Sydney's road system is hardly its best feature — any local or visiting motorist would attest to that — but some of the projects constructed by the state government's roads department have been considered among the greatest of their kind in the world.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge, for example, was for 80 years the world's widest long-span bridge.

The Gladesville Bridge, meanwhile, was the largest of its type in the world when it was completed in 1964.

Video, audio and images of the construction of these projects as far back as the 1920s are being restored and digitised by NSW Roads and Maritime Services.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 12 minutes 46 seconds 12 m RMS analyst Vince Taranto discusses the department's archive with Linda Mottram ( 702 ABC Sydney: Linda Mottram ) Download 5.9 MB

Archival material available online includes documentaries, advertisements and road safety campaigns.

Vince Taranto, transport planner and economic analyst from the Roads and Maritime Services, is in charge of the project.

"These archival materials have been safely stored in a temperature-controlled environment, but we're a bit concerned about some of the 1970s early magnetic tape films because we know they deteriorate quite rapidly," he told Linda Mottram on 702 ABC Sydney.

"We're hoping to get that all digitised as soon as possible."

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Films from the 1960s talk optimistically about projects like the Warringah Expressway to the Northern Beaches and the Southern Expressway through St George and Sutherland Shire.

These projects have never been completed.

Pictures and videos of the construction of the Gladesville Bridge, meanwhile, show a dog spent a very large amount of time on site.

"When I looked at the films in more detail you can see the dog," Mr Taranto said.

"The workmen are high up on the arch placing concrete into a void, and there's the local dog looking on.

"You'd never see that today."

NSW's pioneering road safety films

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The collection also features road safety campaigns, including 1947's Alice in Blunderland which supposedly was one of the first campaigns of its type in the world.

Many of the videos in the archive are extremely long documentaries about the construction of major projects like the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway — now the M1 Pacific Motorway — which will celebrate its 50th anniversary on December 15.

"The Department of Main Roads [predecessor to the Roads and Maritime Services] made these films and gave them out to universities and professional associations in the age before television," Mr Taranto said.

A half-century of traffic nightmares

While 21st-century Sydneysiders complain of a modern traffic nightmare at hotspots like Parramatta Road, Victoria Road, the Spit Bridge and the M5 East, the archive highlights that congestion has long been an issue for the city.

The films reference gridlock problems all the way back in the 1950s.

In 1965, a documentary called Suicide Of A City was released which took a detailed look at traffic woes in the CBD.

To view more of the archived films visit the NSW Roads and Maritime Services YouTube account.

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