North Adelaide tram rolls into multimillion-dollar plan debate
Plans for a future tram to North Adelaide are being kept on the rails as new designs for a major street overhaul are released.
Adelaide City Council is keeping its fingers crossed for a long-awaited tram extension into North Adelaide as new designs for the O’Connell Street upgrade are released.
Designs for a planned O’Connell Street upgrade, which are 70 per cent completed, were presented to councillors at Tuesday night’s infrastructure and public works committee.
The proposed $15 million redevelopment will feature an increase in tree canopy, footpath upgrades, public artworks and additional space for outdoor dining.
Most notably, a “no significant work” zone along the central median strip of the street was reserved for a future tram network extension.
“The administration has assessed the O’Connell Street corridor and there are adequate widths for a potential future single tram carriageway along the street through the centre median area,” a council report says.
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Adelaide City Council has been outspoken in its desire for tram extensions, with its City Plan 2036 outlining plans to “investigate options to connect North Adelaide to the CBD with additional public transport” including an O’Connell Street tramline.
A City of Adelaide spokesperson says O’Connell Street upgrades were expected to commence in mid-2027 with the intention of leaving space for a potential future tramline.
“Council has advocated for the tram extension over many years,” the spokesperson says.
“Design elements have been selected so that a potential future tram extension could still be considered.”
But the designs sparked questions over the tram’s future, with councillor Phillip Martin saying he was “slightly disappointed” by the lack of tram progress.
“We’ve gone from the excitement and perhaps the false hope of a tramway when we started this process to a lost bikeway and the loss of the pedestrian feel of the street,” Martin says.
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“[The upgrade] is long overdue, and it’s important that we get it right because it is, as the administration knows, unlikely that we’ll be touching it again for a generation or at least until the second half of the century.”
A North Adelaide tram has been advocated for by the city council, previous state governments and the opposition parties for more than 10 years.
But extensions of the tramline into North Adelaide have been marred by significant costs to upgrade the state heritage-listed Adelaide Bridge on King William Road, which is estimated to exceed $60 million. The bridge has been deemed unsafe to withstand the increased traffic of a tram in its current state.
Former SA Labor Premier Jay Weatherill pledged to commit $259 million to a two-kilometre extension of the tramline along O’Connell Street into North Adelaide during the 2018 election cycle.
It would have featured stops at Adelaide Oval, the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Archer Street and Piccadilly Cinema but failed to come to fruition when Weatherill lost the 2018 state election.
In September last year, calls for a tram extension were ignited again by SA Greens leader Robert Simms who unveiled a $759 million policy to get city trams travelling to North Adelaide and Norwood to no avail.
A state government spokesperson told CityMag there were “currently no plans to further extend the tram network, however we will continue to monitor and reevaluate so that future investment is directed where it will provide the most benefit to South Australians”.
Eleanor Freeman told councillors on Tuesday night that a tram extension was “very central” to the upgrade of O’Connell Street.
“Part of me does feel quite unsure about investing in the roadway only for it to be ripped up for a tram, and I know that that is still uncertain,” Freeman says.
“But perhaps like the Hindley Street announcement not too long ago, we may be surprised yet.”
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