General News
29 April, 2025
Kuranda Range Road traffic has ‘flatlined’
TRAFFIC growth on the Kuranda Range Road has “flatlined” despite the rise in population, according to a leading regional economic research firm.
Cummings Economics has released its latest research on the troubled transport route which shows that while the population of the Cairns local government area increased by 20% from 2009-2023, traffic on the range road only rose by 3% during the entire time.
That equates to a rise of just 0.2% per year.
In the preceding 33 years, traffic using the range road had grown around 5% a year, while the population rose by 2.9% a year.
“While average population growth from 2009 to 2023 at 1.3% per annum was slower compared with the earlier 33 years, population still grew by 20% over the 14-year period and on previous trends, traffic growth could have been expected to have been above this and not below,” Bill Cummings said.
“While international visitor traffic to Kuranda has been down in recent years, most international visitors travel to and from Kuranda by train, cableway or by large coaches without substantial impact on road traffic counts.
“Indications that the constraints of the road via Kuranda has been affecting traffic growth since 2009 is supported by the fact that traffic on other range roads in the region – the Rex, Gillies and Palmerston roads – has grown over the same period by 27%, 29%, and about 24% respectively.”
Latest figures show that just over 8340 vehicles on average use the Kuranda range road every day.
Mr Cummings concluded that the Kuranda Range Road, built 80 years ago during the early phases of World War II, had “reached its design limit and is providing a bottleneck to traffic that is imposing substantial costs to the region’s economy”.
“Cairns, as the region’s main service centre, port, airport, road and rail head, is situated on a narrow coastal plain that has limited room to expand to the north, west and east. Expansion to the south involves taking valuable agricultural land out of production and threatening the viability of Mulgrave Sugar Mill,” he said.
“As a regional capital/hub city, Cairns services the biggest and fastest growing population in northern Australia and is destined to grow.
“It is vital that it has highly efficient transport links across the ranges to service the population of 70,000 and growing industries in
its hinterland.
“It is also vital that Cairns has a short fast transport corridor to enable the city’s urban footprint to expand into the area west of the ranges.
“The whole issue has been left unattended for decades. It is going to cost a lot of money and if another route will be more efficient for traffic movements to meet the region’s growth needs over the next 80 years, it needs to be explored.
“The job is obviously beyond the resources of the State Government and the first step is to recognise that this is a road project of national importance that would involve extending Highway 1 classification to the Mareeba transport hub and for the Commonwealth Government to meet 80% of the costs.”
Mr Cummings said that a decision was made about 2007 by the then Labour Government to not proceed with a proposed upgrading of the Kuranda Range Road with an estimated cost of about $800 million at that time.
“Since cyclone Jasper’s extreme 100-year rainfall and flooding event in December 2023, the road has been further constrained with lane closures. Safety problems with the Barron River bridge at Kuranda have also been causing disruption of traffic flows,” he added.
Business case still coming
NO date has yet been given as to when the community will get to see what the State Government’s business plan for the Barron River bridge at Kuranda shows.
In its budget, the Federal Government announced $245 million to contribute to the cost of replacing the ageing structure and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterated that commitment in Cairns recently.
But the LNP has yet to specifically commit any funds to the project, with LNP candidate for Kennedy Annette Swaine advising that the Coalition would have a $6 billion Regional Infrastructure Fund through which to help fund a new bridge.
State Member for Barron River Bree James has welcomed the funding commitment from the Federal Government which was “something the former Labor State Government was never able to secure”.
Ms James said the business case was “being actively considered by the Crisafulli Government, and the Far North will shortly be informed of the plan”.
“I won’t stop fighting for this until it’s delivered,” she said.
