Petition calls for urgent widening of Roma-Condamine Road

So frustrated is she by the state of the highway that feedlots, the resource industry, and primary producers are forced to travel on, Ms Leahy has sponsored a petition begun by Jennifer Philp of local property Pine Hill.

Ms Leahy said the road was narrower than a bike track in parts yet the government thought it was fit to carry wide loads that don't even fit on the seal.

"This road is not wide enough for the existing heavy traffic let alone the additional over-mass and wide loads forced onto it by a diversion," Ms Leahy said. "Locals are telling me there are an increasing number of accidents and incidents on this road due to the poor condition of the road and the narrow sections."

One of those is local producer Scott Hamilton, whose country is on the boundary of the Maranoa and Western Downs regions.

"I turn one way and I'm on one of the safest roads in Australia but if I turn the other way I'm on one of the worst, unsafe roads in Australia," he said.

"Quite often we have to pull road trains out when they get bogged going off the side, and numerous people have blown their left front tyre getting off, the edge is that sharp.

"The highway was made at the end of the second World War - I don't think these parts have had much done to it since then."

According to the petition, no funds have been spent on rehabilitation or widening the Western Downs section of the state-controlled road for the last seven years.

The road, the main route to Brisbane before the Warrego Highway was constructed, was often referred to as the 'crystal highway' because of the number of windscreens that were shattered by stray stones flicked up by passers-by, and Mr Hamilton said that still happened on the narrow parts now.

He said 32km of the 52km highway from the Western Downs boundary to Condamine was sub-standard, where the bitument shrank from 8m wide to barely 2.5m wide.

Mr Hamilton added that a $9.6m investment in replacing the Tchanning Creek bridge on the road to dual lane standard had given them hope that funds for the road would be forthcoming to match its standard but that hadn't eventuatted.

Ms Leahy said a quarter of the funds wasted on the failed Wellcamp quarantine facility would have seen the Roma-Condamine Road widened to an 8 metre seal.

"The government has not spent one cent on widening these narrow sections in the Western Downs council area through the Roads Implementation Plan in the last eight years," she said, adding that she'd like Transport and Main Roads to do a business case on the road, so then it would be known how much it would cost to upgrade it.

The petition calls for works to restore the Dogwood Creek Bridge at Miles to full capacity as a matter of urgency.

It also calls for the rehabilitation and widening of the narrow sections of the Roma-Condamine Road to an 8 metre seal in the Western Downs Regional Council section and to have the works completed over a period of no longer than two years.

Ms Leahy said she strongly supported the petition and would fight for the residents and businesses along the Roma-Condamine Road who she said produced millions of dollars in revenue for the state government.

"They deserve their fair share in return investment in this road," Ms Leahy said.

As of Sunday evening it had 877 signatures.

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