Page 4471 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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Mr Humphries: She is there for all of them.
MR CONNOLLY: Yes, but Ms Ellis was the one who got onto me about this problem. When I saw this story in the Valley View yesterday, I could understand why Ms Szuty would be concerned. On the face of it, we have ACTION doing something and the traffic engineers saying that they should be doing something else. The situation is that, unusually, we are locating bus-stops on an arterial road. Normally we would not, but that is a unique situation there as Athllon Drive crosses the parkway and heads down. That new area of Greenway is a quite small area of suburban development between Athllon Drive and the lake, and the advice from ACTION is that it would be very inefficient to take the buses off and for them to wend through those very short roads. It is more effective to have the people walk a block or a block and a bit to Athllon Drive.
The bus-stops were designed and funded through the 1992-93 capital works program, and the traffic and roads section certainly approved the plans. I think that is the quote from Mr Gill. It was a long conversation and the exciting bit got quoted. When he said that they looked better on paper, what he was really saying was, "When we saw the designs we thought they were sound". As is always the case, we take road safety very seriously in the ACT. The traffic and roads section does not just look at a thing on paper and sign it off and forget it. They, as always, go out and look at the site.
Since works commenced in late November, roads and traffic officers have been out there on a number of occasions and have made requests to capital works to omit a number of the features of the design. There was originally a proposal to build a concrete splitter island in order to deflect traffic away from the path of the bus. This went through all the processes of approval on paper, and they were about to construct it. When the engineers went down there and had a look at the site they took the view that the splitter island might, on balance, be more dangerous because it could have the effect of creating potential for head-on collisions.
There were a number of meetings on site and, as a result, on 8 December, when the traffic and roads officers went down there with the public works engineers, with ACTION management and with some delegates from the Transport Workers Union - one thing that union has always been very strong on is safety issues - it was agreed by all concerned that those modifications should be made. The arrangement that will be in place is regarded by all concerned to be safe. The arrangement, as it was originally planned and approved on the design, was thought to be safe; but, when the engineers had the backup of physically inspecting the site when works were in progress, they realised that they should modify their original design. I do not think that is a criticism of the original approved design as much as a matter of being doubly sure.
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