Federal Highway / Majura Parkway - Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

The interchange between the Majura Parkway and the Federal Highway illustrates the strong influence that staged development and traffic management during construction frequently have on interchange design.

Stage 1 (see Figure 1) is a trumpet type A interchange. The loop ramp is to cater for relatively large volumes of trucks. Future extension of the Majura Parkway to the west will lead to heavy volumes of commuter traffic on the Parkway, and coordinated two phase traffic signals were chosen to efficiently cater for these flows, as shown in Figure 2. The importance of landscape design and visual impact is also demonstrated in this design, as it is located on the principal entrance to Canberra, the National Capital of Australia. To minimise the visual impact, the roads and loop ramp were located to avoid the adjacent hills. The location of the bridges was influenced by the location of the existing Federal Highway. Figure 3 shows how the existing road is clear of the bridges, so that traffic management was simplified. 

Figure 3: Traffic Management During Construction	Figure 4: Completed Interchange
	Figure 4 shows the completed interchange.

The design was undertaken using modern computer techniques, and a "fly through" of the project was produced as part of the design process to produce realistic images of proposed works.