The Port River Expressway was built in three stages:
Stage 1 - Was opened for traffic on 19 July 2005. It consists of a four-lane expressway link between Francis Street and the then South Road, Adelaide, now North-South Motorway; with an overpass at each of the junctions of the North-South Motorway, Hanson Road and Eastern Parade.
Stage 2 - Consists of a four lane high-level, opening road bridge across the Port River between Docks 1 and 2, linking Stage 1 at Francis Street to Victoria Road on Le Fevre Peninsula. This section opened on 3 August 2008
Stage 3 - Consists of a single track, dual gauge, high-level, opening rail bridge across the Port River, north of the road bridge, with connections to the existing rail system. Opened in June 2008.
Stage 1 connected at what had previously been a bend between extensions of South Road and Salisbury Highway both of which had been extended in the early 1990s to meet each other. The original plan had been to install traffic lights at that intersection. Instead, an overpass was constructed with a loop through the Barker Inlet wetlands to provide a non-stop interchange. The bridge was named the Craig Gilbert Bridge. Craig Gilbert had been the lead designer of the overpass, but died of cancer before it opened. The bridge was opened and named in his honour on 19 July 2005. It was closed and demolished in May 2019 as part of the construction of the Northern Connector on the North–South Motorway which included new wider bridges on a slightly more westerly alignment. The Port River Expressway is now a major thoroughfare for freight and passenger road traffic travelling from the northern suburbs to the major port facilities of South Australia in Port Adelaide and Outer Harbor. The construction of Stages 2 and 3 was carried out by Abigroup. During 2018 and 2019, construction workers were putting up new elements on the expressway, as part of the Northern Connector project of the North–South Motorway.
Cycling
As there is no parallel shared path near most of the Expressway and Salisbury Highway west of Port Wakefield Road, cycling is permitted on the road, except for restrictions due to closed road shoulders during construction of the Northern Connector of the North–South Motorway from 2017 to 2019. Parts of the detour route were new shared paths constructed or upgraded in anticipation of this detour. The bridge over the Port River includes a shared path on the southern side of the road as part of the construction. At the time of designing Stage 1 of the Expressway, the developers did not imagine that there would be much requirement for people to cycle along it, as Mawson Lakes had not been developed for housing yet, so the Port River Expressway was seen as only connecting industries to other industries. A new path parallel to the Port River Expressway was be built as part of the Northern Connector works. This will complete a shared cycling and walking track between Gawler and Port Adelaide by the end of 2019. As a result, cycling was banned on the Port River Expressway itself.
