Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study

[2] Very few of the plan's recommendations were ultimately brought to fruition in their original form due to political and public opposition.

[5] In 1964 the state Liberal and Country League Premier Thomas Playford announced the commencement of a comprehensive infrastructure planning study for the future of Adelaide's transport needs.

This report, titled the Metropolitan Adelaide Transportation Study (MATS), was released in August 1968 together with an announcement that six months would be allowed for public comment before commencement of work.

[citation needed] The North–South Freeway was one of the most important parts of the plan, allowing travel north and south of Adelaide.

The Report on the Metropolitan Area of Adelaide predicted that the city would eventually stretch more than 70 km, from Elizabeth in the north to Sellicks Beach in the south by the 1980s.

The Noarlunga freeway would serve the rapidly growing residential, industrial and recreational to the south connecting to major highways to Victor Harbor and Yankalilla.

Starting at Old Noarlunga, it was to follow a path adjacent to Main South Road (this has since been completed and is known as the Southern Expressway), then continuing north on a path roughly parallel to South Road then land near the west parkland with off ramps to the CBD, until joining the North Adelaide Connector.

The Hawker Street tram bridge over the Gawler railway line was demolished in the 1970s due to lack of maintenance and safety concerns.

[8] A Torrens Road bridge over the Gawler railway line was constructed in 2021–2022 and allowed traffic from 18 June 2022, eliminating the level crossing.

This was proposed to be a connection between the new South Eastern Freeway (then under construction from Crafers, leaving the winding old road down to the plains) and the CBD.

At approximately 1 km from the O-Bahn's current terminus in Modbury, it would have then turned further north along what is now McIntyre Road through Golden Grove.

Starting at Port Adelaide, this would have been an east–west connector running roughly parallel to and slightly north of Grand Junction Road and terminating at the Modbury Freeway.

The most significant proposed public transport project was an underground railway beneath the city to bring rail to the core of the CBD.

Apart from the direct public transport benefits, it was said the subway would also lead to increased land values and encourage development at the southern end of the city.

The report stated that significant investment would be required to integrate the tram line with the proposed new rapid transit rail system and to construct grade separations along existing roads.

It was predicted that overall public transport usage would fall to below 5% by around the year 2000, and proceeding with the recommended changes would maintain the number at 7%.

However, in concert with changing community attitudes in Australia in the late 1960s,[9] many South Australians were cautious about the MATS proposal for the construction of a large freeway network.

Large-scale property acquisition proved to be one of the most contentious issues, with the very large areas taken up by a number of the proposed freeway interchanges seemingly recommended without any expectation of opposition.

However, the Adelaide Festival Centre was developed over the optimal portal location for the proposed King William Street subway.

Dunstan resisted urban sprawl, but initiated the ill-fated concept of the Monarto satellite city, as well as investigating new technologies in public transport.

[10] In June 1983, the North-South Corridor, the last surviving element of MATS, was abandoned in totality by John Bannon's new Labor government, which cited land sales as the reason.

The abandonment had a significant impact on the Highways Department, because it was the first time in its history that a government had rejected the recommendations of the Commissioner.

[14] MATS' proposed North-South Freeway began to see fruition when the South Road Superway became the first in a series of mass construction projects to build the non-stop North–South Motorway to replace South Road; as of March 2020 approximately 24.3 km of the motorway has been completed from Hindmarsh to Virginia with a 1.8 km link within that length due for completion in 2022.