Port River Expressway

The Port River Expressway was built in three stages:

• Stage 1 - Was opened for traffic on 19 July 2005. It consists of a 5.5-kilometre (3.4 mi) four-lane expressway link between Francis Street and the then South Road, Adelaide, now North-South Motorway; with an overpass at each of the junctions of the North-South Motorway, Hanson Road and Eastern Parade.[1]
• Stage 2 - Consists of a four lane high-level, opening road bridge across the Port River between Docks 1 and 2, linking Stage 1 at Francis Street to Victoria Road on Le Fevre Peninsula. This section opened on 3 August 2008[2]
• Stage 3 - Consists of a single track, dual gauge, high-level, opening rail bridge across the Port River, north of the road bridge, with connections to the existing rail system. Opened in June 2008.[3]

Stage 1 connected at what had previously been a bend between extensions of South Road and Salisbury Highway both of which had been extended in the early 1990s to meet each other. The original plan had been to install traffic lights at that intersection. Instead, an overpass was constructed with a loop through the Barker Inlet wetlands to provide a non-stop interchange. The bridge (for traffic travelling north on South Road to east on Salisbury Highway and east on Port River Expressway to south on South Road) was named the Craig Gilbert Bridge. Craig Gilbert had been the lead designer of the overpass, but died of cancer before it opened. The bridge was opened and named in his honour on 19 July 2005.[4] It was closed and demolished in May 2019 as part of the construction of the Northern Connector on the North–South Motorway which included new wider bridges on a slightly more westerly alignment.[5]

The Port River Expressway is now a major thoroughfare for freight and passenger road traffic travelling from the northern suburbs to the major port facilities of South Australia in Port Adelaide and Outer Harbor. The construction of Stages 2 and 3 was carried out by Abigroup.[6]

During 2018, 2019 and 2020, construction workers were putting up new elements on the expressway, as part of the Northern Connector project of the North–South Motorway.

As there is no parallel shared path near most of the Expressway and Salisbury Highway west of Port Wakefield Road, cycling is permitted on the road, except for restrictions due to closed road shoulders during construction of the Northern Connector of the North–South Motorway from 2017 to 2019.[7][8] Parts of the detour route were new shared paths constructed or upgraded in anticipation of this detour.[9] The bridge over the Port River includes a shared path on the southern side of the road as part of the construction.[10]

At the time of designing Stage 1 of the Expressway, the developers did not imagine that there would be much requirement for people to cycle along it, as Mawson Lakes had not been developed for housing yet, so the Port River Expressway was seen as only connecting industries to other industries.[11]

A new path parallel to the Port River Expressway was be built as part of the Northern Connector works. This will complete a shared cycling and walking track between Gawler and Port Adelaide by the end of 2019. As a result, cycling was banned on the Port River Expressway itself.[12]

The entire road is in the City of Port Adelaide Enfield local government area.

Location	km	mi	Destinations	Notes
Birkenhead	0	0.0	Nelson Street (A16) south / Victoria Road (A6) north – Port Adelaide, Semaphore, Outer Harbor	Western expressway terminus at traffic lights: continues as Victoria Road
Port River	0.5	0.31	Tom 'Diver' Derrick Bridge
Port Adelaide	1.0	0.62	Perkins Drive	Traffic light intersection
Port Adelaide–Gillman boundary	1.7	1.1	Eastern Parade –North Arm, Torrens Island, Ottoway
Dry Creek–Wingfield boundary	4.0	2.5	Hanson Road – Ottoway, Wingfield Waste & Recycling Centre
	5.5	3.4	North-South Motorway (M2) south / Salisbury Highway (A9) east – Regency Park, Adelaide, Salisbury, Port Wakefield	Expressway continues under Craig Gilbert Bridge[13] as Salisbury Highway. Interchange was rebuilt in 2018–20 for Northern Connector as part of North–South Corridor
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

• 
  Port River Expressway approaching the Craig Gilbert Bridge and South Road exit from the west (before North-South Motorway bridges were built)
• 
  Port River Expressway approaching the Eastern Parade overpass heading east
• 
  Tom 'Diver' Derrick Bridge over the Port River.
• 
  The Mary MacKillop Bridge, adjacent to the Tom "Diver" Derrick road bridge
• 
  Looking west at Craig Gilbert Bridge carrying South Road (before North-South Motorway construction)

• Freeways in Australia
• Freeways in South Australia
• Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study

• Transport SA - Port River Expressway