/64613/12-hour-traffic-gridlock-on-f3-to-newcastle/ Mobile Parking

This is a real windfall for the service station. It would not matter if we had 6 lanes heading north some idiot would find a way to block it.
rentakeyboard

I worked as a rep for 4yrs and was constantly on the F3 FWY.

The F3 FWY is an abomination!
Stoney!

I also blame these idiots that work in Sydney yet live on the central coast and Newcastle and drive to work every day, I know I’m going to get flamed for this but I don’t give a crap. I had to sit in 1.5 hours of traffic just from Maquarie park to Sydney Olympic park in my bus the other evening. I can’t believe their are morons that actually do this every day. Specially from the central coast, I’d prefer to get extra sleep.

Sydney in general is a shit place to travel and whilst the public transport is absolutely absurd in Sydney, in some ways I’ve found it to still be a more viable option than car.

Interurban trains however have a seated capacity of 848 passengers which is a lot, but there are only 19 trains in the morning that arrive at central from Gosford and Woy Woy between 6am and 10am. And only 8 of these come from n
Newcastle.

Theres clearly no where near enough capacity on this line (currently at 16416 between 6 and 10) So it’s pretty clear its the idiots running our public transport stuffing it up for us and not the network itself. But sydneysiders continue to commute by car instead of endlessly lobbying governments for better transport, Or living closer to work and it still baffles me ppl will sit in that traffic day in day out.

Yonny

Stoney, I suspect that some people do this (work in Sydney/live in Newcastle or central coast) because they don’t have much choice – for example, can only work in their chosen field in Sydney, but can’t afford to live there. I know people who have ended up doing this – must say I couldn’t do it myself, it would drive me mad.
dazzer01

You deserve to get flamed. And I can’t believe a moron like you even has a job. Attitudes like yours just suck. People live where housing and lifestyles attract them. And the jobs may not be near their chosen residence, so, they commute! Why aren’t you working around your area Macquarie Park? Plenty of light industry near you, and jobs too I guess. In spite of your moronic protestations about other people’s work/lifestyle choices you yourself make a big commute.

Yes, I’m angry at your attitude because I too was stuck in that appalling traffic. Not surprisingly you completely miss the point of all this debate. The anger is not about commuting, bad drivers, public transport or anything else like that. It is about the absolute ineptitude of the RTA in their handling of the accident work-around, the contra-flow arrangements, which were not put in place until some nine hours after the accident.

Discus Champion

Nice accompanying graphic of a U.S. freeway there.
stopwinging

What a bunch of wingers we are. Have a thought for the countless boat people that are stuck on leaky, damp, wooden boats for months on end. No proper sanitation, limited water and food, no warmth, no medicine. And we call them wingers and whiners. Yet being stuck in a warm airconditioned, comfy sedan for a mere 9 hours while a crash is cleared gets on our nerves.

Perhaps that little girl on tv who was winging about missing her friends birthday and needing for a pee should juxtapose her ‘terrible’ night on a motorway with the little kids on leaky boats.

my 2cents flame if you want

Shak

This has nothing to do with cars or a freeway. Nice to hear about it and all ,but this is an automotive forum.

Bob

The Boat People should thank us. Why?

If we didn’t whinge and complain here about improving this – and instead accepted it as normal…. if we didn’t complain about ordinary daily events and Australia eventually turned into a mess of disorganisation, chaos and anarchy…

Why would they want to come here? We’re the ones whinging, keeping the buggers honest and creating the Australian Dream for our inbound refugees.

(Tongue now extracted from inside cheek)

Troppa

I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE AN NRL WINGER.

stopwinging

haha my fault wingeing*

Reckless1

Try Whinging or Whingeing, and the boat people chose their trip.

Carla

I’m so annoyed with the person who compared this with the boat people. Grrrr!! The people of Sydney/NSW are paying taxes and working hard to make sure that the people we put in power are working for us and making our lives easier! We aren’t sitting there offering no financial support to change the way things are. This is the reason we pay taxes!! Sydney traffic is an abomination on regular days let alone yesterdays happenings. The fact that you compare it to people who make a stupid decision to get in a rickety boat so they can illegally gain access to our country and drain the tax payers money by living off our welfare, is sickening. How dare you call these people whingers because the systems they pay for are failing. I’m disgusted at the comment and it’s people like you that are supporting the filling of this country with useless waste!!

stopwinging

You have obviously missed the point. Bringing your whole notion of dole bludging refugees draining tax payers money. My point was that the hardships faced by those motorists should be compared to the hardships faced by boat people and refugees. Its all about context. Relatively speak the suffering experienced by those on the motorway just appears childish.

Carla, you were born here, or you migrated here, just for a second try to imagine you were born in Afganistan. And then warp back to where you are now, and then see if you have summed up the situation fairly. And with regards to you paying taxes, and refugees being a drain, I’m sure if given the opportunity they would pay taxes, heck, they would if given the chance get out of the hell hole they are living in. Its tax evaders you should be complaining about.

Reckless1

They are desperate to come here because they get huge handouts, free housing, and don’t have to work for it. Good news travels…..

stopwinging

No they come here because they are in fear of being killed. Ignorance is truly bliss.
Nick

Well why dont you lead by example and jump on a leaking boat of your own and head to a third world country.

Look at the name of the website…. CAR ADVICE!!

I am sure there refugee sympathy website somewhere for you to have a rant on. We talk about cars here.

toxic_horse

Then they should be cool to stay in Indonesia then.
no one is going to kill them there .

Yonny

The RTA in all probability doesn’t know what the problem was. After all, nobody was exceeding the speed limit on the F3 so everything must have been hunky-dory. Dr Soames Job and all the other slow-downers must have been very happy.

Oh, and to stopwinging above – the word is whinge, not winge. Sure, there is always somebody worse off than yourself, but that doesn’t mean spending 9 hours stuck on the F3 can or should be shrugged off as no biggie.
Matthew

Everyone who works at the RTA should live in Newcastle and do the daily commute to Sydney on the F3. The congestion issue would then be solve in record time!

Gibbo

Doubt it, not with all the beaurocratic, time wasting nonsense that the RTA has in force just to get the simplest of tasks done – let alone solving the massive conjestion problem. Hell to them its probably a good thing cause when the road is conjested no one can speed…and we all know how that is the cause of ALL the problems on the country’s roads.

Riker

If this incident had been given the full attention it deserved soon after it occurred then we wouldn’t have had the appalling outcome we did. What other outcome could there have been.. The traffic gridlock wouldn’t have cleared itself through the incident. The RTA has the contigency plans in place to divert traffic so this kind of incident doesn’t escalate. The first spot to alleviate the congestion would have been at Cowan then more further along the F3. Simple, simple things would have helped.

This is a problem from the top down. The NSW Gov’t, specifically the Transport Minister should have been all over the RTA to get the contigency plan running. He knew what was happening & would have received quick briefings every hour on the hour. It reaks of the continued incompetance from this NSW Gov’t & the RTA pawns under them. Come the 2011 NSW election it is time for a change……… Get them out of Gov’t…..

Shak

How do you know that David Campbell would have known.There are accidents and congestion every single day on Sydney roads. he would have been advised by the RTA that there was an accident on the F3, and that the RTA were onto it. When his departments tell him something he would normally believe them. He would not have received hourly updates as he would not have thought it could blow out into this. He is not to blame it is fully the fault of the RTA, and no one else. They thought it would take less time to clear the crash than use the contra-flow, and it was their mistake.

Davie

He was officially informed at 1pm. as per reports today in the paper.

He did nothing.

ben

haha, i get pissed off when im stuck in 40min peak hour in Perth. cannot imagine 12 hours
Able

Yeah, it’d be pretty horrible being a boat person, coming from those mostly-awful countries, but those people aren’t as poor as you’d imagine . I know for a fact that they pay a somewhat large amount ($5k +) to get on those boats and come here. Yes I’d do anything too, but you could get on a plane for that much, and go anywhere. Australia has too many people as it is.

RE the F3. It’s my least favourite piece of tarmac in Australia. Sleep-inducingly boring and it goes on forever. Sack the RTA, David Campbell (he’s a total dick, you can see it) and the whole portion of the NSW Labor Party, they cannot run this place and they’re too many forms of authority in the country. This is the worst Governments have been for a while, and it pisses the he’ll outta me. That’s it, I’m moving to Hong Kong
Oversteer

Maybe if they increase the already ridiculous RTA fees they might be able to hire better management. RTA is a joke. Biggest cash grab ever. And the roads in NSW are piss poor. Where does all the money go.
http://www.caradvice.com.au Mick

Lets blame the government and the RTA.Yes,theyre a pack of mugs. What about all the fools who drive their cars to work each day from Newcastle to Sydney,rather than catch a train,or better still,find a job in their own area. How about the truck drivers who caused the bloody accident in the first place? We need to get more people out of their cars and into trains,and more freight off trucks and onto rail. there are too many trucks on the roads and they are over represented in crash statistics. Rail can get freight from town to town and then smaller trucks can deliver loads from the trains to its final destination at the stores or wherever.Thats how it used to be done. It’ll never happen though-too many lobby groups will start squealing.
Tim

US Freeway picture, right.
Paul

Are these the same un-firable public service iron lung idiots who want to reduce the national speed limit to 90 kph, yet can’t cope with a simple bit of traffic management…. God help us!

They have us on CCT from dawn to dusk, yet either don’t have or can’t follow a standard procedure??? Forget fur flying, make someone head ROLL!!
CarlMc

RTA,Retarded Transport of Australia, this is the same mob who defected my twin-steer Mercedes-Benz Tautliner at Ballina in 1988 because I had ABS brakes and the wheels wouldn’t lock-up on their “shaker”brake system. At the time there was only two Benz in Australia with ABS brakes,one in WA and mine in NSW.

When I pulled into Benz Qld,the mechanics crawled all over and under my truck because they had never seen one. The manager of Qld Benz talked with the twits at RTA Roseberry in Sydney and told them that Mercede-Benz just invested $650 million in perfecting ABS braking system and your twits at Ballina defected my truck.Now either take off the defect sticker or I’ll sue your stupid Govt. and RTA for $650 million and while your at it,send those dopey truck inspectors up here and I’ll show them how the ABS system works.

Well, when I came back into Ballina at 7.30pm,I pulled back into the same cordoned area and a policeman sheeplishly took the defect sticker off.

RTA of NSW do not have a clue in regards to transport or traffic controls,they are pig-headed,all high and mighty and a law unto themselves,they are right every-time unless you can come up with strong evidence saying different, as in defected speed cameras,red-light cameras,the onus is on you to prove them wrong.

After spending $28 million of your tax-dollars to implement a system to alieviate traffic chaos, they took nine hours to do it,what a waste of monies, but what can you expect from a bunch of TWITS who like nothing better than pass the buck when someting goes wrong.

Truck Owner

Written by a clown that puts the trucking industry to shame. This is CB radio talk and introduces irrelevant, overstated and some obviously incorrect facts and figures. Get over the 1988 past, get on with life as that matter, like the current topic at hand identifies poor RTA management. NEVER forget that Poor management = poor performance. Often good staff are let down by poor management.

The Realist

What did people expect from public servants?
svd

Yes you are all right. The CEO of the RTA should be flying around in a helicopter loaded with cushions to drop in front of trucks etc when they are about to have a crash! It was a truck driver running into another truck that was the root cause of the accident wasn’t it?
Torque

NOT ONE Truck driver was fined, the weighbridge was closed when I went passed and when the trucks are stopped in the traffic the drivers cannot exceed their driving hours.
A truck drivers stupidity caused the problem (and this appears to be on the increase), then the RTA roads controllers took over and the situation became far worse. The backward shonky NSW state government are completely dangerous.
Matthew

Appears the CEO of the RTA has been stood aside while an investigation is underway.

Prepare yourself for a dazzling show of finger pointing and blame shifting, something the current NSW Govt is exceedingly expert at.

May I ask whoever keeps voting these people in to stop. I didn’t vote Labor and no one I talk to ever admits they did . . . .