Toowoomba Regional Council engaged HIG to undertake detailed civil design of the Gap Road upgrade project as part of the Pittsworth Industrial Precinct Enabling Project. The Gap Road project involved an upgraded 10m wide carriageway with auxiliary turning lanes where required, property access upgrades, upgraded stormwater cross drainage structures, landscaping design, route lighting, truck breakdown area, detention basin design, upgraded intersection design to the Gore Highway for additional deceleration and storage geometry.

 

Over the course of this design project HIG undertook the following activities:

• Major stormwater assessments into post development flooding impacts on the downstream rail corridor, properties and the Gore Highway. Mitigation devices such as 2 detention basins were investigated and designed so that future developments may be conditioned to contribute funding to the construction of these based on their percentage of runoff increase. Numerous cross drainage structures were designed and optimised.

• Formalisation of a truck breakdown area that the industrial precinct could utilise with additional guidance and increased space. This area is also used by the Pittsworth sprint club which required careful attention to maintaining configurations for their pit arrangements;

• Numerous intersections and access upgrades to industrial developments and businesses that require B-Double access.

• Management of PUP infrastructure relocations and clash mitigation design;

• Aquaplaning checks and adjustment of horizontal and vertical geometry to avoid issues;

• Extension of the right turn lane to the Gore Highway to enable growth within the industrial precinct in the future. Extensive consultation with TMR was undertaken on this element in the design phase to gain approval for various geometric elements;

• Route lighting and intersection lighting design to a category V3 standard with applications to Ergon for approval under the Rate 2 tariff contestable design process;

• Development of a traffic impact assessment and report to support the funding submission by TRC for this project. This assessment involved calculating ultimate trip generations likely to be caused by the formation of new industrial zoned land under the local governments planning scheme. Distributions of this growth was then determined throughout the surrounding local and state government road network; and

Road Safety audits of the design were also undertaken and reports presented with the final delivery of the project.