Road Photos & Information: New South Wales

Border welcome sign on the Queensland / New South Wales border at Tweed Heads NSW. Image © Paul Rands.

You've arrived at the road photos and information section that covers New South Wales.

In New South Wales, as is the case with all the other states in Australia, the roads are classified into different categories, and are also numbered for maintenance purposes and also navigation purposes.

The state's roads are managed by the Roads and Traffic Authority. The Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) was established on 16 January 1989, under the Transport Administration Act 1988 through an amalgamation of the former Department of Main Roads, Department of Motor Transport and the Traffic Authority. *

The road network that the RTA manages includes:

17,912 kilometres of State Roads (including 4268 kilometres of AusLink network and 161 kilometres of privately funded toll roads).
2946 kilometres of Regional and Local roads in the Unincorporated Area of NSW.
4998 bridges, including major culverts and nine vehicular ferries.
3630 traffic signals and other traffic facilities, systems and corridor assets.

It provides financial assistance to local councils to manage 18,474 kilometres of Regional Roads and also provides some funding and support to the 144,750 kilometres of council-managed local access roads which are funded by local ratepayers and federal road assistance grants. *

Prior to the establishment of the RTA, other state operated organisations performed similar functions. These are detailed below: *

The Main Roads Board (MRB) was established in early 1925 to create and maintain a road system suitable for the motor age by providing advice and finance on road construction, design and development in NSW. The Board was replaced by a Board of Transport Commissioners in 1932 for eight months until the Department of Main Roads (DMR) was created in November the same year and rapidly expanded throughout NSW.

The DMR undertook a huge quantity of works across NSW; including maintenance of all major roads into Sydney, active continuous programs of road reconstruction, construction, upgrading and re-routing. The DMR was also responsible for numerous ferries and bridges across NSW and formed a specialist Bridge section within the Department in charge of bridge design, construction and maintenance. In 1989, the Transport Administration Act (No. 109, 1989) amalgamated the Department of Main Roads, Department of Motor Transport and the Traffic Authority to form the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA). The RTA has continued its design, construction and maintenance of all state and main roads and bridges and ferries in NSW.

According to the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority's Road Occupancy Manual, Roads in NSW are divided into three types:

Road Classification	Description	Managed By
Arterial Roads (State roads)	High traffic volume roads; highways, freeways, motorways and main roads managed by the RTA.	The RTA.
Sub–arterial roads (Regional roads)	These are major connector roads between state roads. They have significant traffic capacity whilst lower than those of arterial roads.	Shared responsibility between RTA and local Councils.
Local roads (Unclassified)	These are other minor roads managed by local Councils.	Usually local Council, but may be joint responsibility.

Route Numbering is designed to aid motorists navigate, using route shields as guidance. NSW currently uses a heirarchical system for route marking. In the metropoliain area of Sydney, Metroads are the most important arterial roads, while in rural areas the National Highways and National Routes are the major highways. State Routes are the secondary ways of travel and other important urban routes that the Metroads dont cover, while Tourist Drives provide links from the State, National or Metroad routes to tourist areas / attractions.

NSW will be converting to the alpha-numeric style of route marking in the near future, which has already been done in parts of Victoria and Queensland, plus across SA and Tasmania. The timing of the conversion is unknown, however the first official implementation of an alphanumeric route in NSW is the Westlink M7 Motorway back in 2005. There are however evidence of the system as new signs are installed. In some cases the new route numbers have been left exposed on the sign, and on most cases, however, the current number is on a coverplate over the new alphanumeric number.

To check out the routes used in NSW and photos of them, click on one of the section names below:


National Highways	National Routes	State Routes	Metroads
The green and gold route markers indicate routes which are part of the National Highway System. They indicate the most direct routes between major cities.	The black on white markers indicate highways around Australia which are not part of the National Highway System but are still of some national signifcance.	The white on blue shields indicate urban and interregional routes.	Used solely in the Sydney metropolitan area to indicate main urban routes. They generally form the shortest routes from one side of the city to the other.

		Decomissioned	Unnumbered
Tourist Drives	Alphanumeric Routes	Decommissioned Routes	Unnumbered Routes
The white on brown Tourist Drive markers denote roads through areas of significant scenic or historic interest.	Alphanumeric routes are the newest form of route numbering in NSW. Roads are numbered with M, A and B prefixes indicating the importance / standard of the route.	Routes that were once numbered, but are now not, perhaps due to alignment changes or the importance of a route has diminished.	Unnumbered routes are roads that have not been awarded a navigational road number.

* Information courtesy of the Roads and Traffic Authority

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