Outbound commuters using the new six-lane Wynnum Road corridor in 2020 will have to squeeze back into four lanes to cross the heritage-listed Canning Bridge at the border of East Brisbane and Norman Park.
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Brisbane City Council's $115 million upgrade project straddles either side of the four-lane Canning Bridge.
On the city side to Canning Bridge, Lytton Road will be six lanes in stage one of the project. From the Canning Bridge east towards Hawthorne, it will remain four lanes.
RACQ spokeswoman Lucinda Ross said widening the city side from four to six lanes would help congestion but she questioned the approach from the eastern side of the bridge.
"The major choke point is the section leading to the Canning Bridge, not the bridge itself, and this will be addressed with the upgrades," Ms Ross said.
Ms Ross said, in the long term, the RACQ would like to see extra lanes added in the section east of the Canning Bridge, or to the bridge itself.
“We think stage 1B interim works will be good for commuters as they’ll address congestion and outbound traffic issues east of the Canning Bridge," she said.
"They’ll address the turning lane issues in this section, as well as the issues where buses block through lanes, holding up traffic.
"However, we look forward to and wait to see any plans for future improvements which might include additional lanes east of the Canning Bridge and the potential upgrade of the Canning Bridge.”
The project, which has bipartisan support, is now 30 per cent complete and will be finished in early 2020.
In 2014, deputy mayor Adrian Schrinner said widening the heritage-listed Canning Bridge to six lanes was an expensive and complex project.
"The plans allowed the approach to the bridge to be graduated from six lanes to four lanes,” he said.
"So there will be merge lanes in the lead-up to it, but ultimately Canning Bridge is a heritage-listed bridge and in order to perform some widening on it, you will have to provide a second bridge.
"That is a major cost, which we don't have the funding for at this point of time."
Greens councillor Jonathan Sri does not support the project.
Four years later, the council on Tuesday confirmed it still had no plans to add lanes to the Canning Bridge or provide a second bridge.
The council believes these measures - east of the Canning Bridge in the 1B section of work to begin after February 2019 - will help traffic flow by removing turning lanes and bus stops that block lanes.
"Significant improvements are being made east of the bridge to reduce bottlenecks by indenting bus stops and upgrading intersections to get people home quicker and safer," a council spokesman said.
Work on the eastern arm of the project, between Canning Bridge to Riding Road at Morningside, was due to begin in February.
Between 2013 and 2017 there were 118 traffic accidents, with 37 serious enough to warrant a person being taken to hospital for treatment.
More than 60 per cent of the drainage work on the project had been completed.
Clarification: Wynnum Road corridor upgrade project's stage one involves widening Lytton Road between Latrobe Street and Canning Bridge from four to six lanes. The story has been amended to clarify this point.
