Port Road, Adelaide
Port Road is a major road in Adelaide, South Australia connecting the Adelaide city centre with Port Adelaide. It is long, and has a very wide median strip, giving a total width of approximately 70 m.
The original design, conceived soon after the establishment of Adelaide, was to accommodate a standard road and a canal, with the canal later replaced in the plans by a railway line. The canal and railway line were never created in the road allotment: the railway line when built in 1853 was built approximately 1 km to the east. Since the extension of the Glenelg tram in 2009–10, 200 metres of median strip at the city end is occupied by tram lines.
In the 1968 Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study the road was destined to be upgraded to become the Port Freeway. The plan fell through, yet in 2005 the Government of South Australia announced a 600 m tunnel for South Road below Port Road and the railway line. The Torrens Road to River Torrens project to upgrade South Road to include a free-flowing road in a trench under Port Road and several other intersections started construction in 2015 and was completed by the end of 2018.
Some routes in Adelaide were renumbered in 2017. Port Road had been designated route A21 between West Terrace and Park Terrace. After the change, the West Terrace end is not numbered, and it bears route R1 between James Congdon Drive and Park Terrace.Major intersections
