The road closures and changes impacting Sydney from this weekend 05:20

And it's going to be a tricky weekend on the roads in Sydney, and there's some major changes I thought we'd get into on the Warringah Freeway. And this will be happening for the next 18 months. So how you drive on the Warringah Freeway southbound into the city is about to be completely overhauled.

On top of that, you've got the city to surf on Sunday too. Well, here to make sense of it all is Craig Moran. He's the Executive Director of Customer Journey Management from Transport for New South Wales and he's with me on the line. Craig, g'day. G'day, Chris, and good afternoon to your listeners. Warringah Freeway, can you just tell us how the changes will work and what we need to know?

Yeah, look, we are making some temporary changes on the Warringah Freeway, particularly in the Mount Street area. Now, what is going to happen, and this will come into place from around 11 o'clock tonight, 11.30 tonight, sorry, and be in place for about 18 months, as you suggested, for the rest of the year.

For people heading north from the Harbour Bridge and heading up towards Mossman and Manly, the lane that they currently use will move slightly to the right. There'll still be one continuous lane as they have today, but when they come near Mount Street, it'll move to the right. So they just need to be a bit aware of that and cautious.

The main change though to facilitate that is in the centre of the Ring Expressway there's some lanes there that we refer to as reversible lanes. They head towards the city on a weekday morning peak and all other times they head north. Now where there's two lanes there at the moment they will be merging to one so it will have some localised impact in that area.

People heading towards the city in the morning in those lanes, they'll go from two lanes to one about half a kilometre before they do today. And people heading out of the city at other times, particularly during the PM peak, as they come off the Harbour Bridge and head toward Mount Street, they will merge from two lanes to one as well. So when we've got...

I noticed, remember years and years ago when you used to get off the Warringah Freeway going north in your left-hand lane and then all of a sudden overnight you had to get off on your right-hand lane to access Military Road and it was a complete and utter debacle. What have you guys got in place to ensure that doesn't happen?

Look, the way that people come off the bridge and head towards Mossman and Manly up onto Falcon Street and Military Road, that largely won't change. There'll just be a bit of a kink in that lane as they head in that direction. And people were heading further towards Chatswood and Epping where they go through the centre reversible lanes. They can still go the same way. It'll just merge from two lanes to one for a period and then widen back out to two lanes.

Okay. Will you have people in place just to be able to ensure that it's not chaotic? Look, we will have extra resources on the ground, particularly if something untoward happens, like an incident occurs in that location, but it will also be very closely managed from the Transport Management Centre across the entire period that this is in place. 18 months, yeah? Yeah, 18 months is the timeline for this change to be in place.

There's been a lot of work going on. I suppose not everybody would know what it's for. Can you brief us on that?

Look, this work is all related to the Warringah Freeway upgrade project. This is a project largely to untangle the Warringah Freeway and get it ready for when the West Harbour Tunnel comes into play in around 2028. Okay. And so you can expect probably for what, the next five years, the Warringah Freeway to have construction, some sort of construction occurring? Because it feels like it's been going forever already. Yeah.

You're right, it has been going for some time. The Warringah Freeway upgrade works is scheduled to be completed sometime in 2026 and then of course the West Harbour Tunnel will come into play around 2028. Okay, let's move to the city to surf on Sunday. If you're not running, don't go into the city. Is that probably fair to say?

I wouldn't necessarily say don't go into the city, Chris, but, you know, it's fantastic. 90,000 people registered for the city to surf. Great news for our city, great news for our state. But there will be a range of road closures in place, particularly around the CBD and out towards Bondi Beach.

They'll progressively come into place from about 3.30 on Sunday morning, and then they'll start to reopen from 1 o'clock and later when you get down towards the Bondi area, where it will be around 4pm. Now, there will be diversions in place, so traffic will be very heavy. But for those people heading out to participate in the City to Surf,

The best thing is public transport's the best way to get there. There'll be extra services in place. And, of course, travel and public transport's included in your registration. You running, Craig? I'm personally running, Chris. I think my role's a bit more overseeing, making sure we've got it working properly. Good on you, Craig. All the best. Thanks, Chris, and thanks for helping us get the message out. No, you're very welcome. That's Craig Moran. He's the Executive Director of Transport Management at Transport for New South Wales.