Page 2153 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 2 August 2022
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upgrades to five significant intersections across Canberra’s south, delivering on our election commitments in Weston Creek and in Lanyon. Further work will be undertaken to improve active travel connections and to make sure that our vulnerable road users remain safe on our roads. This includes new pedestrian crossings and the further extension of the Belconnen Bikeway project on Haydon Drive from Battye Street through to the Calvary Hospital. Making roads and our road users safer is a significant priority for our government, and our collaborative work with the Commonwealth government will ensure the ACT can continue this important investment that makes our community safer and creates good-quality local jobs along the way.
DR PATERSON: Minister, what improvements can our constituents in Murrumbidgee expect to intersections on the south side as part of this investment?
MR STEEL: I am very pleased that our constituents in Murrumbidgee will benefit from these intersection upgrades which will improve safety. The intersections on Streeton Drive, in particular at Namatjira Drive and Heysen Street in Weston, will benefit from upgrades which will include the installation of traffic lights and will improve safe crossings for pedestrians and cyclists, and will also improve the surrounding path network at the same time. We know that 20,000 vehicles are using the road network each day between Weston Creek, Tuggeranong and Woden, and these two Streeton Drive “seagull” intersections are becoming increasingly busier, with difficulty being experienced by vehicles turning right from the intersecting collector roads. It is important that as this region grows we work to improve safety for all road users, especially those who are most vulnerable—pedestrians and cyclists.
We are also—and Madam Speaker, you will be particularly interested in this—working on other south side intersections. In Lanyon we will be doing that at Norman Lindsay and Tharwa Drive near the Lanyon Marketplace, a very poorly performing intersection with 38 crashes over the last seven-year period, and we will be improving in Theodore the Tharwa Drive and Lawrence Wackett intersection with traffic lights—I know that is a matter that has been brought to the assembly before, subject to a petition. We are very pleased we are getting on with that work as well as addressing one of Canberra’s worst intersections, which is Hume Circle at the corner of Canberra Avenue, Wentworth Avenue and Sturt Avenue. It has had 370 crashes over the last seven years, and we will be undertaking designs funded in the budget to improve safety for all road users.
MR PETTERSSON: Minister, is the ACT government planning new intersection guidelines and designs for best practice to improve pedestrian and road safety in Canberra?
MR STEEL: I thank Mr Pettersson for his question. Of course, as part of an active travel plan, which we are currently consulting on, as we invest in improved intersections in streets across Canberra for pedestrians and cyclists, we want to make sure from the very beginning through design that they are safe for those users. We will be consulting with the community on a new best practice design guide for intersections and streets across Canberra. This will particularly address issues of lines of sight around intersections; it will provide new intersection design recommendations which will be incorporated into the Municipal Infrastructure Standards going forward;
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