Expanding suburbs at Gillieston Heights and Cliftleigh are putting pressure on the corridor linking the two centres, and the realisation of the Hunter Expressway will also add more traffic by as much as 120 per cent, some predictions show.

Existing Cliftleigh residents, some of whom have lived in their Main Road homes for decades, look likely to bear the biggest brunt of progress, with traffic queues at the foot of their driveways, a median divider blocking right turns and ever-widening lanes of traffic encroaching on their front yards.

The situation prompted Cessnock Greens councillor James Ryan to call for a masterplan for Cessnock and Main roads between Maitland Railway Station and Kurri Kurri, amid predictions measures such as traffic lights would cause delays and add time to the trip. Upgrades to flood-prone Testers Hollow should be the centrepiece of a holistic plan.

“The State Government and the RTA have to step up to the plate and take responsibility,” Cr Ryan said.

“It’s too important a transport artery to be left to miscellaneous, ad hoc planning. There needs to be a holistic plan that starts at the top of the hill at Kurri Kurri and goes through to Maitland Railway Station.

“We’ve got to have good, free-flowing traffic with bicycle lanes, so people can choose to walk, drive, cycle or catch the bus.”

The residential boom has already begun with subdivisions at Gillieston Heights, which brought the road’s first set of traffic lights at the entry point to Saddlers Ridge, and a 900-lot subdivision approved for Cliftleigh.

Access will be via a second signalised intersection on Main Road.

Further land releases are also in the planning, which could bring more traffic lights, and delays.

Cr Ryan predicted the journey between Maitland and Kurri Kurri was going to get “slower and slower and slower”.

“There are going to be more traffic lights and you can expect queues between 100m or 150m roughly with that volume of traffic - and that doesn’t include the effect of the Hunter Expressway, which has been estimated at 120 per cent on top of 12,000 car movements a day,” he said.