Leach Highway

Leach Highway
Basic data
Operator:	Main Roads
Start of the street:	Tonkin Highway Kewdale ( Perth ) ( WA ) ( 31 ° 58 ′  S , 115 ° 57 ′  E )
End of street:	High Street Carrington Street Palmyra, Fremantle ( WA ) ( 32 ° 3 ′  S , 115 ° 47 ′  E )
Overall length:	23 km
States :	Western Australia
Leach Highway in Palmyra

 Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap

The Leach Highway is a main road in Perth in the southeast of the Australian state of Western Australia . It connects the Tonkin Highway in Kewdale at Perth Airport with Carrington Street in Palmyra ( Fremantle ).

The road has four to six lanes over its entire length and has speed restrictions of 70 and 80 km / h.

history

The Leach Highway was named after JD “Digby” Leach , a former chief of the Main Roads Western Australia road authority . In 1972 the first section between Carrington Street in Palmyra and High Road in Shelley opened.

Soon it was extended to Manning Road in Bentley , spanning the Canning River with the old wooden bridge Riverton Bridge . In 1976 there was another extension to Orrong Road in Welshpool , including two bridges over the railroad to Armadale and the Albany Highway . In 1978 a new concrete bridge, the Shelley Bridge , was inaugurated over the Canning River. The Riverton Bridge has only been used for local traffic since then.

In the early 1980s, the highway was extended further east and now extends to the Tonkin Highway on the southwest border of the airport.

At around the same time, several intersections with new roads were built around the Leach Highway. The Kwinana Freeway , which was extended to the south, was connected with a partial trefoil and the new Centenary Avenue in Wilson was also connected to make the West Australian Institute of Technology more accessible. New crossings at the same height were created on Murdoch Drive and Winthrop Drive for the new suburbs of Bateman and Winthrop .

In Fremantle, in 1985, the Stirling Highway was extended from its junction with the Canning Highway south to South Road , an extension of the Leach Highway to the west. This was the last part of the better heavy haul route between the port of Fremantle and the large industrial areas around Kewdale.

From then on, the Leach Highway remained largely unchanged until work on the projects on the Kwinana Freeway and Orrong Road began in 2005/2006.

High Street in Fremantle

The Leach Highway ends as a six-lane road with separate driving directions on Carrington Street in Palmyra. But from there the High Street goes another 1.5 km to the west. It is designed as a four-lane road without a median (with a speed limit of 60 km / h) up to the intersection with the Stirling Highway, after which it becomes a narrow local connecting road. The confluence of the Stirling Highway is the main entrance to the port in Fremantle and is heavily used by trucks.

Heavy traffic

The Leach Highway is one of the most important heavy traffic routes in Western Australia as it connects the industrial areas around Kewdale and Welshpool with Western Australia's main container port in Fremantle. The highway was built in the 1970s to work with the Roe Highway to provide adequate connections for heavy traffic on this route.

However, due to restrictions due to the existing development, it was not possible to develop the road as an expressway. This means that many back roads and property exits lead onto the Leach Highway. There are 22 traffic light crossings along the entire length and some residents are demanding even more traffic lights. Such a state of development is actually unsuitable for a six-lane road with heavy traffic.

With the (provisional?) Abandonment of stage 8 of the Roe Highway, it looks as if the Leach Highway should remain in this state for the future. The state government's 6-point plan for improving freight traffic to and from the port of Fremantle is fueling hopes that the situation will improve.

Intersection with Orrong Road in Welshpool

In November 2005, the state government announced plans to build an elevation-free intersection of Leach Highway and Orrong Road. On Orrong Road, an extension of the Graham Farmer Freeway , traffic has increased by 40% since the freeway opened in 2000. The Leach Highway spans Orrong Road on a new bridge. This crossing was considered the most problematic in all of Western Australia. Around 70,000 vehicles - a large proportion of which are trucks - cross it every day. The financing of this project was secured through the sale of the strip of land originally reserved for the unrealized Fremantle Eastern Bypass . The project has meanwhile been completed and has significantly improved the situation.

Numbering

The Leach Highway takes the numbering from the Kwinana Freeway as Route 1 (R1) and passes it on to Stock Road.

• along the entire length
• from Bull Creek to Palmyra

literature

• Leigh Edmonds: The vital link: a history of Main Roads Western Australia 1926-1996 . University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, Western Australia 1997, ISBN 1-875560-87-4 .
• StreetSmart Perth 2003 Street Directory . Department of Land Administration and West Australian Newspapers Ltd, Midland, Western Australia 2002, ISBN 0-909699-87-9 .

source

• Steve Parish: Australian Touring Atlas . Steve Parish Publishing. Archerfield QLD 2007. ISBN 978-1-74193-232-4 . P. 77