Maitland traffic moved at a crawl as people began to return to work after this week’s major storms and flood.
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It took motorists up to two hours to travel the few kilometres from Rutherford to Maitland yesterday as drivers felt the pinch of the New England Highway closure.
Eastbound traffic was bumper to bumper from about 8am, according to witnesses, and the gridlock had not eased by mid afternoon.
A section of highway between the Maitland station and Maitland Hospital roundabouts went under floodwater on Wednesday afternoon and forced the the major road to close.
It meant that most traffic from Maitland’s western suburbs was forced through the city, which caused a bottle neck of vehicles and major delays for anyone on the road.
It took motorists about 90 minutes to travel along the highway from the Racecourse Road intersection in Rutherford to the Aberglasslyn Road intersection yesterday morning.
Bruce McKenzie, from O’Neill’s Tyres on the corner of Aberglasslyn Road, said he had often seen traffic jams on the section of highway in front of his workplace during the past four years.
But he had never seen a build up as bad as yesterday.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen it like this,” Mr McKenzie said.
“Even when the truck went through the house over here it wasn’t this bad.”
Mr McKenzie said it had taken him four hours to travel from East Maitland to Rutherford during peak hour the previous evening.
Luskintyre resident Pat Dickinson said she had to cancel an appointment with a Sydney eye specialist yesterday because of the traffic.
She said, when she saw the build up, she decided to try to catch a bus to Sydney.
“I got up really early and I couldn’t even get into Maitland [in a car],” Ms Dickinson said.
“I walked to Telarah to find there were no trains, so I walked from Telarah to Maitland station.”
She rescheduled her appointment after she reached Maitland station and was told that it would take at least two hours on a bus just to get from Maitland to Hamilton.
So she walked from Maitland station back to her car at the Aberglasslyn Road intersection.
A significant part of the road was still covered in floodwater on Thursday afternoon.
