EXCLUSIVE By Jorian Gardner
OPPOSITION Leader Zed Seselja has promised four traffic lanes to “fix the mess Labor has made on Gungahlin Drive”.
In a major $93 million election punt, he has pledged to end the controversial traffic snarls by promptly opening a tender process, if elected in October.
In what seems to be a series of policy rollouts for the forthcoming election, the GDE duplication promise is another big-ticket item from Leader Seselja.
In March, he committed a Liberal Government to abandoning the stamp duty for first-home buyers and more recently pledged that all classes in every primary school (up to Year 6) will have no more than 21 students per class – well up from the Labor Government’s standard, where the 21 student policy applies only until Year 3.
The recently opened Gungahlin Drive extension has attracted heavy traffic usage from day one and been loudly and continually criticised for its delays and the Government’s decision to build it as a single-lane road.
Co-incidentally, in recent days Canberra Party leader Richard Mulcahy has urged Gungahlin residents to unite and press the Government to immediately expand the GDE, offering to take a petition to the Legislative Assembly.
Mr Seselja said: “Construction work will commence as soon as possible [after the election], with particular focus on fixing the Caswell Drive end of the road where it is busiest, and the Glenloch Interchange which gets gridlocked and causes congestion to flow back up the road.
“It’s an example of how out of touch the Stanhope Government is that it sees a one-lane extension as reasonable. Infrastructure investment needs to set the city up for the future rather than patching up problems.
“That’s why our plan to duplicate the GDE is part of a comprehensive plan to build Canberra’s transport infrastructure.”
The Canberra Liberals have consulted with experts in road construction and believe that it will cost about $80 million or less to fix the road. However, to be sure that all costs are met, Mr Seselja has indicated that a total project budget of $93 million is appropriate.
“The Canberra Liberals will fund the GDE duplication by augmenting the existing ACT Government road construction budget,” he said.
“Labor has met repeated cost blow-outs on GDE by diverting money from other worthy ACT road projects like Tharwa Drive.
“We will stop Labor’s pathetic and lazy practice of robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
The GDE was fully opened to great fanfare in March after significant delays to the start of construction, in the main to do with protracted legal battles with the “Save our Ridge” campaigners who tried to stop the route going through O’Connor Ridge and delayed the project for three years. 
As result of the delays, a compromise of one lane either side was decided upon, with Transport Minister John Hargreaves leaving open the possibility of a future extension by allowing foundations to be laid in the place where the extended lanes would be.
Minister Hargreaves accepted that there were challenges with building the GDE including construction postponements and costs blowouts.
“We do know that the project was plagued with legal challenges – delays which caused an increase in the price,” he said.