Bathurst is fortunate that we do not have a highway running down our main street as is the case in Orange, but much of the city is still clogged each day by the thousands of cars and trucks travelling in each direction along Stewart and Durham streets.

But the fact most traffic is already diverted around William Street is as much an argument to support the construction of a bypass as it is an argument to oppose it.

On the plus side, Bathurst's main street businesses have never been as reliant on highway through-traffic as shops in other major centres might be and so a bypass would have less impact than might otherwise might have been the case.

The flipside of that argument, though, is that because the main part of the city is already bypassed you can understand some reluctance from governments to spend the millions it would take to construct a proper southern ring road.

Bathurst Regional Council has taken several serious looks at a bypass but the business case has never stacked up.

In 2008 council produced a Bathurst Southern Ring Road Study but stressed it was only ever intended for strategic planning purposes and that no set route for the ring road had been decided on.

A decade later, at least it seems we have made progress on that front.

Council has tentatively identified a route that would run from Littlebourne Street in Kelso and around the southern edges of the city before linking with Lloyds Road.

Councillor Warren Aubin certainly believes it needs to be done, but it's not going to happen quickly.

Council must still address many of the same issues that were raised in 2008 - including the potential impact on residential properties, agricultural land, conservation areas including Boundary Road, the Mount Panorama and even the Macquarie River floodplain - before we get to square one.

But where Bathurst is different to many regional centres is that issues like this that have been discussed for decades have a strange habit of finally coming to fruition.

This a daily return rail service to Sydney. Think a second circuit at Mount Panorama. Think a roundabout at West Bathurst.

As we've shown time and time again, this is a town where you never say never.