Combined business chambers throw their weight behind Fix the Brown Mountain campaign

The Bega Valley Business Forum represents a unified voice for the six Chambers of Commerce throughout the Bega Valley - Eden, Pambula, Merimbula, Tathra, Bega, and Cobargo - with a total of over 500 member businesses.

Chairman Nigel Ayling said the forum was pleased to support the campaign to Fix the Brown.

"The Snowy Mountain Highway across Brown Mountain is part of the major east-west strategic state highway freight and tourism route linking the Bega Valley to Canberra and the Capital Region, and to Sydney - as well as the Monaro and Riverina.

"In its current sub-standard and traffic-restricted condition, the Brown Mountain road is regarded by local business as unsafe, unstable, unreliable and unsustainable in supporting the growth and maintenance of business activity in the Bega Valley."

My Ayling, on behalf of the forum, has written a letter of support to Jon Gaul, coordinator of the campaign.

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Earlier this month, Mr Gaul highlighted the Draft South East & Tablelands Regional Transport Plan only included a proposal to "investigate" possible solutions to the Brown Mountain issues over the next five to 10 years, "not any actual work".

Mr Ayling and the Bega Valley Business Forum were also concerned by the apparent lack of future commitments to the stretch of state highway linking the Bega Valley with the Monaro.

"This stretch of the Snowy Mountains Highway has been subject to single-lane, red light access for the past 12 months and there is no indication from Transport NSW as to when two-lane access will be restored," he said.

"The road is subject to frequent unpredictable rock and tree falls, landslides and landslips and delays from virtually constant roadworks.

"This negatively impacts freight, transport and fuel costs, business productivity, agriculture, forestry and tourism and the local cost of living due to the ban on B-double truck transport on Brown Mountain, combined with the current restricted single-lane access and traffic delays.

"These negative impacts expand to involve health and emergency transport to Canberra from the Bega Valley and natural disaster relief and resilience, as demonstrated during the 2020 Black Summer bushfires and other flood events."

While both the NSW Liberals and the current Labor Member for Bega have verbally committed to lobbying colleagues at a federal level for the Brown Mountain's reclassification as a Road of Strategic Importance, commitments to short-term action are lacking.

Mr Gaul said signing the Fix the Brown petition campaign was the best way for the community to show community-wide and non-partisan support to upgrade the unsafe and unreliable Brown Mountain road.

"The vital public election commitment needed right now from the political parties is to fund the $15million independent engineering options study to upgrade the existing Brown Mountain route, or identify the best alternative route up the mountain," Mr Gaul said.

"That's the essential first step."