A key Blue Mountains road closure is blowing out travel times – and causing ‘red hot anger’ among locals
NSW government says Convict Bridge will take at least three months to fix but local MP urges long-term plan for ‘fragile piece of road’
Almost two centuries ago, hundreds of convicts carried out a Sisyphean task in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains. After cutting rock from the cliff face, the chain gangs piled up the sandstone, added retaining walls and built a road.
Mitchells Causeway, or “Convict Bridge”, opened in 1832, and was in use for the subsequent 194 years – until last Sunday.
Last weekend Transport for NSW closed the Victoria Pass section of the Great Western Highway, which links Sydney to the central west, after cracks were detected in the bridge’s structure.
On Friday, the NSW roads minister, Jenny Aitchison, announced the road would remain closed for at least three months, pointing to a “major geotechnical failure” which had caused the bridge to move significantly. Images show symptoms of the underlying strain: snaking, longitudinal cracks in the road surface.
About 12,000 vehicles use the bridge daily, and the closure means many will have to make major detours to get to Sydney or to other parts of the area, adding up to two hours to their journey during peak times.
Extra buses and trains have been put on to help, but the situation has left locals worried – and raised questions about successive state governments’ failure to replace the bridge and the lack of attention given to regional transport.
‘Red-hot anger in the community’
Former state and federal Coalition governments funded the initial stages of a planned 34km road widening between Katoomba and Lithgow, which was to include an 11km twin-tunnel from Blackheath to Little Hartley, underneath the existing Victoria Pass.
In 2022, the Perrottet government decided not to allocate further funding, and in 2023, the Minns government shelved the project entirely after the Albanese government withdrew a $2bn federal commitment. The state government redirected remaining funding to the maintenance of roads across western Sydney and regional NSW.
That didn’t stop a $232m, 2.4km dual-lane “road to nowhere” being built at either end of the planned tunnel, bypassing Little Hartley but still connected to the single-lane Victoria Pass.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailAitchison says at least two weeks of specialist testing and 3D imaging have to be carried out with no passing traffic to understand the full extent of the damage to the causeway. “Under the most optimistic scenario,” she says, work to make the road safe would take at least a further two months.
She acknowledged the impact on families, businesses and schools, saying she was “deeply sorry for that disruption”.
“But there will be no shortcuts on safety – we will not risk lives.”
The Labor mayor of Lithgow, Cassandra Coleman, says locals will welcome the timeline and the provision of extra public transport, adding businesses were “really hurting”, especially in Little Hartley. “One business said today that they’ve literally lost 70% of their takings,” she says.
The village is still accessible by car, but excluded from a diverted route of the Great Western Highway between Mount Victoria and Lithgow.
Coleman says the government has committed to updating signage in Lithgow, which initially advised Little Hartley was accessible to “residents only”.
Nationals state MP for Bathurst and former deputy premier, Paul Toole, whose electorate includes Victoria Pass, warns just one day more than the three-month timeline would “cause more red-hot anger in the community”.
Since the closure, children in Hartley and Little Hartley have spent two hours travelling home from school in Mount Victoria, on the other side of Victoria Pass, resident Celine Watz says.
Before last Sunday, “a normal journey by car down the Victoria Pass [was] 10 minutes at most”.
Lithgow local Kylie Mackey says the closure will limit her ability to see her children in Sydney. She anticipates more than a three-month wait: “It’ll be a hell of a lot longer than that.”
The detour sees traffic diverted on to Lithgow’s main street. “It’s only been a week, and we’re already starting to see damage on our local roads from the heavy vehicles coming through town,” Mackey says.
Aitchison says additional resources would go towards strengthening roads taking the additional strain. The diversion will add 25 minutes to a journey, but longer during peak times and weekends, she says.
A spokesperson for the local health district acknowledged the impact of the closure on staff, patients and visitors, advising them to “plan their journey, follow diversion signs, and allow extra time”.
But they say there are no disruptions to the delivery of services at hospitals in Lithgow or the Blue Mountains. “The highway remains accessible to NSW Ambulance and other emergency vehicles between Lithgow and Little Hartley, up to the closure point.”
“An alternate route is available for emergency services needing to drive through the impacted area.”
‘I’m amazed it’s lasted’
The state or federal governments have not yet committed to providing financial relief for affected businesses or residents, with the effects potentially reaching far into NSW. Aitchison said on Friday she was working towards a “whole of government response”.
She did not directly respond to a question from Guardian Australia about whether the government would reconsider shelving the plan for the tunnel. Aitchison told reporters on Friday that “nothing was off the table”, rejecting the suggestion that the Minns government had underfunded regional roads at the expense of metropolitan transport projects, pointing to hundreds of millions spent on maintenance.
Toole says the government had committed to “fixing a fragile piece of the road, but there’s still no long-term vision”.
“You’ve got their federal Labor counterparts talking about a $90bn fast rail from Sydney to Newcastle.”
“If it was in Sydney, Newcastle or Wollongong the project would go ahead but it seems that regional communities are forgotten.”
Coleman says the Coalition’s original plans were “possible and feasible”.
While the closure has created local uproar, it isn’t a surprise. David Wilpour, from Lithgow, says there was a scare about the bridge collapsing in the late 1970s. “I’m quite amazed it’s lasted another 47-odd years,” he said.
Behzad Fatahi, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Technology Sydney, who uses the bridge often, says it’s “phenomenal” it has lasted without the deck, piles or piers of modern bridges.
Engineers drilled holes into the bridge this week to investigate the cause of the cracks. Fatahi says they could be due to the movement of the larger, northern retaining wall, or the deterioration of the interior crushed stone originally laid by the convicts.
“Pieces of this, over 200 years, can crush into smaller pieces, water will get in there and wash this material out,” he says.
Fatahi says a medium-term solution would be to inject cement mixed with water into the empty space, shoring up the original structure.
“The alternative solution in the longer term will be designing and constructing tunnels to bypass these challenging areas.”
Until then, residents are adjusting to the longer, diverted route, which coincides with fears of fuel shortages caused by the conflict in the Middle East. Toole says there are already reports of lines of trucks, “burning additional diesel while fuel prices are skyrocketing”.
One resident, who asks to remain anonymous, says the diversion on to her Lithgow street has left her “extremely sleep deprived”.
“The neighbours have called our street the ‘New Great Western Highway’.”