MOTORISTS travelling into Bathurst along the Great Western Highway yesterday afternoon were left fuming as they were forced to sit in Sydney-style gridlock.
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Late yesterday the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) confirmed “unauthorised roadworks” at Kelso had caused the traffic mayhem.
Phones rang hot at the Western Advocate as frustrated motorists vented their fury.
“I can’t believe this,” resident Helen Bergen said. “It has been a bloody hour from Windy Hill Nursery to the giant goldpanner.”
Ms Bergen, returning from a business meeting in Sydney, travelled from the international airport to the outskirts of Bathurst in three hours.
But once she hit the entrance to the city at 3.05pm she became stranded in a makeshift car park.
“I’ve had to stop my engine five times.”
And the extensive delays were made worse by the fact many motorists had no idea what was actually happening.
“It has taken me an hour and five minutes to get to a sign to tell me there is roadworks happening!” Ms Bergen said.
“If I’m lucky I’ll make it home by five o’clock. Seriously, the management and logistics of these sort of events needs to be improved.”
The ironic thing, Ms Bergen said, was that she was also stuck in traffic earlier in the day due to congestion on the M4 – and that was nowhere near as frustrating as what awaited her at home.
“That was in peak hour in Sydney – it didn’t come to a standstill and it was cleared within half an hour.”
And what left drivers dumbfounded, more than the stop-start journey, was the timing of the work.
Another local, Leanne McClymont, was struggling to make it to Eglinton in time to pick up her children.
“I’m fuming,” Mrs McClymont said.
“Why do we have to put up with this, at this time? There is no commonsense here at all. It’s just insane.”
Mrs McClymont left Sunny Corner at 3pm and at 4.13pm had crawled to outside Fantastic Furniture on Sydney Road.
“Surely the people responsible would have known what it was like when the recent highway upgrade went ahead,” she said.
“We could accept that because it was for the greater good. And at least we still had one lane open each way.
“But today we are stuck. There is nowhere else to go. We are being held to ransom.”
When the RTA was alerted to the problem by the Western Advocate late yesterday afternoon it was forced to investigate.
An RTA Traffic Control Centre spokesperson said there were “unauthorised roadworks” being carried out on the Great Western Highway at Kelso and confirmed that they “were in contact with police and council to send someone out immediately in order to get the road opened”.
