Vital upgrades to High Street have provided safer trips and smoother journey times for road users.
The High Street Upgrade project has delivered a safer and more efficient route for locals and visitors travelling to and from Fremantle and improved the freight route for heavy vehicles heading to the Port.
High Street is a heavily constrained area. The previous intersection with Stirling Highway was a notorious blackspot with a history of hundreds of crashes and some potentially dangerous heavy vehicle rollovers. In the five years prior to the upgrade, there were 399 crashes on this stretch of road and 72 of these occurred at the intersection of High Street and Stirling Highway.
The project, planned in various forms for more than 20 years, has replaced traffic signals at the intersection of High Street and Stirling Highway with a roundabout, which includes bypass lanes to separate local traffic from traffic heading to or from Fremantle Port or locations north of the river.
Also included is a series of important safety improvements, including the separation of eastbound and westbound traffic through a mature tree-lined median, which also provides an attractive gateway into Fremantle.
Since its opening in February 2022, the project has significantly improved travel times by eliminating delays at the High Street and Stirling Highway intersection. The 2031 traffic modelling indicates journey times between Carrington Street and Stirling Highway would take up to 14 minutes longer without the project in place.
The project was developed in partnership with local stakeholders and the community. This is reflected in the design of noise walls and amenity walls, the inclusion of new parking space for netball, the incorporation of Aboriginal and European heritage themes in the project artwork, and the environmentally sustainable drainage solution at Horrie Long Reserve.
New pedestrian underpasses feature artworks from two prominent local Noongar artists- the Peter Farmer Group and Lance Chadd. The large-scale murals tell traditional stories of the area. At Forrest Street, Peter Jnr and Kayley Emery from Peter Farmer Group selected animals and plants representative of the Six Noongar Seasons; while at Montreal Street, Lance Chadd's artwork provides an interpretation of 'Walyalup' - which means the place of Walyo (or Woylie) and is the traditional name for Fremantle.