Douglas motorists will be stuck in traffic jams until at least the end of August thanks to daytime road works along Port Douglas Road. 

Private crews working on behalf of Queensland Transport and Main Roads are rebuilding a damaged road surface on a 1.1-kilometre stretch of the road starting just past QT Resort and heading into Douglas CBD.

Workers have told The Newsport that traffic will be allowed to flow out of town for five minutes at a time, and back into town three minutes at a time, however our readers are reporting waits of over 20 minutes. 

These crews will keep working (and keep stopping traffic one lane at a time) Monday to Saturday between 6am and 6pm. 

The project is expected to take until the end of August, weather permitting. 

Crews are also working on a 660-metre section of road in Craiglie between Beor Street and the Shell Service Station. 

Transport providers like Coral Reef Coaches are fuming at the roadworks, which compound the delays from works already in progress along the Captain Cook Highway between Douglas and Cairns. 

Coral Reef Coaches managing director Pia McKeown reckons the delays cost her company ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ a year from lost time and idling fuel use. 

“We’re locals so we are experienced with roadworks delays but these just add to the ones on the highway that slow us down a lot,” she said. 

“But for the first time ever we received some warning from the guys doing the works before they set up so we could plan for it. That’s never happened before and we were always caught by surprise by it.”

What do you think?

Are roadworks a pain in the neck or are they a necessary evil?

Could the works be timed better?
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