New South Wales

Border welcome sign on the Gold Coast Hwy on the Queensland / New South Wales border at Tweed Heads NSW. Image © Paul Rands.

You've arrived at the road photos and information section that covers New South Wales.

In New South Wales, as is the case with all the other states in Australia, the roads are classified into different categories, and are also numbered for maintenance purposes and also navigation purposes.

The state's roads are managed by the Road & Maritime Services department of the NSW government. It was established on 1 November 2011. The former department responsible for road infrastructure in the state was known as the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) and was established on 16 January 1989, under the Transport Administration Act 1988 through an amalgamation of the former Department of Main Roads, Department of Motor Transport and the Traffic Authority. ¹

The road network that RMS manages includes:

18 028 km of State roads, including 4269 km of National Road Network, for which the Australian Government provides a funding contribution, and 163 km of privately-funded toll roads.

2946 km of regional and local roads in the unincorporated area of NSW.

5051 bridges, major culverts and 22 tunnels.

3751 traffic signals and other traffic facilities, systems and corridor assets.

It provides financial assistance to local councils to manage 18 474 kilometres of Regional Roads and also provides some funding and support to the 144 750 kilometres of council-managed local access roads which are funded by local ratepayers and federal road assistance grants. ¹

Prior to the establishment of RMS, other state operated organisations performed similar functions. These are detailed below: ¹

The Main Roads Board (MRB) was established in early 1925 to create and maintain a road system suitable for the motor age by providing advice and finance on road construction, design and development in NSW. The Board was replaced by a Board of Transport Commissioners in 1932 for eight months until the Department of Main Roads (DMR) was created in November the same year and rapidly expanded throughout NSW.

The DMR undertook a huge quantity of works across NSW; including maintenance of all major roads into Sydney, active continuous programs of road reconstruction, construction, upgrading and re-routing. The DMR was also responsible for numerous ferries and bridges across NSW and formed a specialist Bridge section within the Department in charge of bridge design, construction and maintenance. In 1989, the Transport Administration Act (No. 109, 1989) amalgamated the Department of Main Roads, Department of Motor Transport and the Traffic Authority to form the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA). The RTA continued its design, construction and maintenance of all state and main roads and bridges and ferries in NSW until 31 October 2011, where roads and maritime responsibilities were merged and a new transport infrastructure department was created called Roads and Maritime Services (RMS).

According to the NSW Road Occupancy Manual, published by the former Roads and Traffic Authority, Roads in NSW are divided into three types:

Arterial Roads (State roads): High traffic volume roads; highways, freeways, motorways and main roads. These are managed by RMS

Sub-arterial roads (Regional roads): These are major connector roads between state roads. They have significant traffic capacity whilst lower than those of arterial roads. These routes have shared responsibility between RMS and local Councils.

Local roads (Unclassified): These are other minor roads managed by local Councils. These roads are usually local Council, but may be joint responsibility.

Route Numbering is designed to aid motorists navigate, using route shields as guidance. NSW migrated from a hierarchical system (using numbers on shields) for route marking to the current alphanumeric system.

Prior to the introduction of alphanumeric route numbering, the following system was in place:

In the metropolitan area of Sydney, Metroads were the most important arterial roads. They generally formed the shortest routes from one side of the city to the other.

State Routes used white on blue shields to indicate urban and interregional routes.

National Routes used black on white markers indicate highways around Australia which were not part of the National Highway System but were still of some national significance.

National Highways used green and gold route markers indicate routes which were part of the now defunct National Highway System. They indicated the most direct routes between major cities.

NSW had spent a number of years converting to the alphanumeric style for quite some time, with full conversion commencing in March 2013. The first 2 official routes officially to use alphanumeric designations, were M1 (Tugun Bypass) and M7 (Westlink), which were put in place well before March 2013. Prior to March 2013, new signs were installed with hierarchical route numbers on coverplates over the top of alphanumeric route numbers, but in some cases the new route numbers were left exposed on the sign.

During the transition period, a mix of alphanumeric and hierarchical route numbers were being used.

To view each gallery, click or tap on a sign or route number below.