Page 767 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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PEDESTRIAN ISLANDS
Discussion of Matter of Public Importance
MR SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Mr Stevenson proposing that a matter of public importance be submitted to the Assembly for discussion, namely:
The confusion and dangers caused to pedestrians and drivers by inappropriate and impractical pedestrian islands painted on Canberra streets.
MR STEVENSON (8.01): A recent survey has brought to our attention a fairly major concern for quite a few Canberrans, and that is the fairly recent white line markings on the road to designate some sort of a traffic island. The purpose of those islands being brought into being had to do with school closures, and it was to allow children to cross a street in two stages. I certainly agree, as no doubt we all do, with the principle of making street crossings safe for children. However, I think this measure really does not achieve the goal that it set out with and unfortunately I believe that it has created some dangers, and also some other impracticalities.
One such island in particular - on Dixon Drive out at Weston - was intended to allow children from Holder Primary School to go to Weston and Duffy. There was a suggestion that it was done to establish a safer route for the children. I know that the school principals in the area were asked what they felt should be done to help alleviate the perhaps increased safety problem for children, as were representatives of associations within the school. So, it is commendable that once again people were asked what their views were. As I said, unfortunately I do not think the result solves anybody's problems.
We have the major thought that we do need to care for the safety of our children. The question is: Are the measures that have been taken safe for children? I believe that they are not, for a number of reasons. The first one is that the child is basically taught that it is safe to be within this traffic island in the middle of the road; yet there is no physical barrier there. So I think the safety is more in someone's mind than something that would necessarily be apparent when you are standing in the middle of the road.
There are a number of problems. Taking Dixon Drive as an example, cars used to be able to park on both sides of the road; and indeed they can still park on both sides of the road, although they are encouraged to park in driveways if they can do that. However, if they cannot park in a driveway, and they do park close and parallel to the kerb, other cars coming along behind them need to drive over the white traffic island to get around them. I notice that Mr Duby looks rather puzzled about the matter; I cannot, for the life of me, understand why.
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