We don't need another makeshift exercise

Ms Lindy Simmons pointed out in "underpass is matter of road safety", as I have in the past, that the late 19th century engineering of Woy Woy Rd, including Bulls Hill, is an immediate and present danger.

It needs to be corrected before traffic build-up brings access to the Peninsula to a crisis point.

However, the problem goes further than that.

Even is the phantasmagorical underpass is built, this will bring little relief because the Council seems to have no grasp of the future traffic management requirements of the Peninsula itself and appears to be relying on its usual 'hoping for the best' strategy to see it through, as with the Peninsula drainage.

As anybody who tries to make a right-hand turn onto Ocean Bay Rd will attest, the days of relying on gap theory to manage Peninsula traffic volumes are rapidly drawing to a close.

But there is no indication that the Council has any conception of the steps that will be necessary to maintain the traffic movements, enhance the bus services and expand commuter parking, to mention only three obvious issues for the Peninsula's growing population.

When are we going to see a co-ordinated traffic management plan for the Peninsula to supplement the Central Coast Regional Plan now in preparation?

We don't need to wait for the new City Council to take office; this matter should have been on the agenda years ago.

If Council could remove its gaze from idiotic projects such as the Rawson Rd underpass, the unnecessary widening of Bourke Rd and the provision of parking pads in Trafalgar Ave, and focus on long term priorities, we might start to get somewhere.

However, I confidently predict that the Council's vision won't go much further than debating whether we need traffic lights at the Ocean Beach Rd and Rawson Rd intersection, a band aid solution that alone will make no contribution to overall traffic efficiency.

We don't need another makeshift exercise, like diverting Blackwall and Gosford traffic along Victoria St and Charlton St to Railway St through three roundabouts and two sets of traffic lights because nobody thought ahead of time about how the piecemeal development of Woy Woy would limit traffic options.

Why don't councillors put aside the Performing Arts Centre fiasco and concentrate on some lifestyle issues that affect many constituents on a day to day basis now and are going to get rapidly worse in the near future?

Email, 3 May 2016

Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy