newy.com.au – The 15-kilometre M1 extension from Black Hill to Raymond Terrace will open to traffic on Friday, 11 September, allowing motorists to bypass five sets of traffic lights and the bottlenecks around Hexham and Heatherbrae.
The Australian and NSW governments estimate the new motorway will cut about nine minutes from peak-period journeys and divert about 25,000 vehicles a day from existing congestion points. The change is expected to ease pressure on roads used by Newcastle and Maitland commuters, freight operators and North Coast holiday traffic.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is due in the Hunter today for a ribbon-cutting ceremony ahead of the road’s opening to motorists on Friday.
Often referred to locally as the Hexham bypass, the extension will connect the existing M1 directly with the Pacific Highway at Raymond Terrace, taking through traffic away from the route across Hexham Bridge. It has two lanes in each direction and four interchanges at Black Hill, Tarro, Tomago and Raymond Terrace.
The motorway’s largest structure is a 2.6-kilometre viaduct across the Hunter River and floodplain, the Main North railway line and the New England Highway. The interchanges will connect the new road with the surrounding highway and local road network.
The extension forms part of a $2.24 billion package that also includes the separate Hexham Straight widening project on the existing Pacific Highway. The Australian Government is contributing $1.792 billion and the NSW Government $448 million to the combined works.
Friday’s opening follows more than two decades of planning and construction, with route assessments dating to 2004. It is also substantially earlier than the mid-2028 opening forecast when construction contracts were announced in December 2022.
By April this year, the governments had brought the target forward to late 2026 and announced that the northern section bypassing Heatherbrae was complete. That section remained closed while work continued on the southern connection. The governments said contractors would remain after opening for landscaping, monitoring and targeted maintenance.
The new link addresses a gap left after the broader Pacific Highway duplication program, which delivered 657 kilometres of divided highway between Hexham and the Queensland border. That program was completed in December 2020 after an investment of about $15 billion, but through traffic in the Hunter still had to leave the M1 and negotiate traffic lights.
Further north, the 14-kilometre Coffs Harbour bypass remains another major part of the effort to provide a free-flowing motorway route between Sydney and Brisbane. It will take traffic west of the city, avoiding up to 12 sets of lights.
The NSW Government’s published timetable has the Coffs Harbour bypass opening to traffic at the end of 2026, with overall completion scheduled for late 2027. The governments say the interstate motorway route will be free of traffic lights once both links are operating.
