Commute times from Mount Barker to CBD

[Guest guest7049]

Anyone able to tell me the commute times from Mount Barker to the CBD weekdays during rush hour please?

[Guest BurgessFamily]

I know they are claiming it's 30mins from the new Bluestone estate. We had a look around there over the weekend, but took more than 30mins to get back to the city though with zero traffic.

 

I would guess at 45mins, but sure others here can be more accurate.

[jim and adel]

About 45 mins to an hour, depending whereabouts from Mount Barker you're setting off. The freeway itself is the easy bit (20 mins, and moving even during rush hour), it's when you get to the bottom of it, coming off, and then the road into the CBD (typically Glen Osmond but you could go other ways - all equally busy). So, to get from Mount Barker into 'Adelaide' it's just 20 mins, but it's the final, much shorter (in distance) bit of the journey into the CBD that eats the time.

 

Set off earlier, say 7am, and you can be in the CBD, parked up in half an hour.

 

Jim

[Guest BurgessFamily]

Sounds like a typical bottleneck. I wonder how long it will take in 5 years time (give or take) once there's a few thousand more houses built in Mount Barker and all those people are coming down the freeway to work.

[Guest guest7049]

Thanks guys

[jim and adel]

Sounds like a typical bottleneck. I wonder how long it will take in 5 years time (give or take) once there's a few thousand more houses built in Mount Barker and all those people are coming down the freeway to work.

 

No doubt it will take longer, but then it will from everywhere else!

 

At the moment, when travelling from Mount Barker, any congestion (of any scale, that is – some people in the hills might think it's already congested, although most from the UK would probably regard the place as bordering on empty) is experienced when out of the hills and in Adelaide suburbs at the end of the freeway. Anyone living in these suburbs – and other suburbs on the arterial routes into the CBD – experiences this every day.

 

Therefore, it wouldn't put me off living in Mount Barker any more than it would put me off living in these suburbs (which are amongst the most expensive and 'exclusive' that SA has to offer). You have to ask yourself if a twenty minute easy drive up the freeway is worth it to escape the madness that is 'congested' Adelaide!

 

There are potential issues with a growing Mount Barker, but they'd be easy to overplay. At the moment, if Mount Barker was in Adelaide itself it would be very small (in terms of population) in comparison to other places. There are about 12k people in Mount Barker and roughly 31k covered by the Mount Barker council area (including Littlehampton, Nairne, Hahndorf etc). In comparison, there are over 156k people in the Onkaparinga council area, with many of them facing at least as long a journey into the CBD.

 

If Mount Barker achieves the growth projected in the 30 year plan (and much can change in 30 years – SA has not achieved anything like the growth predicted in previous long-term plans) then it would still be very small, with a population of about 35k.

 

I say 'if' it achieves the growth because the 'build it and they will come' philosophy doesn't always pan out that way. Admittedly the economy is slow here at the moment which has dampened such things, but it's fair to say that land sales and construction is well behind what was being forecast just a few short years ago. The year-on-year 10% population increase that was originally flagged in the 30 year plan certainly hasn't yet started (we settled on our block in April '08, and many of the blocks we looked at before this time are still up for sale, undeveloped).

 

Last year, Kangaroo Island added more people to its population than did Mount Barker ...

 

Jim