Page 2713 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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MR COE (Ginninderra) (4.18): Last week I, like other Nicholls residents, received a letter from the Director of Roads ACT regarding the Nicholls shops car park. I was very pleased to read in the letter that the ACT government is not proceeding with converting the car park to one-way traffic. As the Assembly is well aware from previous debates on this issue, the completion of this plan would have created more problems than it solved. It would not have addressed the problem of capacity or loading zones. It would have created traffic problems at the Paisley Street and Kelleway Avenue intersection and would not have widened the car park.
A public meeting on 29 April 2009 was held to discuss the Nicholls shops car park. The government’s design was unanimously rejected by the meeting. Not one of the 50 residents present expressed support for the government’s proposal, although, I must say, it was not clear where Ms Porter stood on the issue when she spoke. Before this meeting, the community had not been consulted properly and it definitely showed. The community only knew about the meeting because I took the initiative to distribute notices of the meeting by letterbox. Roads ACT only managed to letterbox about 80 homes, whereas I was able to letterbox over 2,000 homes in Nicholls in preparation for the meeting. Most people who attended only heard about the meeting through my letterboxing and I am glad they were able to come to ensure the government got the message. It was clear from the meeting that the government must widen the car park, continue two-way traffic at the Kelleway Avenue roundabout, provide more parking bays and not divert traffic down Paisley Street.
In last week’s letter to residents, Tony Gill stated that Roads ACT will not be progressing with the one-way traffic and will liaise with the ACT Planning and Land Authority regarding “current and future parking demands”. He stated that a new option will not be presented to the Nicholls community until “later in the year”. I am worried that a simple infrastructure program is taking so long and that there are no time frames in the letter. It took more than six weeks to get this letter out and it is remarkably short in detail. In fact, the lack of professionalism the government is showing on the issue is demonstrated by the fact that the government cannot even spell the name of the suburb correctly in the letter—not once but twice. Twice the letter from Roads ACT talks about the suburb of “Nicholl”. This is indicative of the government’s bungled approach to the ongoing issue of the Nicholls shops car park. That is Nicholls with an “s”.
This has been an ongoing issue for the government. On 23 August 2004, the then Minister for Urban Services, Bill Wood, wrote to a former member for Ginninderra, Bill Stefaniak, stating:
I am advised by officers of roads ACT that the traffic and parking arrangements at the Nicholls shopping centre were recently assessed. This assessment identified the need to modify the access road to the shopping centre and to widen the car park to facilitate the movements of vehicles within the car park. The design work for these improvements is in progress and the implementation of the works is expected to commence in October 2004.
So what has happened in the meantime? John Hargreaves was the minister between late 2004 and late 2008. I wonder if that is why it has taken until now to get some
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