Forrest-Apollo Bay Road upgrade Skenes Creek Road Widening

Project Background

Forrest-Apollo Bay Road is a winding, heavily forested route that passes through the Otway National Park. As a key inland road that leads from the Great Ocean Road to the Princes Highway, it also carries a significant amount of tourist traffic. More than 2,000 vehicles use this road every day during the peak summer season, of which about 15 per cent are heavy vehicles. A lack of opportunities to overtake slow moving vehicles is a cause of significant driver frustration and increases the risk of crashes. The Australian and Victorian governments have committed $10 million to improve safety along the Forrest-Apollo Bay Road as part of the Victorian Infrastructure Package - Regional & Rural Roads. Improvements include three new slow vehicle turnout areas between Barwon Downs and Skenes Creek, erosion and landslide mitigation, resurfacing and new widened sealed shoulders, new safety barriers in high-risk locations, improved drainage with new kerb and channel, and improved signage, line-marking and vegetation management.

Ref.: The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications

Problem

Skenes Creek Rd is subject to increasing tourism traffic as well as frequent use by heavy vehicles accessing logging coupes. A lack of opportunities to overtake slow moving vehicles is a cause of significant driver frustration and increases the risk of crashes. The current unsealed state of the road presents an unacceptable risk to Council through the interaction of logging and tourist traffic.

Solution

In November 2019, construction commenced on the first of three new slow vehicle turnout areas. One of these included Skenes Creek Rd (northbound).  Skenes Creek is an idyllic township located 6km east of Apollo Bay on a popular surf beach, in close proximity to the Great Ocean Rd and Great Otway National Park.

More than 10,000m2 of AceGrid Geogrid was selected and used to build the reinforced slopes as the ideal and feasible solution for the road widening.

Results

AceGrid® reinforced slopes are performance proven techniques for road widenings and have been used widely in various projects in Australia (including the Eton Range Reinforced Slope in QLD as the largest reinforced slope in the southern hepishere).

The new turnout lanes will improve safety, travel reliability, providing opportunities for road users to overtake slow-moving vehicles.

Upgrading and widening the road also lead to:

• Improve travel time

• improve visibility for safer navigation

• reducing driver frustration

Global Synthetics provided the assistance to both the designer and contractor throughout the project from early design concepts to onsite construction issues.