The Burley Griffin Way is the starting point for twin town travellers as they head to Canberra.Travellers meet the Hume Highway at Bowning before the road returns to single carriage after Yass.

How many Harden-Murrumburrah and district residents have travelled numerous times to Canberra, possibly for shopping but almost certainly for medical appointments with specialists and in hospital?

On our way to Canberra, we have all enjoyed the dual carriageway of the Hume Highway but we have then had to put up with the mainly single carriageway of the Barton Highway. Well, don’t get your hopes up for much in the way of dual lanes running both to and from Canberra in the foreseeable future. The federal government seems to be reversing itself from investing $1.75 million to determine the feasibility of fully duplicating the Barton Highway.

Building highways obviously costs big dollars and the recently released Barton Highway Improvement Strategy doesn’t see the $1 billion cost of full duplication as “justified in the immediate future”.

This same report states that such duplication will most likely not be needed within the next 20 years. What a crock! There were petitions calling for the improvement of the Barton Highway initiated by the author of this article, signed by local district residents and presented to federal parliament as far back as the mid-1970s.

Historically, the Barton Highway has had a high rate of motor vehicle accidents, with consequent death and injuries. Over 12,000 vehicles use the highway on a daily basis. Certainly, the major cause of this has been human error along with unwise choices made by individual drivers, but to what extent has the relative lack of passing lanes contributed to the situation?

The NSW Highway Patrol usually has a heavy presence on the Barton Highway, using radar to check the speeds of vehicles. Competent drivers, who are able to accelerate their cars up to the speed limits, find incompetent drivers who insist on travelling well below the speed limit, very frustrating.

These competent drivers have to resist the urge to overtake the slower drivers where it may be dangerous to do so. These same competent drivers would welcome the sight of Highway Patrol officers issuing infringement notices to drivers travelling well below the speed limit and with a line of cars backed up for kilometres behind them.

Full speed ahead for the Barton Highway duplication – hopefully in our lifetime.