Ahead of next month’s NSW election, party leaders have been given the message – Fix the Brown Mountain road!  The road, part of the Snowy Mountains Highway, links the NSW Far South Coast to Cooma, Canberra, and the Riverina.

The Fix The Brown community campaign says the Brown Mountain road is unsafe, unstable, unreliable, unsustainable and totally inappropriate for the 21st century.

The Brown Mountain road, which climbs 1,000 metres over 10 kilometres, is subject to random flooding and landslips involving huge rockfalls which threaten public safety and have forced frequent mountain road closures over many years. Traffic on Brown Mountain road is still impacted by single lane closure and traffic light stop-go delays, an incredible 12 months after a landslip caused the disappearance of a lane on the treacherous mountain road.

According to Fix The Brown coordinator, Jon Gaul of Tura Beach NSW, Transport NSW is yet to even engage a specialist contractor to repair the road closure, 12 months after the landslip. Traffic delays with single-lane red light stop-go are predicted for up to another 12 months to March 2024, with repairs not starting until March or April 2023.

This means the Bega Valley and Sapphire Coast communities, from Narooma to the Victorian border, will have endured up to two years of traffic jams and delays and single-lane access on their main highway artery and east-west freight connection, Mr Gaul says.

The latest example was on 29 January, when 500 vehicles crawled bumper-to-bumper in an hours-long traffic jam extending over 5 kilometres up Brown Mountain’s steep grades rising 1,000m. The Brown Mountain Road includes 77 bends, 5 hairpins, steep grades plus a 40kmh speed limit now in place for indefinitely.

The single-lane red light stop-go section means just 6 to 8 vehicles driving up can get through each green phase of the automatic light, with a red light wait of 70 seconds to clear downhill traffic.

“The inevitable result on 29 January was a chaotic build-up of Brown Mountain uphill traffic lasting several hours,” Mr Gaul said.

“We have spoken to drivers delayed.  At least four cars broke down from overheating, causing more congestion. One driver kept an accurate record noting delays extended his travel time by 90 minutes forcing him into an overnight stay en route to Orange”.

Mr Gaul forecast continuing similar traffic jams and delays affecting freight, tourism, health access to Canberra, emergency and natural disaster access on the Brown Mountain for many months ahead, extending into 2024.

“While $4 million worth of stabilisation and maintenance work on the Brown Mountain road is scheduled, it is ultimately just cosmetic, Band-Aid patching. Hard-working local road crews can barely keep up with continuing unpredictable landslides, landslips rock falls and tree falls on this geologically unstable mountain, while Transport NSW planners and engineers dither.

“Despite acknowledging the Brown Mountain Road as a critical freight route, Transport NSW classes the Brown Mountain as a ‘low traffic’ area, with 1,900 vehicles a day. In great contrast, for the communities of the Bega Valley and the Sapphire Coast, the Brown Mountain is a vital artery linking to the Monaro, Canberra and the Riverina.”

Mr Gaul said the Fix the Brown community campaign has written to each major party leader in the upcoming NSW election, calling for the following public commitments:

1.            Funding of $15m by the next NSW government for an independent engineering options study to upgrade the Brown Mountain section of the Snowy Mountains Highway, reporting publicly no later than 30 June 2024.

2.            The next NSW Government to prioritise Roads of Strategic Importance (ROSI) status for the Snowy Mountains Highway through Brown Mountain with the Federal government, to facilitate urgent joint Federal/State funding of the Brown Mountain upgrade.

“Our southeast corner of NSW has been the poor cousin – last on the list – of State highway funding from all sides of politics for far too long. This neglect pushes up our transport and fuel costs, impacts our major industries like tourism and dairy and restricts health, emergency and natural disaster access,” he said.

The Fix the Brown campaign has met with key local representatives, including: Dr Michael Holland, Member for Bega; Bega Valley Mayor Russell Fitzpatrick, a longtime advocate of upgrading the Brown; and Mrs Nichole Overall, Member for Monaro. Both Dr Holland and Mrs Overall are also supportive. The campaign is positioned as a community-wide issue, rather than a party political matter, Mr Gaul said.

He said The Fix the Brown campaign is a community-based, non profit, volunteer organisation which seeks to respond to widespread community concern in the Bega Valley and the Sapphire Coast about the economic and social disabilities arising from the unsafe, unstable, unreliable, and unsustainable condition of the Brown Mountain section of the Snowy Mountains Highway.

The high level of local community concern about the condition of the Brown Mountain road is measured by the strong initial response gained by the Fix the Brown petition campaign, with physical signatures at local markets and agricultural shows and online through change.org.

Fix the Brown petition is online at https://fixthebrown.com