Page 535 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 21 February 2018

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(3) calls on the Government to:

(a) table by the close of business today the completed study of the intersection of Tillyard and Ginninderra Drives;

(b) assure the residents of West Belconnen and the rest of the ACT that the traffic safety measures recommended in this feasibility study will be completely funded in the 2018–19 Budget; and

I rise today to speak to the motion that I have put forward with regard to the intersection of Tillyard and Ginninderra drives. When I was campaigning in 2016, the danger posed by this intersection was without question the single most pressing issue raised with me by the residents of the west Belconnen suburbs of Charnwood, Fraser, Flynn and Dunlop. People who spoke to me shared how many times they had either witnessed accidents at this intersection or seen the aftermath shortly afterwards. Many told me about their own personal near misses. Some of them had been involved in crashes themselves. A large number of people explained to me that they took long trips around the area just to avoid this intersection and its known dangers.

I understood that these people were not exaggerating. After having lived in Charnwood for eight years, their stories were all too familiar to me personally and to my family. Data clearly back up these anecdotes. Between 1 January 2003 and 31 December 2016 the intersection of Tillyard and Ginninderra drives was the site of 110 car crashes, 32 of which involved personal injury. I do not have the final total for 2017, but at least nine more traffic accidents occurred at this intersection last year alone and at least two of those resulted in personal injury.

In the first seven weeks of 2018 at least three more car crashes have taken place at this hazardous intersection. One of these, which was reported on in the Canberra Times, saw three females treated at the scene by paramedics and taken to the hospital. The availability of these statistics means that the ACT government has been aware of the dangerousness of this intersection for quite some time. In fact, the Transport Canberra and City Services road safety improvement program website currently ranks the intersection of Tillyard and Ginninderra drives as one of the 10 most dangerous intersections in the territory, based on the severity and frequency of crashes which occur on the road network where road conditions are considered to be a contributing factor.

I remind the Assembly and the minister that in 2010 the ACT black spot consultative panel identified this intersection as a site with a demonstrated serious crash rate and consequently sought commonwealth black spot funding in an attempt to improve it. Those intersection upgrades were made the following year, in 2011, but they have proven to be woefully insufficient. The rate of traffic accidents at this notorious intersection in the five years after the upgrades were made actually increased 35 per cent, compared to the five years before the upgrades. Of even greater concern is that the five-year rate of injury crashes jumped 243 per cent after the black spot program improvements were implemented, from seven to 17. I wish to point out that the minister’s proposed amendments remove any reference to these shameful statistics.

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